Cristina Rocha

Western Sydney University · Religion and Society Research Centre

When did Christianity become cool? How did an Australian church conquer the world and expanded into Brazil, a country with its own crop of powerful megachurches? In her exciting new book, anthropologist Cristina Rocha analyzes the creation of a transnational Pentecostal field between Brazil and Australia, two countries that have been peripheral in...

When did Christianity become cool? How did an Australian church conquer the world and expanded into Brazil, a country with its own crop of powerful megachurches? In her exciting new book, anthropologist Cristina Rocha analyzes the creation of a transnational Pentecostal field between Brazil and Australia, two countries that have been peripheral in...

When did Christianity become cool? How did an Australian church conquer the world and expanded into Brazil, a country with its own crop of powerful megachurches? In her exciting new book, anthropologist Cristina Rocha analyzes the creation of a transnational Pentecostal field between Brazil and Australia, two countries that have been peripheral in...

When did Christianity become cool? How did an Australian church conquer the world and expanded into Brazil, a country with its own crop of powerful megachurches? In her exciting new book, anthropologist Cristina Rocha analyzes the creation of a transnational Pentecostal field between Brazil and Australia, two countries that have been peripheral in...

When did Christianity become cool? How did an Australian church conquer the world and expanded into Brazil, a country with its own crop of powerful megachurches? In her exciting new book, anthropologist Cristina Rocha analyzes the creation of a transnational Pentecostal field between Brazil and Australia, two countries that have been peripheral in...

When did Christianity become cool? How did an Australian church conquer the world and expanded into Brazil, a country with its own crop of powerful megachurches? In her exciting new book, anthropologist Cristina Rocha analyzes the creation of a transnational Pentecostal field between Brazil and Australia, two countries that have been peripheral in...

When did Christianity become cool? How did an Australian church conquer the world and expanded into Brazil, a country with its own crop of powerful megachurches? In her exciting new book, anthropologist Cristina Rocha analyzes the creation of a transnational Pentecostal field between Brazil and Australia, two countries that have been peripheral in...

When did Christianity become cool? How did an Australian church conquer the world and expanded into Brazil, a country with its own crop of powerful megachurches? In her exciting new book, anthropologist Cristina Rocha analyzes the creation of a transnational Pentecostal field between Brazil and Australia, two countries that have been peripheral in...

When did Christianity become cool? How did an Australian church conquer the world and expanded into Brazil, a country with its own crop of powerful megachurches? In her exciting new book, anthropologist Cristina Rocha analyzes the creation of a transnational Pentecostal field between Brazil and Australia, two countries that have been peripheral in...

Much of the literature on Pentecostal-charismatic Christianity (Pc/C) and African diasporas in the Global North has focused upon African-Majority or -Initiated churches that are either branches of African churches or were created in the diaspora. This focus often frames the appeal of Pc/C to African migrants in terms of: a) its emphasis upon the ‘P...

Introduction to the JGB Special Focus section, "Flows and Counterflows of Buddhism ‘South of the West’: Australia, New Zealand, and Hawaiʻi." In this special issue, we endeavour to explore horizontal flows and counter flows of Buddhism on ‘paths less travelled’ across the Pacific sea of islands, and ‘South of the West’ (Gibson 1992) rather than the...

Buddhism was first established in Australia through flows of migrants in the mid-nineteenth century, and is currently Australia’s fourth-largest religion. Yet Buddhists have received significantly less scholarly attention than Christians, Jews and Muslims in Australia. Previous research conducted on Buddhism in Australia has also largely centered o...

The COVID-19 pandemic unleashed not only a life-threatening virus globally but also the spread of conspiracy theories about its origins and impacts. This dis/misinformation circulated within many societies and subcultures, and, notably, among wellness influencers and holistic spiritual communities. Jules Evans was the first to highlight this rise o...

