Transnational Pentecostal Connections: an Australian Megachurch and a Brazilian Church in Australia Introduction I Arrived at Th

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Transnational Pentecostal Connections: an Australian Megachurch and a Brazilian Church in Australia

Introduction1 I arrived at the Comunidade Nova Aliança (CNA) church on a Sunday, a little bit before the 7 pm service. From the street I could hear loud music playing. When I crossed the front door I unexpectedly found myself in a nightclub: the place was dark, lit only by strobe lights, and there was a stage with large projection screens on each side. People were chatting animatedly in the adjacent foyer. They were all young, mostly in their late teens. A young woman came to chat and asked if I were okay, if I knew anyone. Prompted by me, she took me to pastor Henrique and his wife, Denise, whom I had spoken to on the phone the previous Sunday. We exchanged pleasantries and they excused themselves because service was about to start. We all moved on to the audience seats and five young people climbed onto the stage. There were three young males (a guitar and a bass players, and a drummer) and two female singers. Pastor Henrique asked the crowd in Portuguese: “Who wants to be blessed by God?” Everyone raised their arms and replied “yes”. The band started playing worship music. For an hour there was one song praising Jesus after another. Songs were in Portuguese but real-time telecasts of the band and the song lyrics translated into English were beamed onto the screens beside the stage. Everyone was dancing and singing together with the band. Many raised their arms, some kept their eyes closed, others were crying with their hands on their hearts, a few dropped to their knees overwhelmed by emotion. Denise told everyone to praise the lord as loud as they could. There was intense emotion in the air. After an hour of music and dance, people sat for 20 minutes while Henrique read a passage of the Bible and preached. Again, this was a loud affair: Henrique spoke fast and ran around on the stage, at times stopping to write something on the whiteboard behind him. We were suddenly in a classroom. While the band was climbing back on stage, tithe was collected. Music and the strobe lights resumed. Everyone knew the service was finishing, so they all stood up and moved closer to the stage. They started screaming and dancing, now performing a single routine which resembled Brazilian Axe dancing. After the service, we all got together in the foyer, had minced meat sandwiches, guaraná (a Brazilian soft drink) and coke, and chatted. The women serving the sandwiches told me some kids took the sandwiches for their next day’s lunch. Everyone was very friendly and lovely towards me. I left by 10:30 pm, having met lots of people, with a lingering warm feeling in my heart. This was my first introduction to this kind of “rock concert” service, which has become more common in Brazilian neo-Pentecostal churches in the past decade,2 but which is a key feature of the Australian Hillsong Pentecostal church (Goh 2007: 297). This paper analyses the establishment of a new Brazilian church in Sydney, Australia. Comunidade Nova Aliança (CNA) is an Assembly of God Church created in 2007 by a young Brazilian couple to cater for the increasing number of Brazilian students in Sydney.

1 I am grateful to the Max Planck Institute for Religious and Ethnic Diversity (Gottingen, Germany) for a Visiting Research Fellowship which allowed me to write this article. 2 This style of service was established in Brazil by the neo Pentecostal church Igreja Apostólica Renascer em Cristo (IRC) created in 1986 in the city of São Paulo. For more on IRC’s expansion due to its emphasis on Gospel Music, see Dolghie (2004). 1

Scholars have pointed out that by allowing transnational membership, religion presents itself as a map through which individuals, particularly transnational migrants and organisations, attempt to locate themselves amid fragmentation and dislocation generated by mobility (Vásquez and Marquardt, 2003: 53). Indeed, religion is an important aspect in the insertion of migrants in the country of settlement as well in transnational processes (Levitt, 2001; 2007; Tweed, 2002). Diasporic churches, in particular, assist migrants in the process of overcoming nostalgia, homesickness and the challenge of adapting to the new country. As I will show in this article, CNA offers students a space for community building through Sunday services, weekly cell meetings, camping trips, and other communal leisure activities. It also helps them to adapt to the new life by offering basic training courses in barista and cleaning skills to middle-class Brazilian students, most of whom have never experienced paid employment in their lives.

In addition, scholars have demonstrated that migrants’ religious practices and beliefs have an influence on the host society by exposing it to religious diversity, and because migration continues to impact on the life of the homeland, these new forms are then carried back to the homeland and are recreated there, a phenomenon that Levitt calls “social remittance” (1999). This article also demonstrates the ways in which Australian Pentecostalism is carried as social remittance to Brazil. By doing so, it shows the polycentric nature of Pentecostalism (Freston, 1999), where Australia can become a centre from where religious flows emanate to Brazil.

