The Mennonitization of the Mass Media in Paraguay

Abstract

This article investigates how the churches in Paraguay have used multiple mass media as evangelization instruments and which churches dominate the mass media in 2010–2012, following the growth explosions of Pentecostalism in the 1980s–1990s and especially after 2002. Church uses of the printed media (books, magazines and newspapers), radio, television, and internet in Paraguay are all analyzed. Pentecostal and Protestant church leaders used radio, television, and internet to successfully brand their church, and to a limited extent attract and socialize new followers. Hardly any believers intensively follow religion in the mass media to replace going to church. The article concludes that rather than a Pentecostalization, a Mennonitization of the mass media is occurring in Paraguay, driven by the Mennonite groups’ economic power and their ethnic-religious solidarity.