Practitioners of alternative medicine and spirituality often highlight narratives of healing as evidence for the superiority of their modalities over Western biomedicine. We argue that this form of establishing and defending truth has a long history, and base this analysis on the historical and anthropological study of two periods: the late ninetee...

In this article, I analyze the ways in which fashion, megachurches, and celebrity and youth cultures coalesce in the 21st century, giving rise to the phenomenon of “Cool Christianity.” I contend that this repackaged Christianity, directed at the middle-class Millennials and Generation Z, is created not only by megachurches in a bid to attract new g...

The Brazilian religious field has undergone a remarkable transformation in the twenty-first century. This special issue aims to fill two gaps in two important scholarly literatures. First, it will focus not only on the ways in which Brazilian religions are exported but also on how the Brazilian religious field has been enriched and made more comple...

This article explores the infrastructures that allow the Australian Pentecostal megachurch Hillsong to expand into Brazil. Hillsong is a global religious phenomenon: it has branches in global cities, celebrities among its followers, and an award-winning worship band. Drawing on five years of multi-sited ethnography in Australia and Brazil, I analys...

In this article, I am interested in how belief and religious materiality—sacred objects, places, infrastructures and digital media—are entangled in globalisation processes. Drawing on a case study of the John of God spiritual movement, I analyse the ways in which places and objects that have recently acquired sacred status enter into older, more es...

Post-Millennial middle-class Brazilians have been flocking to Hillsong International Leadership College for the past decade. Some start learning English as teenagers and fundraise for years to be able to have “the College experience.” Others defer their university studies and risk not having a job for the opportunity to join Hillsong. Drawing on th...

In Australian Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements: Arguments from the Margins, Rocha, Hutchinson and Openshaw argue that Australia has made and still makes important contributions to how Pentecostal and charismatic Christianities have developed worldwide. This edited volume fills a critical gap in two important scholarly literatures. The first is...

We are offering 2 PhD scholarships (1 based in Sydney and 1 in Perth) as part of the Australian Research Council (ARC) funded project: "The African Diaspora and Pentecostalism in Australia: New Perspectives on Materiality, Media and Religion." This project investigates the new African Diaspora in Australia and its embrace of Pentecostalism, partic...

In this article I explore the role of Pentecostalism in the lives of middle-class Brazilian students-turned-migrants in Australia. Brazilian students lead precarious lives in Australia. They are transitioning into adulthood, living away from the homeland and without their families for the first time and they experience downward mobility. In additio...

This chapter investigates young middle-class Brazilians’ fascination with Hillsong. It draws on participant observation and open-ended interviews to analyze the role Hillsong plays in the constitution of a transnational religious field between Australia and Brazil. This concept accounts for how global religious institutions affect the everyday live...

Call for abstracts for edited volume: “Access Denied: When Anthropologists Cannot Enter the Field” Editors: Dr Emily Burns, Western Sydney University, Australia Associate Prof Cristina Rocha, Western Sydney University, Australia In order to achieve professional status anthropologists must conduct long-term fieldwork in a particular geographical...

Entry for the Encyclopedia of Latin American Religions, Springer. Henri Gooren (ed.). Definition: John of God is a Brazilian faith healer who has become famous all over the world by performing surgeries without asepsis or anesthetics while channeling spirits.

What is an anthropologist to do when faced with a Brazilian healer who uses kitchen knives, surgical scissors, and scalpels to operate on people without anaesthetics and asepsis? How should she deal with the condemnations of medical doctors and the media who cry 'charlatan' because the healer's understanding of healing and illness and consequent pr...

Rocha’s book is richly detailed and persuasive... Her ability to integrate a variety of relevant concepts and theoretical frames into her analysis is exceptional. The book is clearly written and engaging, and the analysis is original and valuable. Highly recommended for specialists, for libraries, and for students and scholars of religion intereste...

