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Competitive Spirits: Latin America's New Religious Economy
... Over the past decade, the conditions of extreme income inequality and poverty that have enabled the spread of HIV in Brazil have also facilitated the spread of Pentecostalism (Chesnut 1997, 2003). This simultaneous and parallel spread of religion and the AIDS epidemic has contributed to the merging of evangelizing and prevention messages in Brazil. ...
... This quotation illustrates the importance of the church in the community. As Andrew Chesnut (1997, 2003) noted in his work on Brazil, the Pentecostal community markets itself as a place where suffering is cured and thereby attracts people who are looking for both acceptance and cleansing. The pastor quoted above explained that the church should be seen as a site of health, purification, and strength. ...
... The pastor quoted above explained that the church should be seen as a site of health, purification, and strength. Much like commercial districts and previously 'sinful businesses', such as porn theatres, that have been taken over by Pentecostal churches (Chesnut 2003), the youth body has become a site for purification. ...
This study explored the focus on youth in Catholic and Evangelical Pentecostal discussions about and responses to HIV and AIDS in Brazil. Key informant, oral history and in-depth interviews revealed a disconnect between young people's views of themselves as leaders in their religious institutions' responses to HIV and other social problems, and adult religious leaders' views of young people as vulnerable and in need of being 'saved'. Religious leaders presented young people as institutional commodities, emphasizing their symbolic value as signs of the health and future of their churches. We explore the unofficial exchange between religious institutions and young people, who benefited from the leadership opportunities and communities provided by their churches and youth groups. We discuss the political economy of youth in religious institutions' responses to HIV and AIDS within the context of Brazil's high levels of religious mobility as well as the broader, global commodification of spirituality and religion.
... They may play an integral role in improving health indicators and social cohesion. Religions offer options for participation in the social world (Chesnut 2003). Religious organisations have stepped in to solve such " pathogens of poverty " (Chesnut 1997). ...
... In fact the " pathogens of poverty " can be termed the " pathogens of inequality " if we consider the role of racism, gender inequality, unemployment, discrimination based on sexual orientation, etc., in these areas. The role of evangelical religious institutions has been interpreted as a response to the societal illness and structural violence suffered by poor and marginalised women and men (Chesnut 2003, Burkdick 1993). ...
This analysis focuses on the evangelical Protestant responses to drug use and HIV prevention, treatment and care in the urban periphery of Rio de Janeiro. We question how religious institutions, and the positions of pastors, create or reduce various elements of societal illness and vulnerability. We aim to show that the views of pastors may symbolise a form of social regulation that may have a meaningful social impact on drug use and HIV and AIDS. The interviews of 23 evangelical religious leaders were collected. Two case studies of evangelical drug rehabilitation centres (DRC) are derived from five qualitative interviews. Evangelical DRC generally reflects pastors' discourses of reintegration into social networks including marriage, family and employment. We found important differences in the discourses and practices in private versus state-funded rehabilitation centres that may reveal ways social and programmatic vulnerabilities may affect the efficacy of public health interventions.
... For an overview of inculturation , see Irarrázaval 2000. For an analysis of the recent growth of the Catholic Charismatic Renewal from a rational choice/religious marketplace perspective, see Chesnut 2003. for the tremendous growth of Christianity in these two different contexts? ...
Religious practice involves both religious institutions and individual actors, as well as one or more official and popular versions within particular traditions. In reflecting on trends in religious research, one obviously looks to changes in how religion is practiced in the context of a complex set of historical and political circumstances, and how it sheds light on the dynamic of cultural identity and the power relations between institutions and social actors. Perhaps the most significant recent sea change in Latin American scholarship on religion began in 1990, with the publication of David Stoll's and David Martin's books on the growth of Protestantism and its potential implications for the region. Given the extensive and ongoing research on this topic, this trend in scholarship was significant for reasons beyond the actual growth of Protestantism itself, which in Guatemala had already leveled off at about 10 percent a year by the mid-1980s (Garrard-Burnett 1998, 162), decreasing further and perhaps even becoming negative by the year these books were published (Gooren 2001, 190). In any case, Protestantism has become an established part of Latin American studies, and deservedly so. Of course other changes in the religious landscape have been taking place in recent decades, probably the most significant of which are the growth of the Catholic Church and of indigenous religions—as well as syntheses of these—in Guatemala (Garrard-Burnett 1998, 168–169) and elsewhere, as Orta's and Lester's books illustrate.
