This book offers a novel approach to considering Brazilian Christianity's interplay with global processes from its inception to the present day. It adopts a multi-scalar approach to Brazilian Christianity, linking local grassroots practices and beliefs with processes at the various spatio-temporal levels. These include regional (rural-urban diversification), national (secularization, the radical pluralization of the Christian field, and intensified detraditionalization and retraditionalization) and transnational. Sílvia Fernandes also identifies longue durée dynamics that connect colonial Christianity with current events, including the rise, crisis, and resurgence of Progressive Catholicism, and the election of right-wing populist Jair Bolsonaro with support from a sizable number of Evangelical Protestants and Charismatic Catholics, as well as “traditionalist” Catholics. This book demonstrates that as Christianity enters its third millennium, it is increasingly shaped by churches and movements based in the “Global South” that have transnational and diasporic reach through the circulation of migrants, religious entrepreneurs, pilgrims, and tourists, as well as by the expert use of electronic media.

The story of how Brazilian Catholics and Protestants confronted one of the greatest shocks to the Latin American religious system in its 500-year history This innovative study explores the transition in Brazil from a hegemonically Catholic society to a religiously pluralistic society. With sensitivity, Erika Helgen shows that the rise of religious pluralism was fraught with conflict and violence, as Catholic bishops, priests, and friars organized intense campaigns against Protestantism. These episodes of religious violence were not isolated outbursts of reactionary rage, but rather formed part of a longer process through which religious groups articulated their vision for Brazil’s national future.

This Handbook provides an unprecedented overview of Brazil’s religious landscape. Its three sections discuss specific religions/groups of traditions, Brazilian religions in the diaspora, and related issues (e.g., women, possession, politics, race and material culture).

Pentecostalism is one of the most rapidly expanding religious-cultural forms in the world. Its rise in popularity is often attributed to its successfully incorporating native cosmologies in new religious frameworks. This volume probes for more complex explanations to this phenomenon in the favelas of Brazil, once one of the most Catholic nations in the world. Based on a decade of ethnographic fieldwork in Rio de Janeiro and drawing from religious studies, anthropology of religion, and media theory, Transmitting the Spirit argues that the Pentecostal movement’s growth is due directly to its ability to connect politics, entertainment, and religion. Examining religious and secular media—music and magazines, political ads and telenovelas—Martijn Oosterbaan shows how Pentecostal leaders progressively appropriate and recategorize cultural forms according to the religion’s cosmologies. His analysis of the interrelationship among evangélicos distributing doctrine, devotees’ reception and interpretation of nonreligious messaging, perceptions of the self and others by favela dwellers, and the slums of urban Brazil as an entity reveals Pentecostalism’s remarkable capacity to engage with the media influences that shape daily life in economically vulnerable urban areas. An eye-opening look at Pentecostalism, media, society, and culture in the turbulent favelas of Brazil, this book sheds new light on both the evolving role of religion in Latin America and the proliferation of religious ideas and practices in the postmodern world.

"For vivid insight, lively narrative and persuasive use of life histories, this is o major piece of ethnography". -- David Martin, University of London

Evangelical and Catholic groups are transforming Brazilian politics. This book asks why, and what the consequences are for democracy.

How does Christ meet, engage, change, challenge, dialogue, interact with, and bridge cultures? What is the role of the gospel in transforming ethics and culture? These daunting questions guide the present investigation about Evangelical Christianity in Brazil, the largest Catholic country in the world. This book critiques the quantitative and qualitative growth of Evangelical Christianity in Brazil and presents tools for studying the global south and other cultures. Indeed, sociocultural factors play a significant role in the translation of the gospel and may work as bridges and/or barriers within the cultural and religious milieu of the largest country in Latin American. Particularly, four traits impacts the preaching of the Christian message in Brazil, namely: cordiality, religiosity, the Brazilian way of coping, and collectivism. Through oral history methodology, and literature review, this book evaluates how biblically sound translation happens through the Brazilian Baptist Convention as suggested by key leadership writings, practices, and memoirs. This work features an overview of the history of Brazilian Christianity, including its Animistic background, African-Brazilian religious influences, the present Pentecostal majority, and the challenge of Neopentecostalism, in an era of music, TV, and social media.