History of the Gypsy Pentecostal Movement in Spain

At the beginning of the 1950’s, a French pastor named Clement Le Cossec—a former Catholic priest who later converted to the church of the Assemblies of God—began a small ministry in Brest (Normandy). At that time in France there was a clear, carefully-guarded separation between the French, and other marginal groups who came to the country in search of work. Le Cossec ministered to the French, not to the Gypsies or any other ethnic group. His interest in ministering to the Gypsies began unexpectedly when one day a Gypsy couple entered his church. They were not turned away. They heard the Word, and at the end of the service when Le Cossec called forth all those who wanted to accept Christ as their Savior, the Gypsy couple walked together to the altar and accepted the call. After that day, they continued to come to the church—even though their relationship with the French congregation was strained by the ethnocentric attitudes of the time. Then one day, the couple approached Le Cossec and offered him money in exchange for receiving the same treatment as other members of the church—meaning pastoral visits, counseling, and support during the difficult moments of their lives. Their petition moved Le Cossec, who then decided to bring the Word not only to this couple, but to all Gypsies who had come to France to work the grape harvest. Among those temporary workers were many Spanish Gypsies. These first converts eventually returned to their native country and, having been touched by the Spirit, began to share their experiences with their family and friends.

Seeing the success of these first conversions, in the year 1957 Le Cossec founded what he called the Evangelical Gypsy Mission. The purpose of this mission was primarily to offer training to Gypsy converts to become evangelical pastors. In 1965, the first seven Gypsy pastors arrived in Spain. These seven men founded what is known today as La Iglesia Evangélica de Filadelfia, an Evangelical, Pentecostal Church which is completely governed by, financed by, and lead by Gypsies for a predominantly Gypsy population.

The expansion of Pentecostalism among the Spanish Gypsies was rapid, despite the difficult political conditions of Franco’s Spain. During Franco’s dictatorship (from 1939 to his death in 1975), Catholicism was declared the state religion and non Catholics, especially Evangelicals, were objects of persecution and discrimination. After Franco’s death, however, the newly-adopted Constitution of 1978 guaranteed equal rights for all ideologies and religions and so the 1980’s and 1990’s saw especially accelerated growth for Gypsy Pentecostalism. In the year 1980, there were 30 churches in Andalucía. By the end of 1995 there were 78 congregations, and at the end of 1998 (the last year for which statistics were available) La Iglesia Filadelfia counted 700-800 churches dispersed throughout Spain—comprising a total of approximately 150,000 to 200,000 members.

The question then arises: why this rapid spread of Pentecostalism among the Gypsies, but not among the native Spaniards? Follow me to the next entry for some exciting answers to this provocative question.

The Gypsy Image

What image comes to mind when you hear the words Spanish Gypsy? I think if you were to be honest, you would see certain images fairly clearly. Perhaps you would see the iconic Gypsy seductress, or the sensual dancer, or the handsome bull fighter. Those are the more positive, romanticized stereotypes that Spanish tourism loves to promote. But if you actually travel to Spain, you will see other images that are not so positive. You will see the beggar sitting in front of a church, or the fortune teller stalking the outside of the Cathedral for unsuspecting foreigners ready to part with their money for a Tarot spread or palm reading. And if you live in Spain, you may even have learned to fear the Gypsies.

The Spanish press is full of reports of Gypsy criminal activity. The Gypsies have come to be associated with vagrancy, truancy, theft, violent family feuding, and drugs.

And there are few who will dispute that reality – even amongst the Gypsies. When I asked one of my Gypsy friends, Silvia, what she disliked most about her culture, she answered without thinking: la venganza (revenge). What Silvia referred to was the feuding among families that often led to ruina – the displacement of a family as the consequence of escalated violence. And violence always makes the headlines.

When I was in Seville, news came of a disturbance in the town of Castellar, home to 3,800 people in the olive oil-producing province of Jaen in southern Spain. It was reported by the press that several Gypsy families had fled their village after a crowd pelted their houses with stones following a fight between several young people. The next day, over 300 people gathered in the village to protest against a crime wave they blamed on the Gypsies. The locals accused the Gypsy community of threatening behavior, theft, and other petty crimes.

From “gypping”someone out of their money, to vagrancy and laziness, to admonishment for being unhygienic, to retaliation and violence, the standard image of the Spanish Gypsy is cloaked in negative stereotyping. The Gypsy has come to symbolize everything that modern-day, industrialized societies reject as immoral and inefficient. But that image is changing from the only place where change is meaningful – from within.

A remarkable phenomenon is occurring that is changing the face of the Spanish Gypsy: Pentecostal evangelism. As thousands convert to Christ, their slogan has become:

Antes los gitanos iban con cuchillos y quimeras.
Ahora llevamos la Biblia, la palabra verdadera.

Before the Gypsies went with knives and quarrels into battle.
Now we take the Bible, God’s True and Holy Word.

Follow me on to the next entry where I’ll tell you about the history of the Gypsy Pentecostal Movement as it began in France and extended throughout Europe.

A Surprising and Awesome God

What image comes to your mind when you hear the word church? For me, it was once a picture postcard of a New England village. An elegant building with a white steeple and chiming bells. Falling autumn leaves and the fruits of an abundant harvest. Hymns and organ music. Reverent, silent prayer. Church for me was tradition—a lovely place to celebrate Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter. It was a safe place where emotions were checked carefully at the old wooden door. No one ever cried, or laughed, or got angry on the inside of that door. At St. Paul’s Lutheran church in Wethersfield, Connecticut, the members did not get unruly, or talk during the service. Instead they sang, read scripture, and recited the Apostles’ Creed. This was the church of my childhood. A church of discipline and order. But God wanted a bit of chaos for me. He wanted me to feel completely displaced, raw, and vulnerable.