However, academics have paid little attention to the ways in which religious institutions in the host country may influence rituals and facilitate the establishment of the new church. I argue that churches created by migrants are not established in a deterritorialised diasporic vacuum. Reterritorialisation engenders hybridity. Drawing on participant observation in services, and interviews with CNA founders and followers between 2009 and 2011, this paper demonstrates the ways in which CNA has been supported by the Australian Assembly of God and heavily influenced by Hillsong, an Australian Pentecostal mega-church. As a result, I contend that CNA is a hybrid of a conservative/traditional Brazilian Baptist church and a very informal, rock-concert-style Hillsong church.

Pentecostalism in Brazil

The fast expansion of Evangelical Protestantism in Latin America prompted David Martin (1990) and David Stoll (1990) to speculate whether Latin America was becoming Protestant. In 2002 Jenkins argued that in the past century Christianity’s centre of gravity had shifted from the Global North to the South. Indeed, Freston noted that “60% of all Christians are in the Third World. But allowing for the high rates of non-practice in the West, it is evident that a far higher proportion of active Christians live in the Third World” (2004: 12). Most of this expansion in the Global South is due to the growth of indigenised Pentecostalism, which is exploding throughout Latin America, Africa and parts of Asia (most recently in China) (Jenkins, 2002, 2006; Freston, 2004; Miller and Yamamori, 2007; Vasquez, 2009; Wesley, 2004). Presently, Brazil is the second largest Protestant country in the world (behind United States only) and the largest Pentecostal one (Freston, 2001: 198, 2004; Mariano, 2010). In the 2000 census, 15% of the Brazilian population declared themselves Evangelical Protestants (which includes traditional Protestants, Pentecostals and Neo Pentecostals), while this

number was 9% in the 1990 census.3 A survey conducted by Datafolha in 2007 found that the number of Evangelical Protestants had increased to 22% (17% Pentecostal and 5% Protestant) (Cariello, 2007: 2). Furthermore, the number of young people who are religious in Brazil is large. A survey in 21 countries by the German Bertelsmann Stifung Institute in 2008, found that the Brazilian youth is the third-most religious in the world, behind only young Nigerians and Guatemalans. According to the survey, 95% of Brazilians between 18 and 29 years old regarded themselves as religious, while 65% asserted they were “profoundly religious” (Fernandes, 2009: 66).

Pentecostalism is characterized by a strong personal experience of salvation which is believed is given by the Holy Spirit in the form of glossolalia (speaking in tongues), divine healing, exorcism, and prophecy. For these churches, health and wealth are signs of salvation. According to Vasquez & Williams (2005), the explosion of Pentecostalism in Latin America is due to several developments: a precarious transition to democracy, the migration of unskilled workers from rural areas to large cities, neoliberal capitalist policies, poverty, violence, and the consequent generalised sense of insecurity of a small state. In this state vacuum, these religious organisations became spaces of the stability, community support, and hope. Drawing on a Theology of Prosperity, these churches attract the poor and those excluded from the material gains of modernity.

However, this study engages with more recent developments in Neo Pentecostal churches in Brazil. New churches such as Renascer em Cristo, Sara a Nossa Terra, and Bola de Neve4 (established in 1986, 1992, and 1999 respectively) are attracting the urban middle-classes (among them politicians, artists, celebrities, athletes, professionals and business people) and the young. This is so for several reasons. These churches do not ask their followers to leave the world and have an ascetic life as traditional Protestant churches would. They do not ask for sacrifices. Followers can have their lifestyle as celebrities or politicians, for example, and continue to be members of the congregation (Mariano, 1999:101-102). For instance, Bola de Neve’s membership is comprised mostly of young people between 20 and 35 years old who practice radical sports (surfing, skating, jiu-jitsu), and who enjoy the informal services in which worship is done to the sound of pop, rock and reggae bands. Its churches are decorated with beach and surfing themes. Most of the congregation sport piercings, tattoos, and informal clothes (T-shirts, shorts and sandals). To be sure, it does preach celibacy before marriage and prohibits the intake of drugs and alcohol (Dantas, 2010:55-56).

