Sipping The Blood Through a Straw

Hey Folks,

 

I just want to share a couple of random, non-related observations I've made after a month in Brazil.

 

Straws:  One of the most peculiar aspects of Brazilian culture is the use of straws and plastic cups.  People use straws to drink everything, whether the drink comes in a bottle or a can.  When you buy a can of soda from the store, they give you a straw.  When you see people walking down the street drinking, they are drinking whatever beverage it is, in whatever container it's in, through a straw.  In restaurants, soda and beer usually come in cans and bottles, rather than out of fountains or drafts, so they always serve your drink with a glass and of you order a soda they give you a straw.  Some restaurants even have straw holders on the tables, but you'll never find a pepper shaker in the whole restaurant.  On the beach, people drink their beer out of plastic cups rather than straight from the can.  I've even seen people sipping beer out of a can through a straw, like at the New Years Eve Party we attended in Florianopolis.  Now, where I come from, a man who needs a glass to drink his beer is a little queer; so I don't even want to know what the good old boys back home would have to say about a man who sips his beer through a straw.  Sadly, in a country that does not seem to care much about recycling, where people just throw their trash on the street or on the beach, the amount of plastic waste created by all these straws and cups is horrible for the environment. 

 

Street Preachers:  Evangelicals are alive and well in Brazil.  From Porto Alegre to Sao Paulo to Salvador, I haven't seen so many Evangelical churches concentrated in one place since I lived in Detroit.  The rest of South America may be Catholic Country, but the Evangelicals definitely have the largest market share in Brazil.  In Sao Paulo, we saw a couple of street preachers on the square outside of one of the famous Catholic churches.  It's like they're competing to see how many souls they can save.  Each had their own crowd gathered around, bible clutched in one hand or under their arm, as they preached about the "goodness of God".  I watched one preacher while I was waiting outside a subway stop.  He had the moves down, pacing back and forth, raising his hands and shouting Hallelujah, getting down on one knee every now and again, and shouting as loud as he could to anyone willing to listen.  It reminded me of my college days, when the radical preachers would spend their afternoons on the Diag, the main square in the middle of campus at UM, and tell all the students why they're all going to Hell.  Like then, most of the people on the street here just pass by ignoring the spectacle; others smile and laugh; while still few others mock and ridicule the preacher.  But he goes on preaching non-stop with everything he has as though it's the only thing he has to do in life.

 

The Evangelic church buildings also outnumber the Catholic churches by a large margin.  Not that most of them compare to the beauty and spender of even the most modest Catholic church; most of the Evangelical churches are converted buildings, what we refer to as store-front churches back home.  But in some cities, like Porto Alegre, you can find one every few blocks.  Like Detroit, it seems every preacher wants to have his own church, so rather than combining resources and having one large building to house a large congregation, you end up with a bunch of tiny church buildings that could only hold a small congregation.  There are still a few mega churches around Brazil; one of the largest we saw was in Salvador.  This place was on the scale of a Perfecting Church or Straight Gate Church in Detroit, or like The Rock in San Diego.  A huge, beautiful, modern facility that I'm sure holds thousands of people.  It's a strange contrast here, however, when you notice the favellas nearby, with their makeshift houses, tin roofs and tin shutters on windows that have no glass, steep hills, dirt roads and endless mounds of trash.  It seems poor people are desperate for hope in every country and no matter how little they have, they still find some way to give money to the church, and the church spends that money building a glorious house for God, while his people continue live in filth, under the promise and assumption that they will be rewarded for their sacrifices once they make it to Heaven.

 

I'm almost curious to visit one of these Evangelical churches to see if it's just like churches back home.  I won't understand much with the language barrier, but if it's like the churches back home, you don't have to understand the words to get the message since Evangelicals are so much more lively and spirited than Catholics.  Most of all, however, I'm just curious to see if they sip the blood of Jesus through a straw during Communion. 

 

Cheers,

Ozell