The Gospel for Every Person

Introduction

The country of Uruguay is known for a few things: soccer, beaches, asado, and an impervious nonchalance towards the gospel. Boasting the highest number of atheists, agnostics, and ‘nones’ in Latin America, Uruguay is an anomaly in an otherwise religious continent.¹ Each missionary venture takes place within a specific context, and Uruguay’s unique history provides a religious setting nearer to that of Canada or Western Europe.² This poses a unique missionary challenge. However, this context also offers missiological insight. Namely, authenticity and autonomy are two important virtues and dynamics that are consistently ongoing in this setting. Both are about decision-making, power, and agency. Both dynamics have at their core the question of who gets to decide or control meaning.

Uruguayan ‘Nones’

Néstor Da Costa interviewed self-described atheists, agnostics, and religious ‘nones’ in Uruguay in order to probe the nuances within these categories.³ Those who are non-affiliated, for example, may believe in some form of transcendence, while others may not. Atheists, those without belief in transcendence, comprise 10 percent of the Uruguayan population—still the highest in Latin America, but a far cry from the reported 37 percent when taken as a homogeneous group together with ‘nones’.⁴ His findings support theories of ‘lived religion’,⁵ an outlook Da Costa describes as personal meaning-making combining elements of transcendence from multiple sources. Who is involved in meaning-making is of critical felt importance, as evidenced by the responses in Da Costa’s interviews:⁶

• ‘I associate a religious person with an institution. I associate it with a herd of people following a single person who preaches something without even knowing where he learned it. I associate it with manipulation.’ (Noelia)
• ‘All they want is for you to go to their church and think the same as they do.’ (Paula)
• ‘After a certain stage of rejecting religion—almost becoming an atheist—I re-encountered a spirituality that was free from the orthodoxies. That was like unlearning, freeing myself from both dogmatic and atheist convictions and approaching it more like a question. That’s where I am now: taking a questioning look at these things.’ (Ignacio)

Authenticity

Uruguayan Liberation Theologian, Juan Luis Segundo, describes authenticity and its corollary of autonomy as the central impetus of the Christian life, the result of which ‘unmasks’ religion’s agenda and ideological oppression.⁷ The way to ideological freedom is through growing, deepening, and expanding authenticity in what Segundo calls the human journey.⁸ No institution or church can do this for a person; in fact, Segundo argues that ‘thousands of subterfuges are offered’ to ‘help avoid the risk of thinking’ and includes religion in this category.⁹ Segundo instructs believers to ‘take our existence into our own hands’ and to ‘fashion ourselves consciously and fully,’ stating that this process of deepening self-agency is the ‘narrow gate.’¹⁰ Along the path to the narrow gate, there is no distinction between Christians and non-Christians; all who choose to do so may grow in authenticity in the human experience. Segundo reasons that this path leads to a dialogue with self, which asks the ultimate question, ‘Who am I?’ It is here, at the narrow gate, where Segundo draws a line between the believer and non-believer based on how the question is answered.¹¹ 

Segundo summarizes: ‘Without this process of dialogue, without this growth in authenticity, without this experience in communication, the proclamation of the faith is in danger of being turned into an ideology or a myth that is unacceptable to our contemporaries.’¹²

Autonomy

Missionaries in Uruguay do not possess an elevated positional stature, but minister as equals. Cardinal Daniel Sturla describes the attitude towards the church leaders as having ‘no special reverence or respect’. Priests and other church officers are seen as ‘che cura’, loosely translated means ‘priest dude’.¹³ Indeed, newspaper El Observador notes that in Uruguay ‘. . .each person is their own religious authority.’¹⁴

Da Costa suggests autonomy as an interpretive framework for understanding the spiritual lives of Uruguayan ‘nones’.¹⁵ He notes from his interviewees that understandings of spirituality and religion are at odds with one another and hinge on the disconnect between religious affiliation and autonomy.¹⁶ ‘Religions are seen as disciplinary mechanisms that deny free thought. . . . People affiliated to a religion are seen as obedient, non-critical people who need the institution to tell them what to do.’¹⁷ In other words, religious affiliation is perceived as undercutting personal growth, transcendence, and peace.