In addition, by deemphasising exorcism, miracles and the supernatural, while emphasising self-help techniques of success and the so-called Theology of Prosperity, some Neo Pentecostal churches have become more attractive for the middle classes. They promise and support happiness and prosperity in this life, like the Pentecostal churches (Mariano 1999: 104). However, in order to reach these, new pastors preach not only prayer and tithing, but also rationality, pragmatism, and self-reliance. Pastors in these churches are more like motivational speakers than religious figures (Pereira and Linhares, 2006).

3 The results of the 2010 census were not in the public domain when this article was written. 4 Bola de Neve is an offshoot of Renascer em Cristo. It was founded by Rinaldo Luiz de Seixas Pereira, a former minister of Renascer. Rina, as he is usually called, has a degree in marketing and a postgraduate degree in business. He is also a surfer and uses his passion for surfing and cool and laid-back lifestyle to attract young adherents (Dantas, 2010: 50). 3

It is noteworthy that unlike the Catholic Church, Pentecostalism is polycentric (Freston, 1999). It does not have a central authority, but a set of beliefs and practices that can be adapted by local entrepreneurs. According to Freston, “new churches are local expressions of global culture, characterised by parallel invention, complex diffusion and international networks with multilateral flows” (1997: 185). They are part of a global Pentecostal expansion. Vasquez argues that “Pentecostal and Charismatic Christianity build a supra-local space...the space of the Kingdom of God… and a trans-local time, as armies of God move across transnational networks to conquer territory” (2009: 280). CNA is also a local expression of Neo Pentecostalism. As we will see in this paper, CNA was created in Australia (it is not a branch of a Brazilian church) as a hybrid of a Brazilian Baptist church and new styles which its founders picked and chose in Australia.

The Brazilian Diaspora in Australia Brazil was traditionally a country that received inflows of migrants; however, since the mid- 1980s the flow has reversed. The socioeconomic crisis of the 1980s and 90s led to massive social inequalities, rampant crime and violence. This motivated many Brazilians to emigrate. According to a 2000 census of foreign consulates undertaken by the Brazilian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 1.5 million Brazilians had left the country in the last two decades. In 2006, a report of the Parliamentary Inquiry Commission on Illegal Immigration (CPMI) found that this number had doubled. The largest communities are in the USA (1.3 million), Paraguay (500,000) and in Japan (260,000). It is noteworthy that in 2001, Brazil became part of the BRIC economies (Brazil, Russia, India, China), an acronym created to denominate “emerging economic giants.” In early 2012, Brazil overtook Britain to become the sixth largest economy in the world. By 2025 Brazil is set to become the world’s fifth-largest economy, behind only the United States, China, India and Japan (The Economist, 2010: 4). However, Brazil’s newest standing in the world order has not halted emigration (although many Brazilians are returning and some skilled foreigners are now migrating to Brazil). Massive social inequalities persist. The Gini coefficient placed Brazil as the country with the 10th most unequal wealth distribution in the world (Lage and Machado, 2008).. As a result, while the poor emigrate in search of better working opportunities, many middle-class migrants have left the country escaping violence and fear in everyday life.

Brazilian immigration to Australia has two defining moments. The first migrants arrived in the early and mid-1970s, attracted by an Australian Government assistance scheme. These were poor migrants and today still belong to the working class. The second group started arriving in the late 1990s. By contrast, these are young professionals who are highly educated and belong to the upper-middle class. They usually arrive as students in search of cultural capital (including the knowledge of the English language) and a better lifestyle. Indeed, most of the new migrants I interviewed told me they thought of migrating to either Canada or Australia, but decided for Australia because of the warm weather and the beach culture. More often than not, they migrate individually, learn how to speak English well and socialise with and marry Australians. Following the immense gap between the educated and uneducated/wealthy and poor in Brazilian society, the community in Australia is internally fractured between these two groups (author 2006, 2010; Wulfhorst, 2011).

According to the last census in Australia (2006), there were 7,490 Brazilians in the country. Although census numbers show that the population is increasing (in 2001 there were 4,713 and in 1996 there were 3,359) these numbers are grossly underestimated. For instance, 4

according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, in 2005 there were 7,100 Brazilian students in Australia (Linacre, 2007). But even this number is on the increase. According to Australian Education International (AEI), an agency of the Department of Education, Brazil was the 9th largest source country for international students, with 10,526 students in 2011. Of these, 7,400 were between 20-30 years old (AEI, 2012). In addition, based on the number of passports issued in the past decade, the Brazilian Consulate in Sydney has estimated the present number of Brazilians at around 30,000 in New South Wales, Queensland, and Northern Territory, which are under its jurisdiction. The 2006 census may not have captured more accurate numbers because Brazilians may not have responded the census since many of them are students (and thus just temporarily in Australia) and a larger number arrived after 2006.