This is the first ethnographic account of the global spiritual movement headed by John of God, a Brazilian faith healer. In just over a decade, John of God has become an international healer superstar—visited by thousands of the desperately ill, the wealthy, celebrities such as Oprah Winfrey, Ram Daas, Wayne Dyer, and Shirley MacLaine, and an incre...

This is the first ethnographic account of the global spiritual movement headed by John of God, a Brazilian faith healer. In just over a decade, John of God has become an international healer superstar—visited by thousands of the desperately ill, the wealthy, celebrities such as Oprah Winfrey, Ram Daas, Wayne Dyer, and Shirley MacLaine, and an incre...

This is the first ethnographic account of the global spiritual movement headed by John of God, a Brazilian faith healer. In just over a decade, John of God has become an international healer superstar—visited by thousands of the desperately ill, the wealthy, celebrities such as Oprah Winfrey, Ram Daas, Wayne Dyer, and Shirley MacLaine, and an incre...

This is the first ethnographic account of the global spiritual movement headed by John of God, a Brazilian faith healer. In just over a decade, John of God has become an international healer superstar—visited by thousands of the desperately ill, the wealthy, celebrities such as Oprah Winfrey, Ram Daas, Wayne Dyer, and Shirley MacLaine, and an incre...

This is the first ethnographic account of the global spiritual movement headed by John of God, a Brazilian faith healer. In just over a decade, John of God has become an international healer superstar—visited by thousands of the desperately ill, the wealthy, celebrities such as Oprah Winfrey, Ram Daas, Wayne Dyer, and Shirley MacLaine, and an incre...

This is the first ethnographic account of the global spiritual movement headed by John of God, a Brazilian faith healer. In just over a decade, John of God has become an international healer superstar—visited by thousands of the desperately ill, the wealthy, celebrities such as Oprah Winfrey, Ram Daas, Wayne Dyer, and Shirley MacLaine, and an incre...

This is the first ethnographic account of the global spiritual movement headed by John of God, a Brazilian faith healer. In just over a decade, John of God has become an international healer superstar—visited by thousands of the desperately ill, the wealthy, celebrities such as Oprah Winfrey, Ram Daas, Wayne Dyer, and Shirley MacLaine, and an incre...

This is the first ethnographic account of the global spiritual movement headed by John of God, a Brazilian faith healer. In just over a decade, John of God has become an international healer superstar—visited by thousands of the desperately ill, the wealthy, celebrities such as Oprah Winfrey, Ram Daas, Wayne Dyer, and Shirley MacLaine, and an incre...

This is the first ethnographic account of the global spiritual movement headed by John of God, a Brazilian faith healer. In just over a decade, John of God has become an international healer superstar–visited by thousands of the desperately ill, the wealthy, celebrities such as Oprah Winfrey, Ram Daas, Wayne Dyer, and Shirley MacLaine, and an incre...

http://blog.oup.com/2017/01/spiritual-surgeries-alternative-medicine/

This is the first ethnographic account of the global spiritual movement headed by John of God, a Brazilian faith healer. In just over a decade, John of God has become an international healer superstar—visited by thousands of the desperately ill, the wealthy, celebrities such as Oprah Winfrey, Ram Daas, Wayne Dyer, and Shirley MacLaine, and an incre...

O Brasil é o maior país pentecostal do mundo e é sede de várias megaigrejas. No entanto, a megaigreja australiana Hillsong escolheu a cidade de São Paulo para estabelecer uma de suas filiais em 2016. Neste artigo investigo as conexões transnacionais que propiciaram a chegada da Hillsong no Brasil. Defendo que a intensa globalização das últimas duas...

Este livro acumula já uma década de história. Primeiramente publicado em inglês pela editora da Universidade do Havaí em 2006, o livro analisa a popularidade do budismo entre as classes altas, cosmopolitas e urbanas, popularidade que vem crescendo desde meados da década de 1990. Esse crescimento resultou em uma expansão substancial do mercado de li...

