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Prosperity and Masculinity: Neopentecostal Men in Rio de Janeiro

2012; Routledge; Volume: 77; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/00141844.2011.609942

1469-588X

Diana Nogueira de Oliveira Lima,

Religion, Society, and Development

Abstract This article analyses how social subjects from low-income communities in a historically peripheral country like Brazil access and process the economic ideas now prevalent in the contemporary world by examining the rationalizations involved in the adherence to the individualist message of prosperity theology. Based on the classical Weberian premise of a relation between religious ethics and economic ethos (Weber, Max. 1987. A Ética Protestante e o Espírito do Capitalismo. São Paulo: Livraria Pioneira Editora), I analyse the commitment of faith made with the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God by members of a network of worshippers formed by around 20 men aged between 18 and 45 years with low levels of schooling, living in favelas of Rio de Janeiro, in order to comprehend how the principles of neoliberal cosmology, adopted as central elements of Brazilian economic policy since the 1990s, have been incorporated by people from the poorest sectors of urban Brazil. Keywords: Godworkmasculinityentrepreneurshippentecostalism Notes Elsewhere (Lima Citation2007a), I have contested the view present in the local literature on religion which suggests that the UCKG's appeal for the Brazilian urban poor resides in the (supposedly false) promise of prosperity made through its vigorous proselytizing. As well as implying the strange distinction between false and true religious promises, this hypothesis fails to explain why this Pentecostal denomination, preaching prosperity theology from its beginning in 1977, only became sufficiently attractive to increase its ranks by 25% a year in the 1990s. In the social context in which the UCKG is embedded, poverty was always a source of difficulties. However, until that moment Brazilian Christians had not considered it possible (and desirable) to interfere individually with the divine plan for humanity. In other words, the indications of the church's penetration during the 1980s suggest that the figure of the 'Christian entrepreneur', encouraged and defended by it, had not yet achieved the same legitimacy in Brazilian society's moral imagination – or, therefore, the same religious appeal among the poor – that it would attain during the final decade of the twentieth century. It was only then, when the market vocabulary spread through Brazilian collective life, to name social relationships located outside and beyond the direct sphere of the economy, that the idea of an 'entrepreneur', in the words of the Church leaders, working in 'partnership with God' in order to be 'competitive' and 'beat the competition' became acceptable within Pentecostalism's semantic universe. In the English-language press, see 'If redemption fails, you can still use the free bathroom.' The Economist, UK, January 3, 2008. In Brazil, the Universal Church is frequently subject to critical news reports. In August 2009, once again the church's finances were filling numerous pages in influential newspapers such as O Globo and Folha de São Paulo. The two largest Pentecostal denominations in Brazil were founded in 1910 and 1911. The UCKG was founded in 1977 and today, as well as having grown hugely in Brazil, is present in around 90 other countries. The informants have no memory – neither their own or recorded elsewhere – of generations prior to their grandparents. I recorded this scarcity of cognitive and physical memory (photographs, objects, documents) of the temporally more distant members of the lineage as a characteristic feature of lower class families. In this population group, the family is a fundamental value and symbolic reference point, but it extends horizontally, anchored in the daily networks of mutual aid rather than the generations. However, given that I did not undertake systematic research into family histories, contenting myself with what, provoked by my questions, the subjects were capable of recalling in their accounts of their parents' occupations, I have to admit that my informants may have suppressed recollections of their great-grandparents (possibly linked to Afro-Brazilian religions, repudiated by the Universal Church) for religions motives. According to the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics, 22.9% of Brazilian families were headed by women in 1995. By 2005, this number had risen to 30.6%. These terms have been translated from the Portuguese agregados, sitiantes, moradores and camaradas. It is important to keep in mind that in Portuguese they refer to rural workers living on estates who work for the landowner without formal contracts, a situation typical of the traditional rural system marked by patriarchal domination. For a deeper understanding of forms of domination in rural Brazil, see Sigaud (Citation1979). Celso Furtado, in Formação econômica do Brasil, discusses the way in which the question of the 'workforce