While the works here address diverse topics, several themes link them together. Foremost, perhaps, is the absolutely central importance of popular understandings and appropriations of official religious doctrine and practice, for religious, political, social, and cultural reasons. Related to this is the extent to which the Catholic Church has always had to adapt to local contexts and popular practice, even when attempting to eliminate the latter. A third theme is the link between religion and various types of identity, and how these interact with and confront the antinomies of modernity. Finally, reflecting the institutionalization of Protestantism within academic research on Latin America, and the resurgence of Catholicism in the region, the institutional religious backdrop, if not central actor, in all of the works reviewed here is the Catholic Church, with Protestantism only mentioned here and there as part of the background.
Daniel Reff's Plagues, Priests, and Demons: Sacred Narratives and the Rise of Christianity in the Old World and the New is a fascinating study of the parallels between the rise of Christianity in the late Roman Empire and in colonial Mexico. While these are two very different historical and cultural settings, they share two important features: both saw the significant growth and spread of Christianity where it had not existed before, and this happened in the context of dramatic social, cultural, political and demographic change. The book thus implicitly answers the question, What accounted for the tremendous growth of Christianity in these two different contexts? But rather than framing it this way, Reff proceeds to trace, in an impressive display of interdisciplinary research, the conditions of life in each place and time, and to weave together an account of how epidemic diseases, the Catholic Church as an institution, and the ideology and practice that its religious workers embodied, came together to provide an alternative social and cosmological system that both appealed to and was imposed upon the plagues' many victims. The elements involved were biological, ideological, cultural, and organizational.
As Reff notes, his is the first comparative study of the rise of Christianity in the Old and New Worlds, and it fills an important gap in the literature by illuminating the similarities between the periods and places. Christianization occurred at the same time that local societies in the regions were devastated by epidemics, and members of these societies "were attracted to Christian beliefs and rituals because they provided a means of comprehending and dealing with epidemic disease and calamity," especially by the charity and reciprocity advocated for and practiced by Christian missionaries (2). In both cases, infectious diseases destroyed the previous social system, which opened the way for Christianity to take over and establish a new social and spiritual order. In a striking parallel...
... First of all, with respect to religious practice, I have illustrated that leadership positions in Afro-Brazilian religious groups translate into tangible forms of influence and power. As much as the Catholic Church has attempted to stamp out African-derived religion (and of course it also has a long history of accommodating it for pragmatic purposes), it has been growing as a religion in recent decades (Chesnut 2003). Furthermore, it is clear that in some contexts the Catholic priest can be subordinated to the will of the Candomblé practitioner, which is partly due to the fact that the practice of Candomblé and Catholicism are so closely intertwined in Bahian life. ...
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 examine how the women of Boa Morte make strategic use of the limited political resources available to them in their rural communities in order to insure that their sisterhood continues and thrives. Along the way, I emphasize the ways that gender conditions access to religious and political resources in rural Bahia.
... Rodriguez and Oullette (2000) have outlined a heuristic differentiation that can describe this negotiation, in which individuals can (a) reject the religious identity by establishing it as an unimportant part of their lives, (b) reject the homosexual identity by suppressing longings and not practicing sex outside their religious parameters, (c) compartmentalize both identities with the risk of identity dissonance, and (d) reach identity integration through assuming the identity of a gay or lesbian Christian. Chesnut (2003) has maintained that the choices of leaders and followers are driven by a type of religious economy, in which individuals can move from one church or tradition to another, depending on their needs. As mentioned previously, some literature (e.g., Rodriguez & Oullette, 2000; Thumma, 1991; Yip, 1994), has addressed how alternative or gay-positive churches can provide spaces that allow individuals to integrate religious and sexual identity, but our sample did not include any churches of this type because they are located in the center of Rio de Janeiro and in Copacabana, not in the low-income peri-urban Baixada Fluminense, on which we are focusing here. ...