From the moment I walked through the railed door of the church Dios Con Nosotros, God made it clear to me that the experience I was about to have had nothing to do with my book and everything to do with my growth and faith. There were no church bells at Dios Con Nosotros. But there was a large hollow box upon which a young man sat, beating out rhythm with his hands. There was no organ and no familiar hymns. But there was a keyboard and flamenco voices raised in song. And there was not for a single moment, reverence or silence. Children played in the aisles. Their parents answered cell phones in the middle of a service. There was shouting, and chaos, and passion like I had never known before. It was crazy. “Why did you bring me here?” I asked my father desperately. “You know me. I’m not comfortable with people screaming, or jumping up and down, or shouting out their prayers.”

And then I heard Him say to me, “Yes, Susan, I do know you. And this is exactly where you need to be.” And He was right. I had never felt so much love, or passion, or longing for God’s spirit as I did in that humble church in the middle of a drug-infested ghetto. I cried when I heard the Lord’s voice that day. In fact, I cried many more times over the weeks to come because I was in God’s presence, and He was healing me. Perhaps he was also preparing me for something I had not planned on. God told me through Pastor Pepe a few nights later that I had come to Seville to research a book, but He had brought me to Dios Con Nosotros for an entirely different purpose. God wanted me to trust Him. Away from all that was familiar, and safe, He wanted me to praise him. And I did—Gypsy style—with my arms raised and my voice lifted in fervent prayer. And finally, I was able to minister to women whose stories I did not know, but whose pain I understood. And as I ministered to them, God ministered to me. Away from New England’s autumn leaves, church steeples, and quiet traditions, I was finally ready for the harvest.

The Odyssey Begins

The word odyssey is often defined as an extended adventure, or as an intellectual or spiritual quest. I often wonder where my quest began. Or why I was moved to write a book set in Gypsy Spain. I’m sure God knew. He just wasn’t giving me all the details.

And I, given the nature of my personality, didn’t need to know. I’m a fiction writer. For more hours than I care to admit, I live in a fictional world. Anything is possible. I see stories that other people don’t, or aren’t compelled to see. But my novel Azahar (orange blossom in Spanish) did not start as a story; it started as an experience. I first traveled to Spain as a wide-eyed-twenty-two-year-old anxious to see the world. I didn’t know anything about Spanish Gypsies then. All I knew was, as Jeff Goins says on his blog Pilgrimage of the Heart, “they were the kind of people the travel agencies warned you about.” (check out Jeff’s encounter with Gypsies on his blog jeffgoins.myadventures.org. It’s a great story). I heard similar warnings repeated by Spaniards. “Be careful around the Gypsies; they’re cheats, liars, and thieves. Maybe. I suppose some of them were. But when several Spaniards started confusing my friend from India with a Gypsy, and treating him accordingly, a story formed in me. That man from India is now my husband, and the confusion his ethnicity caused eventually inspired a novel.

Twenty-six years later, that novel finally germinated. But, I knew that in order to do justice to subject I was writing about, I had to return to Spain. And this time, I had to meet and get to know the people whose culture I was writing about. The only problem was, I knew that most of the Gypsies in Seville lived in poor, dangerous sectors of the city. My husband knew that too. The only way I was going to convince both my husband and my pastor that I would be safe in these marginalized areas was by connecting with a Christian church that had ministries in the Gypsy community. Well, to make a long story short, I ended up in a Pentecostal Gypsy church called Dios Con Nosotros (God With Us), in one of the most sordid sectors of the city (Las Tres Mil Viviendas). And the day I arrived, Pastor Pepe clearly told me that God had not brought me into his church for my book, but for a very different purpose.

And so it would seem. God transformed my life through my experience with this group of evangelical Gypsies, and convicted me to share the power and wonder of that experience with other Christians who are faithfully following Him – wherever that may be.

Keep coming to The White Tent and experience the richness of what God can do when he chooses to transform a life.

The White Tent

The White Tent is the name I have chosen for my blog. You may be wondering why that is. The tent was, and still is, a sanctuary. It provided shelter in the desert and respite beside cool, running water. In Biblical times, the patriarchs and their families lived in tents. And during their wilderness wanderings, the people of Israel were tent dwellers, always on the move, looking for fresh pasture and water for their flocks. Clusters of tents sprang up where there was fertile land. In the book of Numbers (24:5-7) Balaam looked out and saw Israel encamped tribe by tribe and said, "How beautiful are your tents, O Jacob, your dwelling places, O Israel! Like valleys they spread out, like gardens beside a river, like aloes planted by the Lord, like cedars beside the waters. Water will flow from their buckets; their seed will have abundant water."

The tent is a place of rest and rejuvenation. For the Evangelical Gypsies I worked with in Spain, it is also a place of hope and salvation. Periodically, large white tents are erected on the barren grounds of the poorest neighborhoods. Gypsy pastors preach God's Word and talented musicians praise the Lord with their unique style of Christian flamenco. Many lost souls who step inside those tents find not only shelter, but also peace and healing. It is this healing that I would like to share with you.

An Incredible Odyssey

Have you ever wondered what it's like to live like a Gypsy? I did. And then I stopped wondering and started planning an incredible odyssey. I went to Spain in October of 2008 and lived among the Gypsies. I'd like to take you back there with me. My life was changed in ways I could never have imagined. I hope yours will be too.