Implications for Mission

Friendship evangelism quickly comes to mind as a missiological strategy. However, most secular background people are not seeking to be evangelized. Rather, like every person, people from a secular background may be seeking authentic friendship.¹⁸ Prince is insightful in his reflections on the missionary agenda in friendship evangelism and is worth quoting at length:

‘I always knew when it was time for their newsletter, because that’s when they would want to hang out with me,’ a Uruguayan remembers of a missionary whose primary strategy was friendship evangelism.²⁰ This person’s perspective was that of feeling used for funding: ‘They get paid to hang out with me. I am their job,’ she commented.²¹ In Brainerd Prince’s words, this is turning a friend into an ‘it’ rather than a ‘thou’ or from a person into an object.²² 

The other relevant difficulty with friendship evangelism in this context is that hierarchy is inherent in the agenda-based friendship, with power, or autonomy, resting solely with the missioner. The missioner, whose object for the ‘missionized’ is salvation, introduces a potentially unilaterally decided-upon end goal into a friendship. Within this framework, the missionized must submit to the missionary’s end goals or terms of the relationship, or else risk losing the relationship. The autonomy necessary for mutuality is lacking when friendship is entered into on the basis of agenda. 

Uruguayan culture has a long history of anti-clerical secularism, with the Catholic church and Christianity rejected on the basis of perceived coercion and control. Though the church in contemporary Uruguay is marginal, secular Uruguayans have retained an uncanny gift for spotting religious agendas. In missionary Lisa Hamilton’s words, ‘Uruguayans can spot a fake a mile away.’ To a secular Uruguayan, agenda-based friendships are, at their core, an effort to control the other. In a culture that prizes authenticity and autonomy, friendship evangelism can be received as an insult.

Friendship Evangelism Versus Friendship

Rather than friendship evangelism, Prince argues for friendship.²³ Prince anchors the release of agenda necessary for true friendship in Jesus’ own words when he says, ‘I have called you friends’ (John 15:15). Citing Psalm 25:14, Sandra McCracken observes an invitation framed as a sort of liturgical call and response in receiving and emulating God’s friendship with others: ‘[God] confides in his friends, and we do likewise.’²⁴

Noting that friendship is entered into for its own sake, that is ‘for pleasure,’ and without control, Prince reflects on the gift such friendship gives to the missionary by allowing the missionary to move beyond transactional relationships. ‘It is precisely in their relationship that not only the missionized but also the missionary finds nurture and is ministered. In other words, God has placed the missionized in the missionary’s life for [the missionary’s] spiritual growth and discipleship. So, we look at those whom we do mission with as ordained to minister to us.’²⁵ 

Paradoxically, authentic relationship in mission in this context requires dropping the ‘outcome’ of or agenda for the relationship, so that the relationship may be both authentic and autonomous.

Emotionally Intelligent Christians

‘Authenticity is everything to Uruguayans,’ states a missionary of more than 20 years. This missionary and her husband, together with the pastoral team of their church in Montevideo, have found ‘Emotionally Healthy Spirituality’ (EHS) proposed by Peter Scazzero to provide a spiritual framework through which one makes sense of life’s complexities.²⁶ First, the missionary couple discovered this framework for themselves. For more than a year they implemented EHS practices such as disciplines of silence, sabbath, and embracing grief and loss in their own lives and marriage. Only then did they begin to introduce the concepts in their church. Notably, these missionaries did not ‘try on’ EHS as part of a strategic plan to bring EHS to their church one year later, which would undermine the authenticity. In the beginning, it was simply a framework used for personal development. When they began to offer EHS book studies in the Christ Church congregation, it was because of the transformation these practices had wrought in their own lives, and it was offered as an invitation to others to see if these principles might also be helpful to them. Fifteen years later, many people within the congregation have indeed found the EHS framework to be useful. A long-term effect of these individual decisions and spiritual journeys is that Christ Church as a whole is increasingly characterized by EHS practices and principles of communication, conflict resolution, and interpersonal dynamics. 