This article reports on a study that examined how religious discourses of inclusion and exclusion-in Roman Catholic, evangelical Protestant, and Afro-Brazilian religious traditions-affected people's rights to express same-sex sexual desires, behaviors, and identities in the socioeconomically marginalized urban periphery of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Using extended ethnographic observation of institutions and religious events over a period of 2 years, the authors identified how sexual rights were constructed within religious discourses and conducted ethnographic interviews with 45 religious leaders. In the low-income and violent urban periphery of Rio de Janeiro, religious leaders and institutions play key roles in molding community inclusion and exclusion. A comparison of the 3 major religious denominations shows a diversity of discourses about same-sex sexual desires and their impacts on community formation.
Resumo O objetivo central deste texto é mapear a influência da sociologia weberiana na produção intelectual sobre o fenômeno religioso no Brasil. Mais especificamente, buscaremos compreender de que forma a prédica weberiana que estabelece a "afinidade" do protestantismo pietista com o "desencantamento" das imagens religiosas do mundo e a modernidade capitalista foi apropriada pela Sociologia da Religião, na tentativa de compreender o crescimento do pentecostalismo no Brasil. Assim, rastrearemos a produção sociológica, buscando estabelecer um paralelo entre as representações da sociedade e da cultura brasileiras presentes na forma como os pesquisadores recortam e analisam o fenômeno pentecostal. Concentraremos nossas atenções nos trabalhos que seguem a linha teórica traçada por Cândido Procópio de Camargo, que podemos expressar esquematicamente da seguinte forma: conversão, ruptura com o passado tradicional (aqui representada pela pertença impensada a uma religião - catolicismo), desencantamento das crenças, que levaria à individuação e à ação racional e, finalmente, a modernização da sociedade brasileira. Vemos, portanto, que a reflexão procopiana e a de seus seguidores insere-se em um quadro intelectual mais amplo, que remonta à década de 1930, preocupado com as razões do atraso brasileiro e suas possibilidades de superação. Palavras-chave: Max Weber; Pentecostalismo; Desencantamento; Secularização; Modernização. Abstract The main purpose of this text is to map the influence of Weberian sociology on the intellectual production of the religious phenomenon in Brazil. Specifically, it endeavors to understand how the Weberian proposition, which establishes the "affinity" of pietist Protestantism with the "disenchantment" of religious images in the capitalist world and modernity, was appropriated by the Sociology of Religion in an attempt to understand the growth of Pentecostalism in Brazil. Thus, we review the sociological production, seeking to establish a parallel between representations of Brazilian society and culture evident in the way researchers consider and analyze the Pentecostal phenomenon. We focus our attention on the works that follow Cândido Procópio de Camargo's theory, which can be expressed schematically as: conversion, breaking with the traditional past (represented here by belonging thoughtlessly to a religion - Catholicism); disenchantment of beliefs, which would lead to individuation and rational action; and, finally, the modernization of Brazilian society. The conclusion points out that Camargo's thought and that of his followers are inserted into a broader intellectual framework, which dates back to the 1930s and is concerned with the reasons behind Brazilian underdevelopment and the chances of overcoming it. Key words: Max Weber; Pentecostalism; Disenchantment; Secularization; Modernization.
This article deals with the main religious transition that accomplished the redefinition of Japanese Brazilian identity after the Second World War. State Shinto was the main world view of the Japanese immigrants in Brazil until the 195os, playing a key role in the Japanese resistance of Brazilian acculturation process and in the cognitive dissonance that resulted in the Shindo Renmei movement. The Catholic Church began its proselytizing inside the Japanese community in the 1920s, initially attending to Japanese Catholics and the nisei. After the Second World War the Church participated in the clarification campaigns against Shindo Renmei. With the collapse of Shinto nationalism the missionary activities were especially directed towards the nisei and for that the incorporation of Japanese Catholic symbols proved highly effective. The combination of Japanese and Brazilian Catholic elements represented the development of a hyphenated religiosity, facilitating the trend of Catholic belonging and at the same time offering some cultural continuity.
This article examines two drags on organizing for self‐help community development in Agua Prieta, Sonora. The first is U.S.‐based, church‐led charity in two forms: “forays,” which bring outreach groups to disadvantaged barrios of the city for very brief periods; and more consistent charity provision via Evangelical Protestant churches. The second is the drug trade, which exacerbates a social climate of accumulation, competition, and personal enrichment. The study analyzes charity and drugs together under the rubric of new patron‐client ties that both reflect and reinforce the culture of neoliberalism on the border. The article closes with a brief account of an alternative model for development which seeks to avoid the traps of dependency on charity, drugs, and the state: a subsistence‐ and sustainability‐oriented permaculture model of development that would enhance security and community cohesion through food production, resource conservation, and affordable green housing.
