Book Description

The aim of this work is to tell part of the story of the Brazilian evangelical missions movement by focusing on the work and Brazilian evangelical transcultural workers serving in mission in the context of the Arab-Muslim world. These participants are members of a broader movement of more than 5000 Brazilian evangelicals serving around the world--an evangelical labor force large than that of England or Canada--which has grown significantly since 1976. In order to locate the work of Brazilian evangelicals in an Arab-Muslim context, it was important to first offer a historical narrative showing how Brazil has shifted in the twentieth century from being a mission field to being a base for sending missions. Relying on key historical literature, this has been accomplished first by recounting how Brazil was evangelized largely by North American missionaries in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Building on this narrative, the argument has been made that while the Brazilian evangelical church does share common characteristics with North American and global evangelicalism, it has also begun to forge its own evangelical identity. One important part of this identity is its concrete participation in global mission efforts. As transcultural mission necessarily involves cultural adaption, forty-five past and present Brazilian evangelical workers were invited to participate in a collective case study and reflect upon their own Brazilianness and how they have adapted in the Arab world. The perspectives of ten Brazilian mission leaders have also been included. In this study, I have treated Brazil as an affinity bloc of cultures in which there is clear diversity as well as some elements of cohesiveness. I have approached the Arab world in the same way. Hence, the framework for discussing Brazilians in the Arab world has been to reflect upon two affinity blocs and to ask members of one group (Brazilians) to share their collective experiences living in a second group (the Arab