Pentecostalism and Citizenship in Brazil: Between Escapism and Dominance

Abstract

Brazil is, today, the most Catholic, but also the most Pentecostal country in the world. The Pentecostal churches, namely the Assemblies of God, have been particularly successful among the poorest of the poor. There is little discourse on citizenship in Pentecostal churches, and its theological bases still seem to foster escapism; yet, believers regain a sense of dignity and respect for themselves and for others as they discover themselves as bearers of the Holy Spirit. In addition, contrary to the general perception, there are signs of a sense of responsibility for the whole human being, the environment and the common good. However, the relatively recent principle of ‘brother votes for brother’ tends to narrow down internal and external attention in terms of politics to the election of Pentecostal politicians, with all its ambivalences and a danger to seek dominance. This article argues that a third way between escapism and dominance, guided by a public theology, is possible.

Brajisalem: Biblical Cosmology, Power Dynamics and the Brazilian Political Imagination

“…While the democratic ethos of 1988 establishes its legitimacy largely on social contract (Schuler 2018), universal humanism (Saad-Filho 2017) and a pluralist electoral system (Rocha 2019); those who promote a literalist adoption of a Biblical time-frame in Brazil cite the Abrahamic God and His son Jesus as the unique, omnipresently ultimate, sources of moral authority. They thus empirically associate the provisional mana of Brazilian society with a cosmic rather than civil order (Sinner 2012). Whereas the production of power in the constitutional imaginary advances a dynamic of multiplicity and endless expansionism, an unwitting flow of diverse civil identities that often fuse one into the other and forwards in all directions towards a utopian edge of Progress; the dynamic of power that governs a biblical imaginary of power is of modular enclosure and inwards convergence, an orderly compartmentalisation into localised communities that are minutely divided along clear lines of separation.…”

“…Burdick 1998: 127), which may be captured, absorbed and then circulated through social worlds. This notion of active or flowing divine power increasingly becomes common among other neo-Pentecostal churches in Brazil (Sinner 2012). Pastor Juanribe Pagliarini of Comunidade Crista Paz e Vida, for example, promotes for some years now the idea that the power of God in fact regularly flows through the ground of the Holy Land.…”