A presença global de diversas expressões religiosas brasileiras é tão significativa na atualidade que faz do nosso país um dos mais importantes na nova cartografia religiosa mundial. Este livro tem o mérito de reunir qualificados cientistas sociais brasileiros e estrangeiros que discorrem com competência justamente sobre manifestações da diáspora r...

Brazil's new economic and political standing has given new clout and visibility to its culture. As a consequence, many Westerners have been travelling to Brazil seeking an imagined, pristine environment deeply connected to spirituality and authenticity. Such imaginings of the exotic Other are also being globalized through mass media and the Interne...

João de Deus é um médium curador espírita que se tornou bastante conhecido fora do Brasil. A Casa de Dom Inácio, seu centro de cura em Abadiânia, perto de Brasília, recebe milhares de estrangeiros do mundo inteiro e o médium viaja constantemente à Europa e aos Estados Unidos para participar de eventos de cura organizados por seguidores estrangeiros...

Neste artigo argumento que a globalizacao do budismo e parte de um fenomeno muito maior da globalizacao da cultura. Enquanto ate o seculo XVIII havia uma globalizacao 'fina,' na qual o budismo era disseminado somente na Asia, hoje temos uma globalizacao 'densa,' em que a Asia nao e o unico centro do qual partem os fluxos globais de budismo. Nesta e...

Capoeira, the Afro-Brazilian dance-cum-martial art, has acquired a worldwide popularity. In this paper, we explore the relationships established by Australian students and Brazilian masters of Capoeira. We draw on and extend Wise and Velayutham's notion of everyday multiculturalism. This concept points to the need to research informal vernacular in...

This article considers the place of Australia within the network of sites through which Japanese Brazilian migrants move. In doing so, it aims to demonstrate the importance of moving beyond a bi-focal analysis of transnationalism to one which encompasses a multiplicity of sites and migrants’ diverse strategies to cross these national borders. Here...

Este artigo analisa as mudanças sociais, econômicas, culturais e religiosas que fizeram do Brasil um polo importante de produção do sagrado numa emergente cartografia global. Esta cartografia é policêntrica e entrecortada por uma miríade de redes transnacionais e multi-direcionais que facilitam o rápido movimento de pessoas, ideias, imagens, capita...

The Diaspora of Brazilian Religions explores the global spread of religions originating in Brazil, a country that has emerged as a major pole of religious innovation and production. Through ethnographically rich case studies throughout the world, ranging from the Americas (Canada, the U.S., Peru, and Argentina) and Europe (the U.K., Portugal, and t...

The paper analyses transnational flows of Pentecostalism between Australia and Brazil. It analyses the establishment of CNA, a Brazilian church that caters for the increasing number of Brazilian students in Sydney. It also investigates the ways in which Hillsong, an Australian Pentecostal megachurch, has influenced CNA and has been alluring young P...

Sôtô Zenshû foi a primeira escola budista japonesa no Brasil que atraiu membros sem ascendência japonesa. Ao mesmo tempo diversos imigrantes converteram-se para o catolicismo, alguns ainda antes da sua saída do Japão. Mais recentemente, o Budismo em geral e o Zen, em particular, desfrutou de um ressurgimento devido a popularização da espiritualidad...

This introduction provides the historical, political and social background to enable understanding of the specifics of the development of Buddhism in Australia, in addition to the similarities shared with other Western nations. This chapter begins by detailing the history of Buddhism in Australia and, subsequently, Australia’s relationship with Asi...

João de Deus (John of God) is a Brazilian faith healer who has been attracting a large number of followers outside his country. In the past decade, he has conducted international healing events in Germany, the US, and New Zealand, among others. As a consequence, John of God’s story has been told in documentaries on North American, British, Australi...

In this paper I seek to discuss the methodological challenges of conducting fieldwork amongst one’s own. I explore the fluidity of the outsider/insider identity within the research. I argue that a global “power-geometry” is at play when establishing rapport with a community where fieldwork is conducted. Using the Brazilian Spiritist healing centre...