A Hybrid Church: Comunidade Nova Aliança CNA was established by Henrique and Denise5, a Brazilian couple in their early 20s, in Petersham (a Sydney suburb settled historically by the Portuguese) in 2007. They arrived separately in Australia to study English in 2002, when they were 18 and 16 respectively. Soon after arriving, they met at the Brazilian Assembly of God church in Sydney. However, the couple and part of the congregation left this church in 2007. The reasons for the split are related to discrepancies in cultural values and behaviour, which are a consequence of the profound differences between the first and second waves of Brazilian migration in Australia. The older generation of migrants followed a strict conduct that was common in the Assembly of God in Brazil in the 1970s, while the couple came from a context of an opening in prescribed behaviour (not in moral but in superficial terms, such as dress and language used) in Pentecostalism Brazil.6 According to Denise,

There are people who like churches with more music, or those who like it more traditional, so there was this division of people who were more traditional and people were less traditional. If you see our church, we’re not traditional at all. And this is what we felt it was missing here for these people who had not found themselves here, for the students who hadn’t found themselves yet. There are people who come here who have never been to a church. They come here because they are invited by somebody who studies with them, and they end up staying because it is something different from what this person thought a church was like (personal communication, March, 2010).

They told me they were Baptists in Brazil, but had joined the Brazilian Assembly of God church because it was the only Brazilian Evangelical church in Sydney. Denise rolled her eyes when she said that in the Brazilian Assembly of God women have to wear long skirts (“mulher de saião”), long hair (“cabelão”), they cannot wear makeup or earrings, while men

5 All names in this article are pseudonyms. 6 For more on this Brazilian Assembly of God church in Sydney and the ways in which this gap between the two waves of migration affects other religious choices of Brazilian migrants, see author (2006)

and women sit separately in church. She saw this traditional prescription of behaviour as problematic, since the Brazilian Assembly of God church in Australia was not able to welcome the diversity of Brazilians who arrived in the country. Henrique told me that was the reason they called their new church Comunidade Nova Aliança (Community New Alliance). He went on to explain,

That’s why we wanted to call it ‘community’, because we are not representing any denomination in particular, we are affiliated to the Australian Christian Churches, which is the old Assembly of God of Australia. But we want to send this message that we accept all denominations, we are here to accept everyone. The second part of the name, New Alliance, refers to the alliance Jesus made at the cross with God. So we want to send the message that we are a community, we want to be a family, and also talk about this message Jesus gave us, this new relationship with God (personal communication, March, 2010).

After they left the Brazilian Assembly of God church, they moved with a small part of the congregation to an Assembly of God of Australia church in Beverly Hills, a suburb south of Sydney. They did so because, according to them, it was “less traditional” than the Brazilian one. Shortly after that, Australian Senior Minister Barry Saar from the Petersham Assembly of God invited them to establish their own church to cater for increasing number of Brazilians in the church. Minister Saar supported them in all sorts of ways from the start. Denise told me:

[The Assembly of God] is where we work, we share the same temple, our office is here. We study here, we studied theology here. We were mentored by them. Because we were very young ...we depended on them very much. We started when Henrique was 23 and I was 21. For instance, the constitution of the church. We did not know anything about that. It was all very new for us. We didn’t know how to help people. For example, if a person came here involved in domestic violence, we didn’t know Australian laws in relation to this. We didn’t know how to act as a church. In the first two years, they were really our mentors. We have become more independent only in the past year. Nevertheless, they have not circumscribed themselves to this denomination. As Henrique asserted above, they considered themselves non-denominational. In this context, they have continued “shopping” for successful ways to establish themselves. Denise told me:

We’re such a young church, so we inspire ourselves in churches that are successful. We were very much supported by the Petersham Assembly of God and we go to Hillsong and other churches. We support them and we see what is cool. For instance, everything the Australian churches do, they do really well. They invest money, they invest in marketing. We see these things that are successful... but it was very natural, we were just using [what was successful].

