Why is the black evangelical movement growing in Brazil?

Journal of Latin American Studies

Volumn 37, Issue 2, 2005, Pages 311-332

  Burdick, John ^a  

^a SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ETHNICITY; RELIGION; SOCIAL MOVEMENT;

BRAZIL; SOUTH AMERICA; WESTERN HEMISPHERE; WORLD;

EID: 21044452479     PISSN: 0022216X     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0022216X05009028     Document Type: Article

References (66)

1. In Brazil, in general, the lighter one's skin and the straighter one's hair, the higher one's status; the darker one's skin and the more tightly curled one's hair, the lower one's status. Analyses based largely on statistics include Edward Telles, Race in Another America: The Significance of Skin Color in Brazil(Princeton, 2004);
2. E. Telles, 'Racial Ambiguity among the Brazilian Population,' Ethnic and Racial Studies, vol 25, no. 3, (May 2002), pp. 415-41;
3. Peggy Lovell, 'Development and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in Brazil: 1950-1991,' Journal of Developing Areas, vol. 33, no. 3 (spring 1999), pp. 395-418;
4. Donna Goldstein, Langhter out of Place (Berkeley, 2003), pp. 102-35;
5. John Burdick, Blessed Anastacia (New York, 1998), pp. 25-50. Some scholars have argued that alongside the colour gradient there exists a dichotomous model of race.
6. See Robin Sheriff, 'Embracing Race: Deconstructing Mestiçagem in Rio de Janeiro,' Journal of Latin American Anthropology, vol. 8, no. 1 (2003), pp. 86-115;
7. Natasha Pravaz, 'Brazilian Mulatice: Performing Race, Gender, and the Nation,' Journal of Latin American Anthropology, vol. 8, no.1 (2003), pp. 116-47.
8. Robin Sheriff, 'Exposing Silence as Cultural Censorship: A Brazilian Case,' American Anthropologist, vol. 102, no. 1 (2000), pp. 114-32;
9. Goldstein, Laughter Out of Place, pp. 120-1;
10. Livio Sansone, Blackness Without Ethnicity: Constructing Race in Brazil (Rio de Janeiro, 2003), pp. 21-58. I should point out that I personally take no side on the question of whether rejecting this norm is essential to the struggle for racial justice in Brazil. Indeed, in my other work (see John Burdick, 'Negra and Mestiça: Emergent Meanings in Brazil's Black Pastoral,' Luso-Brazilian Review vol. 39, no. 1 (2002), pp. 95-102) I suggest that there is no inevitable relationship between a dichotomous racial identity and the fight against racism. In this article, then, I am not claiming that those members of the black movement who seek to stimulate a racial dichotomy are right; I am simply reporting an important aspect of black movement ideology, and seeking to understand why this ideology has grown in resonance among evangelical Christians.
11. Antonio Sérgio Alfredo Guimaraes, 'Democracia racial: el ideal, el pacto y el mito,' Estudios Sociológicos, vol. 20, no. 59 (May-Aug 2002), pp. 305-33;
12. A.S.A. Guimaraes, Racismo e anti-racismo no Brasil (Sao Paulo, 1999);
13. Natasha Pravaz, 'Performing Mulatice,' unpubl. PhD diss., York University, 2002;
14. Richard Parker, Bodies, Pleasures, Passions: Sexual Culture in Contemporary Brazil (Boston, 1991).
15. Michael Hanchard, Orpheus and Power (Princeton, 1994);
16. Kim Butler, Freedoms Given, Freedoms Won: Afro-Brazilians in Post-Abolition Sao Paulo and Salvador (New Brunswick, 1998);
17. George Reid Andrews, Blacks and Whites in Sao Paulo, Brazil, 1888-1988(Madison, 1991).
18. On the relatively low level of race consciousness and corporate organisation around race in Brazil (and theories that seek to explain it), see Carlos Hasenbalg and Nelson do Valle Silva, 'Notas sobre desigualdade racial e politica no Brasil,' Estudos Afro-Asiaticos, vol. 25 (1993), pp. 141-59;
19. Edward Telles,'Race, Class and Space in Brazilian Cities,' International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, vol. 19, no. 3 (Sept. 1995), pp. 395-406;
20. E. Telles, 'Residential Segregation by Skin Color in Brazil,' American Sociological Review, vol. 57, no. 2 (April 1992), pp. 186-97;
21. Stanley R. Bailey, 'The Race Construct and Public Opinion: Understanding Brazilian Beliefs about Racial Inequality and their Determinants,' American Journal of Sociology, vol. 108, no. 2. (Sept. 2002), pp. 432 ff;
22. Melissa Nobles, Shades of Citizenship (Stanford, 2000);
23. Anthony Marx, Making Race and Nation. A Comparison of the United States, South Africa, and Brazil (Cambridge, 1998);
24. Howard Winant, 'Rethinking Race in Brazil,' Sociedade e Estado, vol. 9, nos. 1-2 (Jan.-Dec. 1994), pp. 113-36;
25. Francine Winddance Twine, Racism in a Racial Democracy: The Maintenance of White Supremacy in Brazil (New Brunswick, 1998);
26. Robin Sheriff, Dreaming Equality (New Brunswick, 2001).
27. In terms of sheer numbers, evangelical churches are a much larger phenomenon than all the other religious groups in Brazil combined. See Andrew Chesnut, Competitive Spirits (Oxford, 2003), pp. 3-5.
28. For accounts of black activists' views of evangelical Christianity, see Stephen Selka, 'Double Belonging: Religion and the Politics of Ethnic Identity in Bahia, Brazil,' unpubl. PhD diss, SUNY Albany, 2003;
29. Anna Pagano, 'Religion and the Politics of Racial Identity: The Relationship between Candomble and the Movimento Negro in Salvador, Brazil,'unpubl. Master's thesis, University of Florida, 2002;
