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"Sheep Stealing." Part of Pentecostal's appeal—particularly to migrants—is this total, emotional participation. One Puerto Rican described the U.S. Catholic Church he rejected as "like a supermarket—cold and formal." Says Presbyterian Rafael Martinez of Chicago's interdenominational Casa Central: "When you walk into a Pentecostal service, you are likely to be asked, no matter who you are, your name, where you are from, and 'Brother, do you have a word to say for us?'"
Many traditional Protestants regard the evangelical Pentecostals as an embarrassment or a threat. The complainers say that the only movement the strongly anti-ecumenical Pentecostals ever make toward a sister church is to set up camp near another church's mission for what missionaries call "sheep stealing." Their lack of community involvement is also resented. Says John Hobgood of the Chicago Commission on Human Relations: "These Pentecostal churches are, by and large, an unintelligent operation in the sense that they usually don't encourage or equip the Puerto Rican to function in the larger community in which he must live." Rejecting the social gospel, Pentecostals concentrate instead on a puritanical personal morality. Members shun cigarettes and whisky; women wear no makeup.
But more and more traditional Protestants and Catholics are acknowledging a similarity between the unsophisticated, unfashionable Pentecostals and the unsophisticated, unfashionable early Christians. Says Jesuit Scholar Daniel J. O'Hanlon: "We can learn from the Pentecostals that the central Christian message must be proclaimed in all its clarity and simplicity." Admits William Elliott, chairman of the Presbyterian Board of World Missions: "We do not feel that they excel us in a theological point of view. But they often shame us in their zeal to proclaim our Lord as they understand him."