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To walk down the streets of Lima, Peru's capital city, is to experience a nation re-engineering itself. The fall of the Iron Curtain was not only a sea change for U.S. geopolitical realities, but it has also had a ripple effect on developing nations like this Latin American country. Everything-currency, jobs, gender roles, social habits, spirituality-seems up for grabs.

In this context, Peru's evangelical church is growing at a phenomenal rate of 12 percent. But even as Peruvian evangelicals are in the midst of revolutionizing the country's spiritual landscape, the first wave of converts (from Baptist, Christian and Missionary Alliance, Assemblies of God denominations) is being challenged by independent charismatics and Pentecostals to throw out their old wineskins.

"This is a time of great definition for Peru's evangelicals," says Oscar Amat, a Peruvian evangelical sociologist. "The evangelical church is trying to find its way in a society in flux. It's as if we're caught between three major forces -the economic revolution, the Catholic church, and the charismatic/Pentecostal movements."

The evangelicos are operating in an arena dominated by two major agents of change in Peru-President Alberto Fujimori and the Peruvian street vendors, both of which are directly connected with evangelical life. First, evangelical Christians helped elect dark-horse presidential candidate Alberto Fujimori to his first term in 1990. It was the first time that evangelicals played a key role in a Peruvian election. And though some evangelicos have since felt snubbed by the Fujimori presidency, it did not hinder Fujimori from handily winning a second term in April. Second, the bulk of evangelical growth is happening among the poor who almost all operate in Peru's street-vendor economy.

Despite a history of military coups, surrealistic inflation, food shortages, and mad car bombers, little changed in Peru's social and religious landscape during most of the twentieth century. But today, due in large part to forces unleashed by President Fujimori, Peruvians are frenetically creating and adapting to a new nation.

Fujimori created much of the framework for the changes with his pragmatic and autocratic leadership. He dissolved and reformed a gridlocked congress, reduced inflation from 5,000 percent to 10 percent, built over 18,000 miles of new highways, and emasculated the fierce political terrorist group Shining Path. These accomplishments have created a more stable business environment, making Peru the fastest-growing economy in the world (13 percent).

Fujimori's policies are also aimed at energizing capitalist activity from the bottom up. His legalization of Lima's sea of sidewalk merchants has unleashed a tidal wave of economic activity generated by the hundreds of thousands of dark-skinned Andean migrants who have come to Lima from the impoverished Andes mountain region in hope of a better life.

As part of the new Peru, companies now stress user-friendliness and customer service-novel ideas in a country whose businesses had been infamous for their surly "I'm-doing-you-a-favor" view of consumer relations. The new customer-oriented approach is influencing many Peruvians to have similar expectations of their churches. This has set the stage for the explosive growth of charismatic and Pentecostal independent churches that, in the same way that Fujimori is stressing pragmatism over ideology, stress personal experience over theology.

THE INFORMALES

To walk on Jiron Pachitea, one of Lima's countless street "malls," with its seemingly unending rows of vending stalls lining both sides of the street, is to see a sophisticated and grassroots job-creating machine in full operation.

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June 19 1995, Vol. 39, No. 7