The number of Buddhists in Australia has grown dramatically in recent years. In 2006, Buddhists accounted for 2.1 per cent of Australia's population, almost doubling the 1996 figures, and making it the fastest growing religion in the country. This book analyses the arrival and localisation of Buddhism in Australia in the context of the globalisatio...

João de Deus (John of God) is a Brazilian faith healer who has become increasingly well-known outside Brazil. In 2006 alone he was invited to conduct healing events in Germany, the United States of America and New Zealand. He returned to the United States of America and New Zealand in 2007, and in 2008 was once again in the United States of America...

John of God is a Brazilian psychic healer who is attracting a large number of overseas followers. In the last decade, he was invited to conduct healing events in Germany, the US, New Zealand, Greece and Peru, among other countries. He has visited more than once some of these countries. In this article, I analyze the ways in which this new religious...

Brazil has traditionally been a country that received inflows of migrants. However, in the last two decades of the twentieth century the flow has been reversed. Since the early 1980s, many Brazilians have emigrated, due to a socioeconomic crisis that has resulted in massive social inequalities and rampant crime and violence. According to the Brazil...

This paper explores the historical role of Busshinji temple as a center of Bud-dhism in Brazil for non-Japanese. Busshinji was established by Sōtōshū as a betsuin (branch temple) in the city of São Paulo in 1956. Drawing on interviews with early adherents, I intend to argue that many first attended Busshinji as it was the only Buddhist temple offer...

Charles Prebish and Martin Baumann (eds.), Westward Dharma: Buddhism Beyond Asia. University of California Press, Berkeley, Los Angeles, London, 2002, pp. 407, ISBN 0520226259 (Hbk), 0520234901 (Pbk)

My first experiences of Japan were so early in life that they are hazy in my memory. My neighbours in São Paulo City, a sprawling megalopolis in Brazil, were Japanese migrants. I was seven or eight when I first saw their festivals and performance presentations from my parents’ bedroom window. I remember my awe at their colourful costumes, masks and...

Brazilian immigration to Australia has two defining moments. The first migrants arrived in the early 1970s, attracted by an Australian Government assistance scheme. These were poor migrants and today still belong to the working class. The second group started arriving in the late 1990s. By contrast with the first group, these are young pro- fession...

Widely perceived as an overwhelmingly Catholic nation, Brazil has experienced in recent years a growth in the popularity of Buddhism among the urban, cosmopolitan upper classes. In the 1990s Buddhism in general and Zen in particular were adopted by national elites, the media, and popular culture as a set of humanistic values to counter the rampant...

This paper explores migration stories and examines the ways migrants use their gardens as sites of cultural practice in the Fairfield municipality of Western Sydney, one of the most ethnically diverse regions in Australia. We argue that many of those from diverse cultural backgrounds use their gardens in ways very different from the stereotypical c...

In this paper, I discuss the establishment of Sōtō Zenshū missions in Brazil. I contend that the discourse on Zen that emerged from the writings of D. T. Suzuki and the Kyoto School to resist Western cultural hegemony not only fed the Zen boom in the West, but has more recently impacted on the Zen practice of some Japanese, I show that Japanese Sōt...

This paper aims at being a first approach to the trends of the Brazilian religious concerning the intellectual upper-middle class. Here I analyse the spreading of Zen Buddhism in Brazil. Arriving first by the hands of Japanese immigrants, from the 1960s onwards it took roots amongst Brazilian intellectuals. However, these two groups defined Zen Bud...

Esta tese de mestrado visou investigar o significado da cerimônia do chá (chanoyu ou chado) no Japão e seu aparecimento na história japonesa como uma “tradição inventada”, conceito criado por Eric Hobsbawm. A partir da constatação que o chanoyu é usado como uma metáfora da identidade cultural do japonês e tem se transformado juntamente com a cultur...