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New Religious Movements in Brazil
Abstract
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, including ones grounded in race and class. The article outlines the major topics and problems taken up by the contributors to this issue, including appropriation across lines of race, ethnicity and class; the growing influence of evangelical Christianity in Latin America and beyond; esoteric religious practice in the late modern era; and questions of purity and authenticity, syncretism and anti-syncretism. Through their engagement with these themes, the articles in this issue contribute to a number of important discussions that relate not only to the study of religion in Brazil but to the study of new religious movements in general.
... The proclamation of the Republic of Brazil in 1889 marked a significant turning point, influenced by positivist philosophy and secular governance models. This shift led to the formal separation of church and state, dismantling the Catholic Church's institutional privileges and fostering an era of religious pluralism (Pierucci and Prandi 2000;Selka 2012). While this transformation introduced legislative freedoms, it also posed challenges, particularly in a landscape where religious ignorance and limited religious education left many without structured theological guidance (Rodrigues 2021). ...
Brazil’s religious landscape is shaped by a dynamic interplay of historical legacies, social transformations, and spatial reorganizations. This paper explores the evolving geography of religion in Brazil through the theoretical lenses of Milton Santos and David E. Sopher, examining how religious institutions and movements shape and are shaped by urbanization, migration, and socio-economic structures. The study highlights the fluidity of religious spaces, where individuals move between Catholicism, Pentecostalism, Afro-Brazilian traditions, and spiritualist practices, fostering a hybridized religious culture. Drawing from Santos’ theories on spatial production and socio-political inequalities, this article discusses how religious institutions both reproduce and challenge social disparities, particularly in land conflicts, indigenous rights, and marginalized communities. Sopher’s contributions to religious geography help contextualize Brazil’s religious shifts, notably the rise of Pentecostalism and its spatial expansion into urban peripheries, where it fulfills both spiritual and social functions. The research further critiques traditional secularization theories, arguing that religious transformation in Brazil does not signal a retreat from religiosity but rather an adaptive reconfiguration of faith in response to contemporary challenges. By integrating critical geography and religious studies, this paper contributes to a deeper understanding of the interconnections between faith, space, and social justice in Latin America and underscores the importance of studying religious landscapes not merely as historical legacies but as evolving, contested spaces where belief systems intersect with political, economic, and cultural forces.
... After independence, Catholicism remained the state religion with limited tolerance and some freedom for alternative beliefs (Chesnut 2003). The 1889 separation of church and state, heavily influenced by Positivism, led to a certain pluralization of Christianity and the religious landscape in general (Pierucci and Prandi 2000;Selka 2012). Throughout the twentieth century, there was a greater diversification of religions (Giumbelli 2008;Rodrigues 2023). ...
In the ever-evolving religious landscape of Brazil, researchers who study contemporary phenomena of religions face a complex and often contradictory reality. The practical application of theoretical categories and concepts in this domain is an endeavor that continues to challenge researchers. Brazil’s religious landscape is characterized by an impressive diversity of beliefs, practices, and convictions that often merge and overlap across different boundaries. This complex reality poses a serious challenge to religious studies, which strives to classify, analyze, and compare phenomena in historical and contemporary dimensions. The problems begin with the basic categories, which are often blurred in their applicability and meaning. Therefore, the focus of this article is to argue that the rapid change and impermanence of categories used in religious studies are due to the deep-rooted contradictions in Brazilian religious reality, which (e)merge, transform, and respond to social, cultural, and political changes in a constant state of flux. These changes cause defined categories that may have made sense at certain times. This article argues, however, that a phenomenological perspective is needed to conceptualize the centrality of spiritual entities to comparative religion. The omnipresence of spirits pervades the entire religious field of Pentecostalism, traditional Christianity, indigenous religions and Shamanism, as well as African-derived religions, which will be exemplified in terms of their references and striking parallels when it comes to the concept of spirits while manifested in human bodies and practices.
... One potential explanation is that, in those six countries, religious borders are more 'blurred', particularly in the less educated and among the rural populations due to the influences from diverse religious sources. Brazil is a case in point [56]. According to this interpretation, the cultural trait 'religion' becomes more important only in the culturally more sophisticated social strata of those countries. ...
Individuals more strongly affiliated to religion have on average more children than less religious ones. Here, based on census data of 3 658 650 women aged 46–60 years from 32 countries provided by IPUMS International and data from the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study (n = 2400 women, aged 53–57 years), we show that religious homogamy is also associated with higher reproduction in terms of a higher number of children and a lower chance of remaining childless. We argue that, together with the relationship between general religious intensity and number of children, religious homogamy has reproductive consequences. These may impact future demographic developments and could have also played a role in the biological evolution of humans.
