Christianity Today

Francisca Maria Costa Lima was 21 years old when her husband first locked her out of the house.

It happened three times, and each time she had to bang on the door, with her Bible in the other hand, shouting at her husband to let her in.

The expletives her husband yelled back contrasted sharply with the prayers Francisca spoke in the Pentecostal church about 15 minutes earlier.

But she says she had known it would not be easy following this new wave of Pentecostalism with a husband stuck in the past.

A Balancing Act

Now 35 and able to freely walk to and from church, Francisca sits on her porch in Mutamba, a neighborhood in Icapuí, a city of 16,000 in northeast Brazil. She fixes her dark brown eyes on the wooden door she used to beat with her fists.

The rest of her house is made of bricks and clumps of hardened mortar from when the mixture was left to ooze out of the cracks while it was still wet.

Forroacute;—the traditional northeastern music blending accordion, triangle, and zabumba drum—blares from the house across the street, dancing over the dirt path and the uneven fence surrounding Francisca's house.

Living in the sunniest state in Brazil for all her life has darkened Francisca's face and added lines beyond her years. Her fingers smooth her turquoise skirt and brush over the worn pages of the Bible she received 14 years ago, when she first encountered Christ.

Her husband no longer locks her out to stop her from attending church, she says, but still, he complains.

"This time that I dedicate to the church, he wants for himself," she says.

Whether she is teaching a youth Bible class or leading a weekly prayer meeting at Templo Central, Francisca is one of the many committed women who form the backbone of the Pentecostal churches in Icapuí.

The women are part of the growing Pentecostal movement in Brazil, which remains the largest Catholic country with 134 million Catholics, despite three significant waves of Pentecostal expansion over the past century. According to a 2006 Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life survey, an overwhelming 72 percent of Brazilian Protestants—who make up about one-fifth of the population—identify as Pentecostals.

It is hard to estimate the number of Pentecostals in Icapuí, but Pentecostalism has been known for gaining members in low-income areas like this small city where, in some neighborhoods, the average income is $23 a day.

Sociologists have also observed that Pentecostalism holds a particular appeal for women, who find themselves encouraged to step up and take leadership roles within the church that are inaccessible or discouraged at home and in the public spheres of government and business.

However, another trend became clear in conversations with the Pentecostal women of Icapuí: Many of them cannot be as committed to the church as they would like to be because their non-Pentecostal husbands complain about their church involvement.

Fighting Resistance

The list of reasons why many men in Brazil distrust churches is long. According to anthropologists Renzo Taddei and Ana Laura Gamboggi, who study gender and family dynamics in north-east Brazil, many men display machismo, loyalty to local traditions, and resistance to social transformation—all of which are challenged by their country's new Pentecostal growth.

But despite such resistance, Francisca has never let go of her faith, observes Railis Barbosa de Sousa, one of the leaders in her church.

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