Abstract
This chapter considers the global networks, historical events and political economic contexts that have given rise to Evangelical and Pentecostal faiths in Brazil. Acknowledging Brazil’s long-held traditions for religious tolerance and syncretism, we query the roles of international forces in producing Brazil’s rather unique religious landscape. By unpacking a host of interrelated political, social and economic factors, we offer fresh insight regarding the growth and development of evangelical and Pentecostal faiths in Brazil and Latin America more generally. We explore the roots of their missionary efforts and the ways they adapted and grew in the late twentieth century. Related to these developments are domestic and international political events, as well as the changing role of the Catholic Church in Brazilian society. By focusing on the northeastern city of Fortaleza, we highlight the ways religious conversion and evangelical/Pentecostal growth connects to larger processes of globalization and political economic change. While proselytizing efforts were once linked with urban poverty and American missionaries, today Brazilians are leading this charge, establishing churches throughout the Amazon as well as in Africa and Asia. Our findings suggest that the growth of these Brazilian faiths relates to a multitude of political economic processes and patterns of global change: Brazil’s return to democracy in the 1980s and the rise of neoliberalism in the 1990s played important roles as did domestic and international migration patterns and shifting urbanization trends. These churches’ practices have adapted and evolved as they have globalized which explains the appeal of these faiths to Brazilians and elsewhere throughout Latin America. Just as Brazil’s religious past was characterized by rapid spiritual change and global connectivities, so will its religious future likely be just as dynamic and heterogeneous.
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Notes
- 1.
Today, in Brazil, there are a multitude of Christian churches and faiths. Some are easily identified as Pentecostal, or Protestant, or Presbyterian, and so on, but many are more ambiguous. In this chapter, we refer to this entire amalgamation of Christian-based churches and faiths with the term “non-Catholic Christian.”
- 2.
Unless otherwise noted, data in this chapter come from a collection of field notes gathered over a period of several years. Fieldwork was begun in the city of Fortaleza in 2000 and then formally within the community of Pirambu in 2005. Since then, extended return visits were made in 2006, 2007, 2009, and 2010. The dataset contains more than 150 semi- and unstructured interviews, significant archival research, and months of participatory observation notes gathered while conducting fieldwork in Pirambu (Garmany 2010).
- 3.
Throughout this chapter we refer to the community (or neighborhood) of “Pirambu.” The greater Pirambu area is actually a very large collection of individual favela neighborhoods, and for purposes of confidentiality, we refrain from using the name of the specific neighborhood within Pirambu where this research was conducted.
- 4.
The word crente literally means “believer.” In Brazil, the term crente (or crentes) is generally considered synonymous with evangelical (or evangelicals) and is regularly used as an umbrella term for all those of evangelical/Protestant/Pentecostal faiths.
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Garmany, J., Gerhardt, H. (2015). Global Networks and the Emergent Sites of Contemporary Evangelicalism in Brazil. In: Brunn, S. (eds) The Changing World Religion Map. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-9376-6_106
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