Denise and others in the congregation participate in Hillsong’s conferences and services whenever they can. Denise also told me that they had discarded church practices they thought

were not successful. When asked what kinds of practices these were, they told me that the Brazilian Assembly of God’s strict control of people’s behaviour and lifestyle was counterproductive. She said:

I think that in Brazil some churches put so many obstacles for people to arrive! We said: ‘Enough. We are going to do things differently. We’re going to invest in social work at the church.’ We have our department dedicated to social work. We help people find work, people who are depressed, all sorts of people, people with problems with immigration, visa. So we had to leave behind this side of the church that establishes rules that were not given by God but by human beings.

Supporting the Community

Similar to what other scholars have found for churches which cater for migrants (Levitt, 2001; 2007; Martes 1999; Vásquez and Marquardt, 2003Vásquez and Ribeiro, 2007; Tweed, 2002), CNA supports its congregation by creating a home away from home as well as establishing links to bridge the home and hosts societies. CNA has a lot of social activities for its congregation. Besides its Sunday service, it has weekly smaller cell meetings (with around 10 people each) in different suburbs of Sydney. In these cell meetings they read the Bible and chat about the past week. These are led by people who have been in the congregation longer. On Tuesday evenings CNA has prayer meetings, and fortnightly on Thursdays it holds evening meetings called café com palavra, in which there is live music, people can chat and network while savouring coffee and Brazilian cheese balls (pão de queijo). Acording to Denise, these café com palavra meetings were established for first arrivals so that they can see that the church is just like the world outside, ministers and the congregation enjoy music, good food and a chat. On Saturdays, CNA has a special service for young people. Again these were created for young people to see that they can enjoy themselves in church in the same way they do outside, but without alcohol. Some of these services are thematic; others are outside in parks and at the beach. When I interviewed Henrique and Denise, they told me that the theme of the following Saturday was surf, so the kids were bringing sand into the church. According to the founders, all these activities are done to make sure the community is alright. It would be impossible for the two of them to watch closely and support the whole congregation (around 100 young people). By meeting with the leaders of each cell and each of these activities, they can keep tabs on everyone and make sure they are supported.

They also have courses for the congregation so that they can find their first job in Australia. They have cleaning and barista courses, English language conversation for students, and Portuguese courses for children of Brazilians, and they teach them how to write their CVs. This has a clear practical side, but also spiritual side. According to Henrique, he was tired of saying “love the other as you love yourself” in church, but not doing anything about it. He hopes that the congregation can feel the love the leaders have for them and therefore feel God’s love for them as well.

The profile of the congregation reflects the larger Brazilian community in Australia. The majority are middle and upper-middle class and used to live with their parents in Brazil. They are now living by themselves for the first time in their lives in Australia. According to

Denise, their social class and their new freedom create a lot of problems for them in Australia:

One of the most frequent difficulties [we find] are people who are depressed because they arrived here and got disillusioned in some way. For instance, there is an image that they sell in Brazil which is not true. They say you are going to get here, learn English in six months, live by the beach, and earn $20 an hour. They arrive here, and it’s hard to find a job, and it’s hard to learn English, and they have to live in a shared three-bedroom house with another 18 people. Reality bites and they are far away from their families. They can’t go back to their mum and cry on her shoulder. And they are alone here and they get pretty depressed. There is a lot of frustration. There are people who come here and have post-graduation degrees and are cleaning offices. It is very hard for them. They thought they were coming for something and they end up in a worse situation than in Brazil.

Given the issues their congregation faces, it is easy to see why Henrique and Denise chose social work as their main approach and to accept people as they arrived. Again, their work is spiritually based. They believe that “If you don’t have spiritual life you don’t have the rest of your life. If you straighten up your spiritual life, things start to change for the better” (Henrique, March 2010).

The Hillsong Style of Worship Hillsong was established by Brian Houston and his wife Bobbie in Baulkham Hills, a suburb north-west of Sydney, in 1983. It has quickly expanded to become a megachurch, opening branches throughout Sydney, as well as in London, Cape Town, Stockholm, Paris, Moscow, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, New York City, Kiev and Germany. According to Goh, a megachurch has a “contemporary worship style prominently featuring electronic musical instruments and media, dynamic and charismatic speakers, services geared towards ‘seekers’ rather than mature believers, international links and networks, informality in dress and atmosphere” (2007: 285). According to its website, Hillsong has 18,000 worshippers each weekend (www.hillsong.com).