Moacyr Scliar’s novel A mulher que escreveu a Bíblia (1999) depicts Old Testament writing from within the court of King Solomon and engages with Harold Bloom’s theory that a woman wrote parts of the Bible. The present article first demonstrates how syncretism in this novel facilitates forensic remembrance irrespective of religious categories. Next, it explores the novel’s employment of memory in mapping its characters’ transgressions and assigning guilt, with the act of writing functioning as both a transgressive and redemptive endeavor. The novel solidifies and subverts notions of Biblical male authorship while engaging psychographic writing as a nexus of memory and religious belief. Taking up the potentiality of remembrance as a retrospective and revisionist endeavor, this article unpacks the novel’s elliptical nature, both in the sense of gaps it leaves undeveloped, and in its ability to move back and forth through time and memory.
This article examines the devotion to souls in Saõ Paulo-A practice that involves lighting candles for and petitioning the souls of the anonymous, suffering dead-by focusing on the particularity of place. To that end, it employs the notion of religious transit (trânsito religioso), used by Brazilian scholars to talk about religious change and movement. But whereas most literature on the subject has focused on switching affiliation, this article explores how affect shapes devotees' religious transit through urban space. It argues that, in the context of the devotion, mutual suffering underpins a relationship of mutual aid, drawing together the living and departed at places of trauma and death.
The novelty of African-American roots tourism to Brazil is that to some extent it defies the secondary position occupied by Brazil in the African diaspora, a context marked by the hegemony of U.S.-centric conceptions of blackness. At the same time, roots tourism entails three kinds of inequalities: the disparity between those who have access to travel and those who do not, the belief of many African-American tourists that they can exchange what they view as their “modernity” for the “traditions” of the local black communities with whom they interact during their travels, and the much greater access of African-Americans to the means by which Africa and the diaspora can be represented. Blacks located in the North and the South of the American continent have unequal access to global currents of power. Thus, at the same time that it offers the possibility of challenging traditional North-South flows of cultural exchange, African-American roots tourism confirms the existing hierarchy within the black Atlantic.
As autoras discutem como o catolicismo da libertação e a Renovação Carismática Católica no Brasil têm se posicionado de modo variado e distinto diante das forças culturais globalizantes e homogeneizadoras tanto no catolicismo universal e quanto na sociedade mais ampla. Argumentam que, adotando noções distintas de global e local, esses dois movimentos do catolicismo contemporâneo se identificam com tendências específicas do catolicismo global e se confrontam com processos de sincretismo, aculturação e inculturação. Através da análise do sentido dado à tradição, do uso da música, da prática de peregrinação, as autoras mostram como ambos os movimentos conseguem construir culturas religiosas diferentes e formas distintas de inculturação num contexto repleto de tensões entre o local e global.
R. Andrew Chesnut shows how the development of religious pluralism over the past half-century has radically transformed the "spiritual economy" of Latin America. In order to thrive in this new religious economy, says Chesnut, Latin American spiritual "firms" must develop an attractive product and know how to market it to popular consumers. Three religious groups, he demonstrates, have proven to be the most skilled competitors in the new unregulated religious economy. Protestant Pentecostalism, the Catholic Charismatic Renewal, and African diaspora religions such as Brazilian Candomble and Haitian Vodou have emerged as the most profitable religious producers. Chesnut explores the general effects of a free market, such as introduction of consumer taste and product specialization, and shows how they have played out in the Latin American context. He notes, for example, that women make up the majority of the religious consumer market, and explores how the three groups have developed to satisfy women's tastes and preferences. Moving beyond the Pentecostal boom and the rise and fall of liberation theology, Chesnut provides a fascinating portrait of the Latin American religious landscape.
Part 1 Historical genealogies and theoretical background: Anglo and Latin - rival civilizations, alternative patterns the Methodist model - Anglo-American cultural production reproduced in Latin America. Part 2 Latin America - history and contemporary situation: profiles of evangelical advance in Latin America Brazil - largest society and most dramatic instance the Southern cone - Chile and the Argentine contrasted smaller contrasting societies - Ecuador, El Salvador, Gautemala and Mexico. Part 3 Comparisons and parallels: Carribean comparisons - Jamaica and Trinidad, Puerto Rico and Haiti instructive parallels - South Korea and South Africa. Part 4 Re-formations: new spiritual communications - healings and tongues, songs and stories conversions - transformations and turning points Protestantism and economic culture - evidence reviewed the body politic and the spirit - evidence reviewed. Part 5 Conclusions: the argument summarized and extended.
