Looking for God in Brazil: The progressive Catholic Church in urban Brazil's religious arena. (Volumes I and II).
Item
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Title
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Looking for God in Brazil: The progressive Catholic Church in urban Brazil's religious arena. (Volumes I and II).
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Identifier
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AAI9108084
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identifier
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9108084
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Creator
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Burdick, John Samuel.
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Contributor
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Adviser: Eric R. Wolf
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Date
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1990
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Anthropology, Cultural | Religion, General
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Abstract
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Since the late 1960s, the progressive wing of the Brazilian Catholic Church has fostered congregations known as Christian base communities, or "CEBs", in which members are supposed to develop a heightened social and political consciousness. Although the Church claims the CEBs to be responding to the needs of the Brazilian masses, in the working-class urban periphery it is clear that CEB membership numbers less than half, sometimes only a third, of those involved in other religions, especially the Afro-Brazilian cult of umbanda, and, above all, evangelical pentecostalism. This thesis is an effort to provide an explanation for this contrast, and an exploration of its political ramifications, based on a year and a half of ethnographic fieldwork in Sao Jorge, a working-class town in the urban periphery of Rio de Janeiro.;Adopting a phenomenological and life-historical approach, the thesis focuses on the experience of groups of people--in particular, women faced with domestic conflict, unmarried youth and people who identify themselves as negros--who collectively represent the clearest demographic contrast between the CEB, on the one hand, and pentecostalism and umbanda, on the other. I argue that progressive Catholicism fails to provide women with an arena with which to deal with domestic turmoil; cannot provide young people with a definitive rupture from the pressures of youth society; and, despite its efforts, cannot produce an effective counter-ideology to racism. In contrast, umbanda and pentecostalism provide, albeit in different ways, compelling means for dealing with domestic tension, breaking away from youth society, and developing a counter-ideology to racism.;Turning from the causes to the political consequences of religious affiliation, I argue that political discourse and action in both the CEB and pentecostal church are fraught with ambiguity. The CEB, it turns out, is home to a wide variety of political ideologies and practices, with only a small minority of members embodying the progressive ideal. The pentecostals, meanwhile, are rather less alienated than their reputation makes them seem. Evangelical Protestantism is in fact full of counter-hegemonic and messianic values that sometimes move adepts to resist relations of domination.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
