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

As Brazilian democracy faces a crisis of legitimacy, political divisions grow among Catholic, evangelical, and non-religious citizens. What has caused religious polarization in Brazilian politics? Does religious politics shore up or undermine democracy? Religion and Brazilian Democracy: Mobilizing the People of God uses engaging anecdotes and draws on a wealth of data from surveys and survey experiments with clergy, citizens, and legislators, to explain the causes and consequences of Brazil's 'culture wars'. Though political parties create culture war conflict in established democracies, in Brazil's weak party system religious leaders instead drive divisions. Clergy leverage legislative and electoral politics strategically to promote their own theological goals and to help their religious groups compete. In the process, they often lead politicians and congregants. Ultimately, religious politics pushes Brazilian politics rightward and further fragments parties. Yet Religion and Brazilian Democracy also demonstrates that clergy-led politics stabilizes Brazilian democracy and enhances representation.

Democracy and Brazil: Collapse and Regression discusses the de-democratization process underway in contemporary Brazil. The relative political stability that characterized domestic politics in the 2000s ended with the sudden emergence of a series of massive protests in 2013, followed by the controversial impeachment of Dilma Rousseff in 2016 and the election of Jair Bolsonaro in 2018. In this new, more conservative period in Brazilian politics, a series of institutional reforms deepened the distance between citizens and representatives. Brazil's current political crisis cannot be understood without reference to the continual growth of right-wing and ultra-right discourse, on the one hand, and to the neoliberal ideology that pervades the minds of large parts of the Brazilian elite, on the other. Twenty experts on Brazil across different fields discuss the ongoing political turmoil in the light of distinct problems: geopolitics, gender, religion, media, indigenous populations, right-wing strategies, and new forms of coup, among others. Updated analyses enriched with historical perspective help to illuminate the intricate issues that will determine the country's fate in years to come. Democracy and Brazil: Collapse and Regression will interest students and scholars of Brazilian Politics and History, Latin America, and the broader field of democracy studies.

Do religious arguments have a public role in the post-9/11 world? Can we hold democracy together despite fractures over moral issues? Are there moral limits on the struggle against terror? Asking how the citizens of modern democracy can reason with one another, this book carves out a controversial position between those who view religious voices as an anathema to democracy and those who believe democratic society is a moral wasteland because such voices are not heard. Drawing inspiration from Whitman, Dewey, and Ellison, Jeffrey Stout sketches the proper role of religious discourse in a democracy. He discusses the fate of virtue, the legacy of racism, the moral issues implicated in the war on terrorism, and the objectivity of ethical norms. Against those who see no place for religious reasoning in the democratic arena, Stout champions a space for religious voices. But against increasingly vocal antiliberal thinkers, he argues that modern democracy can provide a moral vision and has made possible such moral achievements as civil rights precisely because it allows a multitude of claims to be heard. Stout's distinctive pragmatism reconfigures the disputed area where religious thought, political theory, and philosophy meet. Charting a path beyond the current impasse between secular liberalism and the new traditionalism, Democracy and Tradition asks whether we have the moral strength to continue as a democratic people as it invigorates us to retrieve our democratic virtues from very real threats to their practice.

With contributions from leading international scholars, this Handbook offers the most rigorous and up-to-date analyses of virtually every aspect of Brazilian politics, including inequality, environmental politics, foreign policy, economic policy making, social policy, and human rights. The Handbook is divided into three major sections: Part 1 focuses on mass behavior, while Part 2 moves to representation, and Part 3 treats political economy and policy. The Handbook proffers five chapters on mass politics, focusing on corruption, participation, gender, race, and religion; three chapters on civil society, assessing social movements, grass-roots participation, and lobbying; seven chapters focusing on money and campaigns, federalism, retrospective voting, partisanship, ideology, the political right, and negative partisanship; five chapters on coalitional presidentialism, participatory institutions, judicial politics, and the political character of the bureaucracy, and eight chapters on inequality, the environment, foreign policy, economic and industrial policy, social programs, and human rights. This Handbook is an essential resource for students, researchers, and all those looking to understand contemporary Brazilian politics.

Liberation theology is often characterized as rejecting democracy and, based upon their option for the poor, advocating a form of socialism. This claim is challenged through an analysis of the works of Brazilian liberation theologians, Catholic social teaching, and studies on the base community movements in Brazil from the imposition of military rule through democratization (1964-1992). Liberation theologians initially rejected liberal democracy, but by the nineties were advocating a participatory and ecological democracy. However, they differed on how such a democracy was to be achieved in the competitive political party arena. In addition, increasing ecclesiastical opposition and the collapse of existent socialist regimes marginalized liberation theologians' vision of an inclusive, participatory democracy.

The Diaspora of Brazilian Religions explores the global spread of religions originating in Brazil, a country that has emerged as a major pole of religious innovation and production. Through ethnographically-rich case studies throughout the world, ranging from the Americas (Canada, the U.S., Peru, and Argentina) and Europe (the U.K., Portugal, and the Netherlands) to Asia (Japan) and Oceania (Australia), the book examines the conditions, actors, and media that have made possible the worldwide construction, circulation, and consumption of Brazilian religious identities, practices, and lifestyles, including those connected with indigenized forms of Pentecostalism and Catholicism, African-based religions such as Candomblé and Umbanda, as well as diverse expressions of New Age Spiritism and Ayahuasca-centered neo-shamanism like Vale do Amanhecer and Santo Daime. Contributors include Ushi Arakaki, Dario Paulo Barrera Rivera, Brenda Carranza, Anthony D'Andrea, Sara Delamont, Alejandro Frigerio, Alberto Groisman, Annick Hernandez, Clara Mafra, Cecília Mariz, Deirdre Meintel, Carmen Rial, Cristina Rocha, Camila Sampaio, Clara Saraiva, Olivia Sheringham, Neil Stephens, José Claúdio Souza Alves, Claudia Swatowiski, and Manuel A. Vásquez.