The Story of Brazil's United Presbyterian Church (IPU)

by Bert Campbell

The Rev. Robert J. Campbell is pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of Washington, PA.

[4-23-03 -- also published in the Spring 2003 issue of Network News]

"God works in mysterious ways God's wonders to perform."

In the 1960s Brazil was torn apart after the military took over control of the government. The mission-founded main-line Presbyterian Church of Brazil moved to the political right, supporting the coup. Influenced by the fundamentalism of Carl McIntyre, the denomination crushed its progressive youth movement, disowned its university students, and purged its seminaries of their progressive professors and students, seeking to exclude large numbers of its local churches and pastors who stood on the side of the poor and marginalized.

Celebrating its 25^th anniversary this year, the United Presbyterian Church (IPU) was formed. It immediately petitioned the United Presbyterian Church USA to adopt our Book of Confessions, including the Barmen Declaration.

Jim and Alma Wright, and Bill and June Rogers, fraternal workers from the UPCUSA, were part of the struggle. The story has been told in detail in a book by Joao Dias de Araujo entitled Inquisitions Without Burnings (1982).

As the IPU struggled to train new ministers, it saw the need to reach out to other Protestant churches engaged in similar struggles, and to scholars in the Roman Catholic teaching orders, to found the first entirely ecumenical seminary in Brazil, the Institute for Theological Education in Bahia (ITEBA). The seminary was to be a free space where an older generation of theological professors and pastors could once again "do theology" with a new generation of students.

Remarkably, ITEBA soon became "free space" for the poor Afro-Brazilians of Salvador, and particularly women, as they put their lives together, developed a theological framework, and tried to help others toward liberation.

Since 1993 the First Presbyterian Church of Washington, PA, has worked to build a support network of progressive congregations, committed to mission focused on justice. Two mission trips totaling 95 persons representing over a dozen churches have resulted in significant new support for ITEBA and the IPU.

The most valuable time was spent helping a new group of North Americans relate to and understand the reality of our Brazilian friends' struggle, and specifically to help them find ways to pursue an education at ITEBA under the most difficult circumstances (money for transportation, for example, has become a major issue). In spite of constant effort amidst poverty they remain hopeful.

We are blessed as a church to have been given this opportunity to share the spirit engendered by the leadership and students at ITEBA and their founders, the IPU. Recall that this Seminary arose from the midst of an oppressive military dictatorship, a reactionary church and a restrictive economy that offered few options. Many of the conditions of social injustice and economic oppression persist not only in Brazil but everywhere. I believe we are asked to resist!

These are difficult times in our own beloved Presbyterian Church (USA). The spirit of fundamentalism, judicial threat, censorship, and purging lurks in the shadows. The efforts of the network of congregations with the IPU and ITEBA Seminary are often called "Muturao," in partnership. Truly this unique and courageous band of brothers and sisters in our faith and the tiny ecumenical seminary committed to living as well as teaching the inclusive and compassionate love of a God of justice and freedom can teach us much for "the living of these days" in the time and place to which we have been called."