Abstract
Abstract This article examines the persistence of religious intolerance experienced by practitioners of Afro-Brazilian religions. Drawing from recent reports and historical resources on religious intolerance, it approaches religious diversity in Brazil from a decolonial perspective, pointing to the contradiction between the image of Brazil as a place where religious change and plurality occurs with minimal conflict and the painful reality experienced by practitioners of Afro-Brazilian religions. Picturing religious intolerance and racism as two faces of the same coin, it argues that both must be resisted. The article concludes with a call for a religious-racial literacy which is intercultural in nature and promises a path to overcome the insidious persistence of racism and religious intolerance. Such a way forward, however, demands a de-centering of Brazilian Christianity, despite its religious majority status, in favor of an epistemic humility which gives full consideration to the knowledge, memories, and lived experience of Afro-Brazilian religious practitioners.
Highlights
While acknowledging the increasing diversity of Christian churches in Brazil, and the need to attend to contextual nuances across the country, this article examines the persistence of religious intolerance experienced by the practitioners of Afro-Brazilian religions, the sector of the Brazilian population it affects the most
Drawing on recent reports and historical resources on religious intolerance, I approach the reality of religious diversity in Brazil from a decolonial perspective, pointing to the contradiction between the image some scholars have painted of Brazil as a place where religious change and plurality take shape with minimal conflict and the painful reality experienced by the practitioners of Afro-Brazilian religions
While popular Catholicism and Pentecostalism can boast of a majority of Black and Brown practitioners (Oliveira 2004; Hoornaert 1991), this fact does not erase the contrasting epistemic and ontological reality in which most Brazilian Christian institutions and theologies function as part of a racialized power dynamic that stands in continuity with the colonial project; which in its turn was inherently Eurocentric and Christian
Summary
The boom of Pentecostalism in Brazil in the past few decades has increasingly become a focus of scholarly investigations, drawing attention to recent religious changes that have taken place in the country (Vital da Cunha 2021). In the past two decades, Evangelicals and Pentecostals have experienced more than numerical expansion, taking on more visible public roles, electing large numbers of public officials, gaining significant space in the mainstream media, and spreading an increasingly recognizable evangelical culture. As Leonildo Campos (2008) pointed out, “Christians were 97.8 percent in 1940 and in 2000 they were only 8.6 percentage points lower.” In other words, Brazil remains a largely Christian majority This fact, often overlooked in conversations about Brazilian religious plurality, is especially significant. Barreto for non-Christians who, regardless of whether they are before a Catholic or Protestant majority (or a combination thereof), continue to be marginalized and to experience religious intolerance
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