Conclusion

Authenticity and autonomy in the context of Uruguayan secularism are understood as equivalent to freedom and dignity. Where personal choices are limited, especially in a religious setting, this context interprets such limits as potentially coercive control. Where the full range of human experience is given space, voice, and resonance within a religious community (ie grief, mental illness, loss), and there is the possibility of connection with a God and/or church, Uruguayans may then interpret the experience as authentic. This may be a surprise to many because of the socio-cultural religious landscape, but may also be a relief as it is different from the traditional interpretations of religion in Uruguay. 
May the church begin to present an emotionally intelligent God and community, who are able to weather the intricacies of human experience, choice, and seasons of belief; that is, a God and religious community who embrace authenticity and autonomy as people discover together what may sometimes be considered an oxymoron: a secular-background Uruguayan Christian.²⁷

Endnotes

1. David Martin, Tongues of Fire: The Explosion of Protestantism in Latin America (Oxford: Blackwell, 1990).
2. Russell H. Fitzgibbon, Uruguay: Portrait of a Democracy (New York: Russell & Russell, 1966), 264.
3. Néstor Da Costa, ‘Non-Affiliated Believers and Atheists in the Very Secular Uruguay,’ Religions 11:50 (2020).
4. Da Costa, ‘Non-Affiliated,’ 1.
5. See Nancy Tatom Ammerman, Studying Lived Religion: Contexts and Practices (New York: New York University Press, 2021); Da Costa, ‘Non-Affiliated,’ 2.
6. Da Costa, ‘Non-Affiliated,’ 4–6.
7. Juan Luis Segundo, Liberation of Theology trans. John Drury (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1976), 10.
8. Juan Luis Segundo, The Community Called Church, trans. John Drury, (MaryKnoll, NY: Orbis, 1973), 69. 
9. Segundo, The Community, 68.
10. Segundo, The Community, 68.
11. Segundo, The Community, 68.
12. Segundo, The Community, 68.
13. David Agren, ‘Uruguayan Cardinal – Designate Works on the Peripheries, Like Francis,’ Catholic News Source, Feb 12, 2015, https://www.ncronline.org/news/uruguayan-cardinal-designate-works-peripheries-francis
14. Gustavo Morella, interviewed by El Observador, ‘Semana non Sancta de Durrumbe del Cristianismo en el Pais Menos Religioso de la Region,’ March 28, 2024, https://www.elobservador.com.uy/nota/semana-non-sancta-el-derrumbe-del-cristianismo-en-el-pais-menos-religioso-de-la-region-20243251670. 
15. Da Costa, ‘Non-Affiliated,’ 4. 
16. Da Costa, ‘Non-Affiliated,’ 4.
17. Da Costa, ‘Non-Affiliated,’ 4–5. 
18. Editor’s Note: See article ‘Reaching Generation Z with the Gospel’ by Steve Sang-Cheol Moon in Lausanne Global Analysis, March 2021. 
19. Wonsuk Ma, Opoku Onyinah, and Rebekah Bled, eds., The Remaining Task of the Great Commission & The Spirit-Empowered Movement (Tulsa, OK: ORU Press, 2023), 66. 
20. Personal communication.
21. Personal communication.
22. Ma, Onyinah, and Bled, eds., The Remaining Task, 71.
23. Ma, Onyinah, and Bled, eds., The Remaining Task, 73.
24. Sandra McCracken, Send Out Your Light: The Illuminating Power of Scripture and Song (Nashville: B&H Publishing Group, 2021), 9.
25. Ma, Onyinah, and Bled, eds., The Remaining Task, 73–74.
26. Peter Scazzero, Emotionally Healthy Spirituality: It’s Impossible to be Spiritually Mature While Remaining Emotionally Immature (Grand rapids: Zondervan, 2017).
27. Editor’s Note: See article ‘Reaching the World’s Rising Nonreligious’ by Steve Moon in Lausanne Global Analysis, November 2021.