Like CNA, Hillsong is non-denominational, but it is affiliated to the Assembly of God of Australia. It expanded phenomenally in the past two decades by targeting the needs of young people. Connell argues that Hillsong makes “religion fun, fashionable and even trendy; it is about consumption rather than commitment” (2005:330). Indeed, its services are more like live music concerts (with a large band, a choir, huge screens, strobe lights, smoke coming out of the stage), the clergy and audience are dressed informally, the language in the sermons is also very informal and peppered with slangs, while the “church” itself resembles a convention centre (no crosses to be found anywhere) with a cafe and a shop in the foyer which sells T-shirts, CDs, DVDs and books by the church pastors (Connell 2005: 322-323; Goh 2007: 292). It also has a strong presence online: Hillsong band concerts around the world and services can be watched on the Internet, the online shop sells the same merchandise as the church headquarters. Connell argues that Hillsong has a strong hold on its congregation by offering a sense of community and a network of support in suburbia, since outer suburbs lack social institutions and public spaces (2005: 327). Hillsong also offers 8

smaller cell meetings according to age and place of residence, women’s and men’s weekly groups and annual conferences, opportunities to volunteer for disadvantaged people in Sydney as well as in poor countries in Africa, and participation in fund raising campaigns (e.g. the tsunami appeal in 2005 and the 2010 Australia flood relief).

A particular important arm of its business is the Hillsong International Leadership College. The college offers accredited courses in worship music, pastoral leadership, TV and media, dance, and bachelor of contemporary ministry. Given that the college courses are recognised by the Australian Department of Immigration, it attracts a majority of international students, many Brazilians included. According to the Hillsong website, the college presently has 900 full-time students across two campuses. The curriculum description on the website clearly targets young people, “The curriculum is centred largely on the creative arts with the goal to train students to express their faith in the areas of music, dance, drama and visual arts in both church and secular contexts” (www2.hillsong.com/college). Since the college offers a visa to study in Australia, the possibility of interacting with Hillsong ministers and music band stars, as well as exciting, creative and expressive courses, it is easy to see why some young Brazilians have told me how much they wanted to come to study at Hillsong College.

CNA: Between God as the Father and God as a Friend Like Hillsong, CNA is youth oriented, and has a relaxed, informal and inclusive attitude towards its congregation. Its services are similar to Hillsong’s albeit in a much smaller scale. CNA ministers’ age, way of dressing and speaking make them relate easily to their young congregation. Because of these similarities and because Hillsong is becoming well-known in Brazil (as we will see below), some in the CNA congregation go to Hillsong’s services, conferences, and college. André, a young man from the south of Brazil who has completed an MBA in São Paulo’s prestigious Fundação Getúlio Vargas, told me he used to go to Hillsong before adhering to CNA. André “loves” Hillsong: “Everything there is done with love and care – from the carpet to the wall paper, to the toilet paper. Everything is excellent there” (personal communication, April, 2010). Asked why then he left it for CNA, he replied: “Everything is great there, but it is cold. Here [at CNA] it is more like a family. I didn’t want to go to a Brazilian church because I came to Australia to learn English. But now I am very happy here”. Patricia, a graphic designer from São Paulo, joined in the conversation: “It is the warmth [we have here], the community feeling. After the Hillsong service everyone gets into their cars and leaves. Here we keep chatting for hours after the service. Many of us share houses, we have surf classes, there are always activities. It is a family”. Yet she quickly added: “But Hillsong is excellent! The college courses are awesome and Baulkham Hills is beautiful. It is so green!” It seems that although Hillsong caters for young people, it does not thoroughly fulfil the role of family for those who are migrants and do not have their own families with them. Moreover, Patricia’s reference to cars is telling. Given the social class of these Brazilian students, most probably they all had cars in Brazil, where more often than not only disadvantaged and working class people take public transport. In Australia, leaving the church in suburbia by train late on a Sunday night can be a lonely experience. Therefore, although Hillsong is very attractive for these young Brazilians, given their condition of migrants, they need more than religious services geared to youth in Australia. CNA fulfils these needs. It works as a home away from home, a place to meet other Brazilians in the same 9

situation they are in, to network, deal with nostalgia, and adapt to their new life in Australia by learning its laws, language, and retraining for work. Furthermore, the founders and cell leaders function as faux parents for young people who are away from their parents” home for the first time in their lives. Indeed, Freston has also observed that:

In the diasporic situation… organised religion expands… fulfilling many other functions in addition to the usual ones: familial, social cultural, linguistic (preservation of the language), economic, political (representation and organisation), medical and other functions. The churches expand to fulfil these other functions vis-a-vis the relative lack of other state and civil society institutions among immigrants (2008: 258).