crisis' was perceived by São Paulo's coffee-growing elite at the turn of the twentieth century. Célia M. M. Azevedo, in Onda negra, medo branco: o negro no imaginário das elites – Brasil, século XIX, is also a good source for understanding the view of the elites concerning the labour force composed of former slaves. Among other benefits, currency stabilization allowed the Brazilian population wider access to credit and, concomitantly, the conditions to plan how to use their money or the amounts borrowed in loans. This environment of economic stability was undoubtedly objectively important for the UCKG's believers to realize the impetuses of entrepreneurship stimulated by the church. But it should be made clear that my informants, who, in this symbolic context, refer to themselves as businessmen, began their entrepreneurial careers as street traders selling sweets or insurance policies: in other words, they started with very modest commercial activities still at the margins of the credit system. Sweet sellers invest a very small amount in their merchandise, while the insurance seller invests nothing and receives pay in the form of commission. Research and data analysis show that women also form the majority in Afro-Brazilian religions, generally accounting for two-thirds of their membership. According to the literature, male conversions are much more common among men older than my informants, among whom religious adherence mostly occurred before the age of 20. Many of them met their wives at the temple itself, implying that the decision to seek out religion was their own (sometimes encouraged by their mother, though not always) and preceded marriage. Don Taso, key informant in the classic work by Sidney Mintz (Citation1964), is emblematic of the lower class man whose masculinity even as a mature adult – that is, after marriage – is constructed around the affirmation of virility, courage and drink. He only agrees to abandon what he affirms as worldly pleasures at an older age. Much more recently, most of the men met by Smilde in the field were also already married when they 'decide[d] to believe' (Citation2007: 3). Brusco (Citation1995) argues that Protestantism in Colombia has liberated women because it has distanced their husbands and fathers (married men) from the paradigmatic macho behaviour – drunkenness, violence and adultery. In Brazil, under the title of '[a]lcoholism, gender and Pentecostalism,' Mariz (Citation1994) analyses empirical material obtained among married men and women from a lower class district of Recife. Machado (Citation1996), in her study of religious adherence in the family sphere, also writes about husbands. A huge difference exists between the audience of the cathedrals and that of the neighbourhood churches. It is worth noting that this difference is not specific to the UCKG. In all the religions, the cathedrals are frequented at special moments by occasional visitors, while small groups form in the local temples. Studies of the Universal Church are still few and far between. Among those that exist, very few are based on empirical research of the religious experience of members linked to small temples. This movement is stronger among women, a fact that by itself would merit another analysis. Since the 1990s, the intensification of violent crime in the city has left 'good people' indignant – as well as frightened by the vulnerability the violence of the gangs and the police in the favelas – and the contrast between their identity as workers and the drug traffickers has acquired the status of a question of honour. A discussion of the historic and contemporary inclusion of women in Brazil's labour market and its effects on gender relations is beyond the scope of the present article. Here, it is important to highlight the persistence of work as a value in male affirmation in the social context under analysis, despite the transformations occurring in gender roles over the last few decades. Bruschini and Lombardi (Citation2000, Citation2002), Bruschini and Puppin (Citation2004) and Bruschini (Citation2006) provide a good map of the objective and symbolic complexity of this scenario marked by many contradictory aspects. While female participation in the labour market has grown since the second half of the 1970s – threatening male authority – we can also note the high level of female unemployment and the low quality and poor pay of female jobs, reaffirming the asymmetry between the sexes. At the same time as the number of educated women exercising professions and occupying prestigious positions has grown, testifying to the absorption of the individualist ideology in Brazilian society, the employment of women in precarious and informal activities still predominates. Weekly during the Monday services – always dedicated to the theme of material prosperity – the pastor analyses a parable containing a simplified version of a well-known case of entrepreneurial success, which refers the worshippers to the internal strength and belief that every Christian should have inside themselves. As well as studying a brief text, they mimic the feeling of victory by signing hymns.