30. John Burdick, 'The Lost Constituency of Brazil's Black Movements,' Latin American Perspectives, vol. 25, no. 1 (1998), pp. 136-55.
31. This is a very strongly held view. Traditional black activists hold that those who wish to tap a spiritual well to strengthen black identity should immerse themselves in candomblé, which, they claim, was the primary vehicle through which slaves kept alive their African cultural heritage. Research that provides historical support to this view includes Mikelle Smith Omari-Tunkara, Manipulating the Sacred: Yoruba Art, Ritual, and Resistance in Brazilian Candomblé (Detroit, 2004)
32. and Rachel Harding, Refuge of Thunder: Candomblé and Alternative Spaces of Blackness (Bloomington, 2000).
33. I recently encountered among black leaders the opinion that at best Protestants could not be trusted, at worst that they were a dangerous fifth column. A director at Geledes, the largest black women's organisation in Sao Paulo, said that 'Our experience with Protestants is mainly negative. They do not attend meetings, they think all they have to do is pray and say 'hallelujah' and they are saved, so they don't have to worry about racism. And they actively attack our major source of black identity, candomblé.'
34. Doug McAdam, Political Process and the Development of Black Insurgency, 1930-1970 (Chicago, 1982). For a recent updating and enrichment of the model,
35. see Charles Tilly, Doug McAdam and Sidney Tarrow, Dynamics of Contention (Cambridge, 2001).
36. The research upon which this article is based began in 1996. In that year I conducted a dozen interviews with people involved in what was then a very incipient movement. Between 1997 and 2001, I conducted occasional interviews on the topic, while focusing on a different project. In June 2002 I carried out ten interviews with black evangelical leaders in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, and in May and June 2003 I interviewed twenty black evangelical leaders in these cities.
37. The Pastoral emerged in part through collaboration with the progressive Catholic Church, which had by then generated an active Black pastoral. See Floriano and Novães, O Negro Evangélico.
38. A pastor in São Paulo named Rubens, of the Pentecostal Church of God in Christ, was inspired by a trip to the United States to begin a group which became a training ground for other anti-racist leaders.
39. Founded in 1987 by Jair de Maros Martins, a Baptist, who upon Rubens' death created an association in São Paulo that sought to valorise the memory of blacks in Biblical terms, creating and archiving documents and translating Protestant anti-racism books from English; the group now translates and publishes articles and posts them on the web.
40. This centrally-based ecumenical organisation, led by the Methodists, is still a major interdenominational commission focused on the formation of leaders, pastors and teachers who can bring the message of anti-racism to their congregations. A key figure from CENACORA was the Reverend Olimpio Sant'anna, whose boundless energy remains to this day a charismatic presence in the black evangelical movement.
41. Founded in 1988, in São Paulo, by Paulo de Sousa Oliveira, pastor in the Pentecostal Igreja Batista do Povo. This group, which has never grown beyond a handful of participants, was dedicated mainly to producing the pamphlet 'A Black Blessed in the Bible', giving talks at churches, and distributing the pamphlet.
42. Moises da Rocha, a radio and samba personality in the Methodist church, co-founded this musical group, that eventually came to involve about thirty people from a variety of mainly historical churches, specialised in a variety of 'black musics', including Brazilian samba and American black gospel music, interspersed with commentary about racism and racial justice.
43. In 1988 Hernani Francisco da Silva, an accountant in São Paulo, and member of the Brasil para Cristo Church founded, with CENACORA's help, this organisation, dedicated to creating a series of theological pamphlets that explained the issue of racism in fully Biblical terms; organising regional and national meetings of Pentecostal churches; and implementing in a poor neighbourhood in São Paulo a series of literacy, professional and training courses.
44. http://www.clicnews.com.br/dourados/1062922511,NjgwNA==,clicnews.html
45. See 'MANIFESTO DO FÓRUM DE LIDERAÇAS NEGRAS EVANGÉLICAS.' The whole text is available at http:// br.msnusers.com/AfrodescendentesnasIgrejasEvangelicas/manifesto.msnw
46. The best current analysis of the political forces at work to bring about this change, including the role of the Ford Foundation, may be found in Mala Htun, 'From "Racial Democracy" to Affirmative Action: Changing State Policy on Race in Brazil,' Latin American Research Review, vol. 39, no. 1 (Feb 2004), pp. 60-89. (Indeed, although I have not been able to focus on the Ford Foundation in the present study, it is likely that future research will reveal that the Foundation exerted a major influence on racial politics in Brazil during the period from 1985-2000.) The deeper economic forces that have contributed to this policy shift remain to be analysed; still, it is possible to venture that an adequate analysis of these forces should take into account such factors as Brazil's budget crisis, the growing importance of Afro-Brazilian commodities on the world market, and the need to reinforce the 'Afro-niche' of Brazilian society as a magnet to conferences, tourism, research funds and trade with Africa.
