A fierce gust of wind lashes across the sprawling camp, carrying with it the ­bitter aroma of pepper spray and faeces. Above, Black Hawk helicopters clatter through the cobalt blue sky. On the ground clusters of homeless Haitians with hammers and rusty saws set about cobbling together improvised shacks out of corrugated iron and shreds of plastic sheeting.

Welcome to Pont-Rouge, a refugee camp for about 15,000 displaced people, and one of Port-au-Prince’s most recent shanty towns. It is here, on waste land near the city’s international airport, among rickety shacks and smouldering campfires, that an evangelical revolution is gathering speed.

With the government’s presence all but invisible, and humanitarian agencies and the UN struggling to cope with the demand for aid, groups of preachers are moving in to fill the void.

“I’ve started a school and we are trying to give people food and clothes,” said ­Reverend Sauverne Apollon, 75, whose church – the Eglise Mission foi Caribéenne Independence d’Haiti – was one of the first to be constructed in the slum after its ­headquarters was destroyed in the quake.

“The people need hospital help, food and homes. I’m trying to do what I can,” Apollon added.

As he spoke, UN troops used pepper spray and rubber bullets to contain ­Pont-Rouge’s residents who were crushing together in their thousands in a queue for water and food. ­Peruvian soldiers from the UN stablisation force waved their ­shotguns about in an attempt to repel children who were ­trying to push into the seemingly ­endless queue.

Haiti has two official religions: ­Catholicism and voodoo, and the majority believe in some form of voodoo. But as in the rest of Latin America and the ­Caribbean, the number of born again ­Christians has risen sharply over the last 10 years. For Port-au-Prince’s ­Pentecostal leaders the earthquake is an opportunity ­further spread their word among the city’s ­homeless people.

“When God speaks we must listen,” said Apollon, known in Pont-Rouge as “le pasteur”. “The earthquake is God’s voice and He will do other things. The stars will crash down onto the earth.”

Apollon’s improvised church consists of three wooden pews and a plywood altar. Behind the altar, a green sheet has been tied to a sheet of corrugated iron. On it are the words: God is great.

For those who have lost their homes, Apollon offers not just an explanation but also physical aid and security.

“I’ve been here for nine days,” said Thamara Berlome, a 20-year-old recruit to Apollon’s church, wearing a black cap with words: I’m the boss.”I don’t have anything. There’s no government. ­People here are fending for themselves. I’m waiting for President René Préval to say where we should sleep. At the moment the pastor is the one helping.”

“He’s a good guy, he stops the ­fighting, there’s discipline around the church,” added Berlome, who is living in the camp with her mother, father and brother after their house was destroyed.

Across town the message repeated itself. In a Pentecostal-run orphanage in Peguy-Ville, home to nearly 50 orphaned or abandoned children Gerard Ganthier, from the Church of God of the ­Mountain, summed up his feelings about the ­earthquake by quoting from Matthew 24. “And Jesus said unto them: See ye not all these things?” said the blind preacher.

Meanwhile, members of Haiti’s voodoo community were spreading an equally bleak message.

Ouvida Alva, a 38-year-old voodoo leader, said: “We have three elements, water, earth and fire. Now we are waiting for the fire. Only he who believes will survive.

“Whether you are a [Pentecostal] preacher, a Catholic priest or voodoo, it’s the same. Humanity needs to say: ‘Stop. Stop now. Stop the sinning’.”

For now, Pont-Rouge’s residents have more worldly issues to address.

“I don’t know how long we’ll have to stay here. It’s not up to me,” said Pierre Rubens, the dreadlocked ­president of the shanty town’s community ­association, who is also among the ­estimated 1 ­million people displaced by the earthquake. “Right now we need food, water and tents.”