This study makes a distinctive contribution to the understanding of these Pentecostal congregations, their members, and their leaders. Although the focus of this study is Betim, Brazil, the dynamic it describes and analyzes is pertinent to similar groups condemned to poverty throughout Latin America.
— Journal of Church and State
An exciting and provocative book! Without sensationalizing, Chesnut brings us to an understanding of the spiritual and emotional profundity of conversion.
— Virginia Garrard-Burnett, Institute of Latin American Studies, University of Texas, Austin
An engaging case study of one of the most successful Pentecostal bodies in Latin America. Importantly, it focuses on what most Latin American Pentecostals doùpersonal healing.
— David Stoll, author of Is Latin America Turning Protestant?
Professor Chesnut's succinct study should be required reading for all scholars of comparative religion, intellectual and social history, and Latin American culture. The fruit of an intensive field period of field research in the early 1990s...this volume manages in clear, unredundant, and highly readable style to synthesize the twentieth century history of four of the main Pentecostal denominations...of Brazil as well as exploring in depth the infrastructure and external politics of the largest of these denominations.
— Luso-Brazilian Review