It is noteworthy that, for CNA founders, Hillsong is an inspiration but they do not desire to copy them thoroughly. They watched and copy some aspects of the service, church organisation (different ministries/departments, cell meetings), community building, social work and charity work. Henrique asserted that: The influence of Australian churches had on us make as look more like an Australian church that speaks Portuguese than a Brazilian church. Of course, some things are Brazilian: for instance, having a meal together after the service. When we camp we make black beans! Many things are from Australian churches. Even the system of cells is Australian (they also use it in Brazil). There are things we adapted from them. But some things we held onto because Brazilians need them. However, Henrique was very clear that he wanted CNA to have its own identity. After three years of work, he told me they found a middle way between Brazil and Australia. He noted:

We have this Australian side that people here see God more like a friend, but we also have the Brazilian side which sees God as a father figure (senhor), a more respectful attitude. It’s a good place to be, because you have that respect for God but you also have a friendship, a relationship with God. I think they are two extremes: some people only see God as a friend, and another extreme in Brazil in which people are afraid of God. ‘If I do this, God will send a thunderbolt to strike me.’ We don’t want to be in either of the extremes, we want to be in the centre. I think that’s the identity of our church. Denise summarised her thoughts with the words: “We are an Assembly of God Australian style. It is less traditional, happier, freer, which is similar to the Baptist church in Brazil”. When I remarked that there were similar, informal Neo Pentecostal churches in Brazil, Denise replied that they had left Brazil before Bola de Neve was established. There have never been to their services and most of their inspiration came from Australia. Perhaps because they never had pastoring experience in Brazil and learned their trade in Australia, they are more open to this Australian style.7

7 I am grateful to Paul Freston for pointing this out to me. 10

Hillsong in Brazil: Transnational Fan Clubs

It is worthy to note that when young Brazilians are not in a situation of migration, they can then embrace Hillsong more thoroughly. Attesting to the polycentric nature of Pentecostalism and the impact of a growing Brazilian community in Australia, the Australian church is becoming well known in Brazil. Such flow of information on a Pentecostal church unknown in Brazil until recently is a good example of what Levitt calls “social remittances”. She has noted that “social remittance exchanges occur when migrants return to live in or visit their communities of origin; when nonmigrants visit their migrant family members; or through interchanges of letters, videos, cassettes and telephone calls” (1999: 936). The latter channel through which information is disseminated should be updated to include websites, social network sites such as Facebook, and blogs. For instance, in May 2011, when I did a Google search with the keywords “Hillsong” and “Brasil” (in its Portuguese spelling with an “s”) together, I got around 1.550,000 results. They are YouTube videos featuring preaching and the band concerts at Hillsong’s headquarters in Sydney, MP3 downloads for their music, Brazilian fan clubs on social network websites, blogs, and lyrics translated into Portuguese. The most comprehensive Brazilian site is Eu Amo Hillsong (“I love Hillsong”, http://euamohillsong.com). This site is not affiliated to Hillsong, but it was created by Brazilians who “adore” the Church and want to “inform about it in a quick, reliable way”. The site explains Hillsong’s history, its ministers and their memorable quotes, the history and songs of each of its CDs, the prizes the bands and albums received, dates and links for Hillsong conferences, and how to contact Hillsong in Australia. It also sells Eu Amo Hillsong T-shirts. Overall it is more of a fan club site than a church site, given that the figure of Jesus and God are not as prominent as Hillsong ministers and bands.

When I checked the site in May 2011, there was a special link which was set to cover the Brazilian tours of Darlene Zschech and the band Hillsong United in June and November 2011, respectively. The June event took place over three days: one day in Foz do Iguaçu (a small town on the border of Brazil, Argentina, and Paraguay), where she was part of the March for Jesus8 together with a carnival-style floating car parade, and two days in Rio de Janeiro’s Sambadrome. All concerts were free. This is Darlene Zschech’s second tour in Brazil; the first one was in 2009. As in 2009, she made a video to invite Brazilians to come to the tour. The video has been shown during Comunidade Internacional Zona Sul services (a Neo Pentecostal church whose style is similar to Hillsong) and posted online.