47. 'Discurso do Senhor Presidente da República Fernando Henrique Cardoso na Solenidade de Assinatura do Decreto da População Negra,' (Brasília, 1995). Htun argues that Cardoso's support for affirmative action may have stemmed in part 'from a desire to compensate for his inability to further a progressive social legacy in other areas. Unlike other social policies, affirmative action is relatively inexpensive and can be engineered by the executive branch without the need to broker deals with congressional members.' Htun, 'From "Racial Democracy" to Affirmative Action,' p. 79.
48. Htun discusses the conference and its political importance at some length, in 'From "Racial Democracy" to Affirmative Action,' pp. 81-3.
49. 'Debate sobre cotas para negros esclarece pontos polemicos' http:// www.unifesp.br/comunicacao/jpta/ed180/debate.htm. The issue of affirmative action in Brazil is only now beginning to receive the scholarly attention it deserves.
50. See Luiz Clauido Barecelos, 'Race Relations among University Students in Rio de Janeiro,' National Political Science Review, vol. 9 (2003), pp. 105-25;
51. Vera Lucia Benedito, 'Ações afirmativas a brasileira: em busca de consenso,' Caderno CRH, vol. 36 (Jan.-June 2002), pp. 69-91. Yvonne Maggie of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro has recently begun a multi-year team project of assessing various affirmative action policies across Brazil (Yvonne Maggie, personal communication).
52. The Workers Party has been on record since the mid 1990s that it supported affirmative action policies for both women and blacks. See Tatau Godinho, 'Ação Afirmativa no Partido dos Traballiatore,' Estudos Feministas, vol. 4, no. 1 (1996), pp. 148-57.
53. For a full analysis of the evangelical stance towards state authority, see Paul Freston, Evangelicals and Politics in Asia, Africa and Latin America (Cambridge, 2001).
54. Some of these had Protestantism in their upbringing, but most did not. The reasons for this wave of conversion are more complex than I can explore here. They include the intensified partisanship of the black movement after the relative failure of the 1988 centenary of abolition to bring about the racial millennium; the growing awareness among some black militants by the early 1990s that candomblé was not the social utopia, spiritual panacea, or natural ally of anti-racist struggle touted by its romanticisers; and, more generally, the fact that the 1990s brought with it the natural ageing of a generation of black leaders and a new set of health, marital and ageing crises for them.
55. Recent analyses of the importance of the internet to grassroots pokics include W. Lance Bennett, 'Communicating Global Activism: Strengths and Vulnerabilities of Networked Politics,' Information, Communication & Society, vol. 6, no. 2 (2003), pp. 143-68.
56. Ellen L. Lutz and Kathryn Sikkink, 'The international dimension of democratisation and human rights in Latin America,'in Manuel Antonio Garretón M. and Edward Newman (eds.), Democracy in Latin America: (Re)constructing Political Society (New York, 2001).
57. http://www.dhnet.org.br/direitos/militantes/paulomesquita/ mesquita_peddhsp.html
58. Linda Rabben, 'Human Rights in Cardoso's Brazil,' Amnesty International USA, paper prepared for the Brazilian Studies Association Meetings in Recife, June 2000.
59. See also Sergio Adorno, 'Insecurity Versus Human Rights: Between Law and Order,' in Tempo Social: Revista de Sociologia da USP, vol. 11, no. 2 (Oct. 1999), pp. 129-53.
60. This discourse is not without drawbacks. Hernani, while throwing his lot into the human rights camp, is worried that anti-racism may get 'swallowed up' by human rights language, that its special sting and fervour may be diluted, that it can be too easily connected to multiple issues with different histories, stakes, constituencies and politics.
61. Ironically, a delegation sent to Azusa from the Tennessee-based Church of God in Christ let it be known that they would have preferred to support a church more in tune with the North's dire images of Third World poverty, rather than one located in a neighbourhood with paved streets and metered electricity.
62. See Revista www.epoca.com.br (Dec. 12, 2003) In 1992, 1.38% of black heads of household earned more than five times minimum salary; in 2001, 2.68% did so.
63. http://www.brazzil.com/cvraug99.htm
64. Brazil August 1999. http://www.brazzil.com/cvrauggg.htm
65. It is widely acknowledged that the experience of class mobility can have a radicalising effect. Scholars have, for instance, made the argument that it was precisely the growth of a black middle class in the cities of the US South after the Second World War (such as Montgomery), that led to an overall greater resentment in the black community toward their treatment as second-class citizens. On the role of class mobility in the civil rights movement, see McAdam, Political Process.
66. Paul Freston, Evangelicals and Politics in Asia, Africa, and Latin America.