Stephen Selka

• PhD
• Indiana University Bloomington

Neste artigo, enfatizo que a política dos terreiros surge não apenas como resposta à hostilidade evangélica, mas também por meio de vários tipos de engajamentos e interações entre o terreiro e o público — o que Paul Johnson (2005) chama de “candomblé público”. Dou especial atenção a um ponto que muitas vezes falta nas discussões sobre como as relig...

This article provides a historical and ethnographic overview of Afro‐Catholicism in Latin America. For the purposes of this article, ”Afro‐Catholicism” encompasses the wide variety of ways that people of African descent have practiced or engaged with Catholicism. Much of the article focuses on Brazil, but it also draws on the literature on Afro‐Cat...

The Cambridge History of Religions in Latin America covers religious history in Latin America from pre-Conquest times until the present. This publication is important; first, because of the historical and contemporary centrality of religion in the life of Latin America; second, for the rapid process of religious change which the region is undergoin...

Studies of Afro-Brazilian religion have tended to focus on Candomblé and other African-derived religions, and this is especially true in studies focused on the northeastern state of Bahia. Indeed, Bahia has long been imagined as a kind of living museum where African culture has been preserved in the Americas, a place where Christianity appears only...

In this article the author explores the ways in which Catholic, evangelical, and Candomblé actors produce competing framings that shape encounters taking place in the city of Cachoeira in the Brazilian state of Bahia. The framing of Cachoeira as a site of heritage tourism – one where local religious practices are read as part of the African heritag...

The transnational turn has generated new ways of thinking about borders and phenomena that cross them, including religion. Nevertheless, there is little agreement on what kinds of processes the terms “transnationalism” and “globalization” refer to and to what extent they represent something new. As the articles in this special issue examine, howeve...

This article provides an overview of the Brazilian religious landscape and an introduction to this special issue on new religious movements in Brazil. I stress how the Brazilian religious landscape, although often imagined as a place of religious syncretism and cultural mixture, is crosscut by an array of boundaries, tensions and antagonisms, inclu...

Stefania Capone's Searching for Africa in Brazil provides a fascinating discussion of discourses of tradition and purity in Afro-Brazilian Candomblé. In it Capone engages wider debates about authenticity and African origins that have long been at the center of the anthropological study of Afro-Brazilian religions. To be sure, other scholars have ch...

Most of the research on the growth of evangelical Christianity in Latin America and elsewhere has focused on the distinctive products that evangelicals bring to the “religious marketplace” and on other competitive advantages that evangelical churches have over their religious rivals. Alternatively, on the basis of research among evangelical Christi...

This article focuses on the Afro-Catholic Sisterhood of Our Lady of Good Death ( Boa Morte ) in the rural town of Cachoeira in the state of Bahia, Brazil. I examine the tensions between the sisters of Boa Morte and male religious and political actors from the city, including Catholic priests, elite politicians, and black movement activists. I exami...

RESUMEN Este artigo analisa a relação entre política e religião no Recôncavo Baiano, região do Nordeste brasileiro, a partir da observação da festa afro‐católica da Irmandade da Nossa Senhora da Boa Morte. No Brasil, religiões de origem africana têm sido consideradas exemplos idealizados de mistura cultural, especialmente quando combinadas às tradi...

This chapter discusses the complex and contested ways in which religion is enmeshed with the politics of Afro-Brazilian identity. As shown in the previous chapters of the book, religion and Afro-Brazilian identity shared a complex relationship. Although Candomblé served as an emblem of Afro-Brazilian identity, the relationship between the religion...

Brazil is often cited as the world's most Catholic country however in reality Brazil is a plethora of religions. While Catholicism is still the primary religion of the majority of Brazilians, there are significant numbers of Brazilians who frequent Protestant Churches, African-derived religions and Buddhist temples. This chapter discusses how the p...

Salvador da Bahia is a major port and it has been the center of colonialism for the past two hundred years. It was the place for slave importation and the center of the sugar industry, and these two aspects tied the blacks to slavery. In the years that have passed, Salvador was subjected to change as industry, economy, and trade moved to the south...

Much of the discourse on Afro-Brazilian identity is pegged on Candomblé although the religion is not evenly practiced in Afro-Brazilian communities. Debates on syncretism, double belonging, and anti-syncretism all pinpoint the existing relationship between Candomblé and Catholicism. Furthermore, emphasis on Candomblé shows a rather religious plural...

This chapter discusses Candomblé, Afro-Brazilian culture and anti-racism within the context of the several diverse African-derived religions in Salvador and other Afro-Brazilian communities. This chapter focuses on Salvador which is home to the oldest and most famous Candomblé terreiros in Bahia wherein several of these terrieros date back to the n...

This article explores the interweaving of the traditional, the modern, and the postmodern into the practice of Candomblé, an African-derived religion of Brazil. Multiple and competing perspectives on what is traditional or legitimate Candomblé practice coexist today. Over the course of the twentieth century, such claims about authenticity have been...

Brazilians of African descent draw upon both Christian and African diasporic religions to construct their racial identities in a variety of intriguing ways. Focusing on the Reconcavo region of northeastern Brazil--known for its rich Afro-Brazilian traditions and as a center of racial consciousness in the country--Stephen Selka provides a nuanced an...

In the Brazilian state of Bahia today, Afro-Brazilian activists are confronting racial inequalities and racist practices that until recently many Brazilians refused to acknowledge. Many groups engaging these problems are religious, and ethnic affirmation based in African-derived religions such as Candomblé is at the heart of the black consciousness...