Photos and story by Liza Shurik

Dressed in black, their faces painted white, four young missionaries prepare for their weekly “crucifixion.” Children of all ages emerge from their homes, lining the street of this Nicaraguan ghetto to watch Giovani Medrano, 18, face the cross.

Within moments, with religious music blaring from crackling speakers behind him, Medrano falls to the ground, and lies unflinching on the sun-baked dirt road. The previously inattentive eyes of the surrounding children now focus on him.

Moments later, he is resurrected.

This is one of two weekly street shows put on by young missionaries from the First Church of Bautista in Jinotepe, a small city in southeastern Nicaragua. The church is one of several evangelical Protestant congregations that have sprung up in the city within the last decade.

Catholic by default, Nicaragua has experienced a sharp rise in evangelical Protestantism – or Pentecostalism – in the last two decades. Characterized by fervent church services and intense born-again experiences, Pentecostalism has appealed, in large part, to the poor, according to an article by Virginia Trevino Nolivos and other sources.

Protestants make up more than 15 percent of the country’s Christian population and of those, 80 percent are Pentecostal, according to a study by Anne Motley Hallum.

The nonhierarchical nature of Pentecostalism allows the previously marginalized poor to get more involved in the church, Hallum writes. Also, Pentecostalism uses television and radio broadcasts to reach the uneducated and illiterate.

Julio Antonio Palacios Vargas, the pastor of the First Church of Bautista in Jinotepe, says he has seen a sharp rise in attendance in the past couple of years. His church – a large hall with white walls, fluorescent lights, wooden benches interspersed with plastic chairs, and a simple stage – is filled to capacity almost every day of the week.

The church offers emotionally charged services, which include a live band with Vargas as the lead singer and a guitarist playing fast-paced Christian songs with the entire congregation singing and dancing.

As the intensity of the sermon picks up, more members rock from side to side, arms stretched upwards, eyes closed shut with tears streaming down their faces.

Fanny Morales, along with her mother Vilma Morales and her brother Marcello Morales Velazquez, and other congregation members, often speak in tongues. They appear to be possessed as their mouths move at an inhuman rate emitting incoherent sounds.

After reaching the optimal connection with God, Fanny Morales, breaks into hysterical laughter. She describes it as the release of intense emotion.

Meanwhile, at the front of the room, Vargas is lost among a crowd of people whom he has called up to receive forgiveness. As he walks around, laying hands on people’s foreheads, some are overcome by emotion and collapse to the ground, where they lie until they recover their senses and get up to rejoin the group.

The passionate nature of Pentecostalism creates a comfort zone for Nicaraguans who have undergone a tremendous amount of political, economic, and social turmoil, according to a study by Hallum.

Though the Catholic Church still has a stronghold over the government, the number of practicing Catholics is decreasing, said Robert Rindos, the chaplain at a Catholic university in San Marco, Nicaragua. Originally from New Jersey, Rindos moved to Nicaragua a year ago.

Because so many of Nicaragua’s Catholics are non-practicing, a conversion to Protestantism is generally considered a born-again experience. Converts often face rejection from Catholic friends and family.

Catholic by birth, Felix Pedro Narvaez, who is running for mayor of Jinotepe with the local Protestant party, converted two years ago. Before that, he was an alcoholic, he says. Nevertheless, his family had a difficult time with his conversion.

“They didn’t stop talking to me,” he says, “but they initiated a sort of religious intervention to bring me back to Catholicism.”

Narvaez says he is running for office because he feels the Catholic Church isolates the growing Protestant minority, which is too big to be ignored. Though he pointed out no clashes between Catholics and Protestants in the community, he notes there is tension between the two groups.

Evangelical services differ quite radically from the austere services of the Catholic Church, but this is not the defining difference of the two faiths. Protestants, unlike Catholics, do not believe in saints, they do not believe in worshipping idols, and they do not worship the Virgin Mary: they believe only in praising Jesus Christ.

The Protestant faith has grown so much that local Catholic churches have begun to change their routines to retain membership, says Alfredo Moraga, the pastor at the Church of Nazarene in Jinotepe. He says there are fewer icons on the walls of some Catholic churches, there is more singing during services, and they are slowly changing the language of mass from Latin to Spanish.

Eventually, the two faiths will be able to coexist peacefully, Narvaez says. “We all love the same God, so we must love each other.”