Religious life is studied by way suggested by the rational choice theory and the religious capital theory. The basic contentions of the theory on the nature of religious life having to do with an exchange upon a religious market, by firms offering compensators and rewards, and consumers, is considered. In the empirical analysis, it was validated that the independent (religious capital) and dependent (religious rewards of two types) were empirically separate constructs. Cross-sectional analysis of survey data indicated a very strong association between religious capital and institutional and ritual experience rewards within religious life, at a cross-cultural analysis, including Bosnian Muslims, Serbian Orthodox, Slovenian Catholics and US Protestants. The association was confirmed as robust at regression inspection with religious socialization. This extends further support for the empirical validity these novel theories of religious life and extensions of economic analysis into religious life
What do we currently know about atheists and secular people? In what ways are atheism and secularity correlated with positive societal outcomes? This article offers a thorough presentation and discussion of the latest social scientific research concerning the identities, values, and behaviors of people who don’t believe in God or are non-religious, and addresses the ways in which atheism and secularity are positively correlated with societal well-being.
'Ausgangspunkt des Artikels ist der empirische Befund, dass der Verbreitungsgrad traditioneller Formen der Religiosität in verschiedenen Regionen der Welt, aber auch zwischen den Ländern Europas äußerst unterschiedlich ist. Es werden drei Faktoren erörtert, die für die Erklärung des Rückgangs der Religiosität in bestimmten europäischen Ländern von besonderer Bedeutung sind: 1. Die Reduzierung der Lebensrisiken durch die Verbesserung der materiellen Lebensbedingungen und den Ausbau des Wohlfahrtsstaats; 2. die Entzauberung der Religion vor allem durch den Protestantismus und der damit verbundene Verlust der sinnlichen Erfahrungsqualität der Religion; und 3. das konflikthafte Verhältnis zwischen Kirche und Bevölkerung im Verlauf der Geschichte, das dazu beigetragen hat, dass die Menschen nur wenig Vertrauen in die Kirche haben und sich heute in zunehmendem Maße von der Religion distanzieren.' (Autorenreferat) 'Point of departure of this article is the empirical finding that the dissemination degree of traditional forms of religiousness varies strongly across different world regions, but also within Europe. Three factors are discussed, which are of particular importance for explaining declining religiousness in specific European countries. First, the reduction of risks to life as a consequence of the improvement of the material living conditions and the implementation of the welfare state; second, the demystification of religion, mainly because of European Protestantism, and the corresponding loss of sensual quality of religious experience; third, the frequently conflicting relationship between church(es) and the population during the course of history, which undermined the confidence in churches and has enhanced an increasing distancing from religion in our times.' (author's abstract)|
Focusses on how since the arrival of Haitians in South Florida since 1979 many of these increasingly joined and converted to Haitian evangelical Protestant churches, and came to disavow the combined Catholic and Vodou beliefs they adhered to. Author points out how this echoes trends in Haiti since the 1970s of increased conversions to evangelical Protestantism, with these localized/Haitianized Protestant churches later also moving to Florida. She further examines the motivations behind and meanings of these conversions, and argues that poor Haitian migrants construe conversion as a rhetoric and set of behaviours for mastering a model of individual, social, and economic success in the US. At the same time, she shows how this Protestant evangelical practice offers converts an escape route from familial and other obligations and interdependence connected to traditional, transnational domestic and ritual ties, that are also spiritually and magically enforced. Author however indicates that while the pastors model for their flock an assertive, separatist disposition, central to Protestantism's historical appeal, combined with a modern, ascetic approach, underneath this is often an instrumental logic aimed at instant money and private ambition. As these traditionally were illicit rewards of sorcery and magic, the pastors are seen by some as renewed and successful sorcerers. Author further examines the conversions relating these to the moral dialectic from Vodou, known as Guinea and Magic, mediating the conflicts between individualism and community, and gives examples of often pragmatic motivations for conversion. She thus concludes that Haitians' interpretations of their conversions are unique in that they are filled with their cultural concerns, images, and morality.
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