Christianity in Brazil: An Introduction from a Global Perspective

Description

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. Silvia Fernandes also identifies longue duree 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.

Silvia Fernandes is a Sociologist and Professor at the Federal Rural University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

{The author} presents a book that comes fill a gap ... [making] a considerable contribution. * Religiao e Sociedade (Bloomsbury Translation) * Silvia Fernandes combines theoretical insight with her experience in the field, to provide an accessible and rigorous overview of the dynamics that have shaped Brazilian Christianity, as well as its contributions to global Luso-religiosity. * Gustavo Morello SJ, Associate Professor of Sociology, Boston College, USA. Author of Lived Religion in Latin America (2021). *