Protestants are making phenomenal gains in Latin America. This is the first general account of the evangelical challenge to Catholic predominance, with special attention to the collision with liberation theology in Central America. David Stoll reinterprets the 'invasion of the sects' as an evangelical awakening, part of a wider religious reformation which could redefine the basis of Latin American politics.
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 tradições européias. Entretanto, e mais recentemente, militantes que lutam contra desigualdades raciais têm tomado estas mesmas práticas religiosas como símbolos de resistência cultural. Enquanto os políticos da elite invocam a Irmandade como símbolo de mistura harmoniosa, militantes anti‐racista a interpretam como demonstração de resistência negra à dominação. Neste contexto, o artigo investiga de que modo as praticantes interpretam esta apropriação simbólica em torno de suas práticas religiosas. Especificamente, examino de que modo as irmãs da Boa Morte se utilizam destes dois discursos, o da mistura harmoniosa e o da resistência negra, para o benefício de seus próprios objetivos.
This article focuses on the intersection of religion and politics in the Recôncavo region of the state of Bahia in northeastern Brazil. African‐derived religions, particular practices that combine African and European traditions, have long been cited as examples of the Brazilian ideal of cultural mixture. More recently, however, activists struggling against racial inequality have sought to claim African‐derived religions as emblems of cultural defiance. Focusing on the Afro‐Catholic festival of the Sisterhood of Our Lady of Boa Morte in the state of Bahia, I investigate how elite politicians invoke this sisterhood as a symbol of harmonious cultural and racial mixture while antiracist activists simultaneously claim it as an emblem of black resistance. Against this backdrop, I explore how practitioners have responded to and engaged politicized representations of their religion. In particular, I examine how the sisters of Boa Morte negotiate the discourses of harmonious mixture and black resistance for their own purposes.
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 Christians and practitioners of African-derived Candomblé in northeastern Brazil, I examine the role of discourses about morality in encounters between two religions that, although often openly hostile to one another, draw adherents from similar socioeconomic circumstances. I argue that competing religious discourses play a central role in struggles for moral distinction in communities that are relatively homogeneous in terms of their social compositions. [Brazil, religion, Candomblé, Christianity, morality]
Freedoms Won: Afro-Brazilians in Post-Abolition São Paulo and Salvador For more about the role of irmandades and similar institutions in the history of
- Kim Butler
8 Kim Butler, Freedoms Given, Freedoms Won: Afro-Brazilians in Post-Abolition São Paulo and Salvador (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1998), 147. For more about the role of irmandades and similar institutions in the history of Afro-Latin America see George Reid Andrews, Afro-Latin America, 1800–2000 (
Discourses on Afro-Brazilian religion: From de-Africanization to re-Africanization
- Tina Gudrun Jensen
Tina Gudrun Jensen, " Discourses on Afro-Brazilian religion: From de-Africanization to re-Africanization, " in Latin American Religion in Motion, eds. Christian Smith and Joshua Prokopy (New York: Routledge, 1999), 265–283,
Reafricanização e Sincretismo: Interpretações Acadêmicas e Experiências Religiosas
- Vagner Gonçalves
- Silva
and Vagner Gonçalves da Silva, " Reafricanização e Sincretismo: Interpretações Acadêmicas e Experiências Religiosas, " in Faces da Tradição Aro-Brasileira, eds. Carlos Caroso and Jeferson Bacelar (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil: Pallas/CEAO/ CNPq, 1999), 149–157.
New Religious Movements in Brazil 15 Patricia de Santana Pinho African-American Roots Tourism in Brazil
- Selka
Selka: New Religious Movements in Brazil 15 Patricia de Santana Pinho, " African-American Roots Tourism in Brazil, " Latin American Perspectives 35:3 (2008): 70–86.
Why Historical Churches Are Declining and Pentecostal Churches Are Growing in Brazil: A Sociological Perspective
- See Silveira
See Leonildo Silveira Campos, " Why Historical Churches Are Declining and Pentecostal Churches Are Growing in Brazil: A Sociological Perspective, " in In the Power of the Spirit, eds. Benjamin Gutierrez and Dennis A. Smith (Drexel Hill, PA: Skipjack Press, 1996), 65–94;
Pentecostais No Brasil: Uma Interpretação Sócio-Religiosa
- Francisco Cartaxo
Francisco Cartaxo Rolim, Pentecostais No Brasil: Uma Interpretação Sócio-Religiosa (Petrópolis, Brazil: Editora Vozes, 1985);
Intolerancia Religosa: Impactos do Neopentecostalismo no Campo Religioso Afro-brasileiro
- Silva Gonçalves
- Vagner
and Gonçalves da Silva Vagner, Intolerancia Religosa: Impactos do Neopentecostalismo no Campo Religioso Afro-brasileiro (São Paulo: EDUSP, 2007).