In his study of another Neo Pentecostal church, Comunidade Evangélica da Restauração (CER), in the outskirts of Belo Horizonte (the capital of Minas Gerais state), Gomes (2007) found that Hillsong is an inspiration in terms of music, dress and service style for young CER adherents. As in the Hillsong service, youth at CER’s service play music on stage, dance in the audience under strobe lights and dry ice smoke. A 23-year-old CER woman told Gomes:

Hillsong has a lot to do with my dress style. I am just not blonde like the woman [Darlene Zschech], but I mirror myself in her… I find her way of

8 The Marcha para Jesus/March for Jesus is an annual global evangelical event which started as City March in 1987 in London. The largest in Brazil is in São Paulo, where over three million people take part. It ends on an all-night worship music rock-style concert. 11

thinking, her book…I am dying to read it but I haven’t had the time yet. I think just like her. … I identify with her (in Gomes 2007: 73).

The reference to Zschech’s blonde hair and the desire to be like her is telling. Australia figures in the imaginary of many Brazilians as what Brazil could be like, had it overcome the malaises of the developing world such as corruption, poverty and violence. Their rationale is that both countries are similar in that they are young, multicultural and enjoy a laid-back, beach culture, but Australia has been able to become part of the developed world (author 2006, 2008, 2009; Wulfhorst 2011). According to Levitt, “remittance impact is also a function of size and power differences between sending and receiving country … Some recipients will be more receptive to remittances because they want to be more like those in the ‘rich’, ‘modern’, receiving community” (1999: 940). As a result, for many young Brazilians, going to Australia to visit or study at Hillsong College in Sydney is a dream. A blog by a Brazilian who has been studying in the Hillsong College demonstrates this. He writes:

Many Brazilians write to me to ask about worship, pastoring and TV courses at Hillsong…. In Brazil there is an immense fascination in relation to Hillsong. They sort of idolise the church, the worship, and even some pastors and singers …This fascination makes many Brazilians sell their car, borrow money from their father, uncle or grandfather to come here to take up these Hillsong seminary courses (www.brazilaustralia.com/hillsong- college).

Responding to this local demand, specialised Brazilian Christian travel agencies provide ways for these youth to embark in transnational connections with Australia. They sell package tours to Hillsong congresses and place them with Australian Christian families while they study in the Hillsong College. Transnational flows are established when they take home DVDs of Hillsong conferences, CDs of Hillsong bands, T-shirts, books, and report their experiences to evangelical pastors and friends in Brazil, prompting changes in their religious rituals and ways of worshipping. CESE, one of these Brazilian Christian travel agencies, has this message on its website: “Our goal in taking groups to participate in the [Hillsong] conference is very simple: to find out how a church serves with so much excellence and bring this to our local churches” (www.cese.com.br). Indeed, Levitt has noted that:

Transnational migrants bring particular incarnations of global religion with them, create new forms by combining what they bring with what they encounter, and then reintroduce these ideas, practices, identities, and social capital – or what I call social remittances – back to the sending communities (2003: 849).

As a result of these social remittances, when these young Brazilians arrive in Australia they are more familiarised with this style of service, organisation and worship, and it is easier for them to adhere to Hillsong and CNA.

Conclusion

This paper called for scholars to turn their attention to processes of hybridisation that diasporic religions may undergo in the host land. Religious communities do not dwell in a 12

vacuum in the diaspora. They more often than not are impacted by the host society. Here I investigated a Brazilian Neo Pentecostal church established in Australia to cater to the burgeoning Brazilian student community. Like other churches that cater for migrants, CNA offers a place for community building and support so that adherents can overcome nostalgia, while adapting to the new country. This paper argued that CNA does so by taking inspiration not from Brazilian Neo Pentecostal churches, but from the Australian Assembly of God, in particular the Sydney-based megachurch Hillsong. It contended that CNA is a hybrid of a Brazilian Baptist church (which the founders adhered to in Brazil) and the very informal, rock-concert-style service characteristic of Hillsong. Like Hillsong, CNA caters for middle- and upper middle-class youth.

Importantly, this paper demonstrated the polycentric nature of Pentecostalism and pointed to transnational connections which so far have not been analysed in the literature of global Pentecostalism. While CNA is a Brazilian church created in Australia derived from Brazilian and Australian influences, Australia is a centre for the dissemination of Hillsong-style Neo Pentecostalism in Brazil. Brazilians returning from Australia, former Hillsong students, Hillsong band tours, and blogs, websites, books, CDs and DVDs, all disseminate information on the Australian megachurch and entice young Brazilians to go to Australia to experience its worship style. Many do so by utilising Brazilian Christian travel agencies which cater for these young “pilgrims”. However, once in Australia, they may switch to CNA because it better fulfils their migrant needs.

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