PROTESTANTISMO BRASILEIRO DE RITO LUTERANO:

CLASSIFICAÇÃO, PERIODIZAÇÃO E DESOBSTRUÇÃO ÉTNICA

Abstract

This article analyzes the historical and sociological trajectory of Brazilian Lutheranism, from the arrival of German immigrants in Brazil in 1824 to the processes of ethnic deobstruction observed in the last decades of the twentieth century. Drawing on established typologies in the sociology of religion — particularly those formulated by José Miguez Bonino, Cândido Procópio Ferreira de Camargo, and Lauri Emilio Wirth — the article discusses the classification of Lutheranism within the so-called “ethnic” or “immigration Protestantism”, distinguishing it from missionary Protestantism and Pentecostalism. The analysis is organized around a tripartite periodization: (1) the congregational or self-managed period of communities; (2) the institutionalization of ethnic Protestantism, strongly shaped by the bond between Germanness (Deutschtum) and evangelical confession; and (3) the transition toward a national and missionary Evangelical Church of Lutheran Confession in Brazil (IECLB). It is argued that exogenous factors — late German expansionism, two world wars — and endogenous factors — rural exodus, urbanization, the decline of natural growth, mixed marriages, and the loss of the German language — produced a progressive ethnic deobstruction, reorienting the IECLB's institutional identity. The article further contends that this transformation was neither linear nor tension-free, but resulted from an articulation between grassroots social forces and political and theological shifts among ecclesiastical leadership. The article contributes to debates on religion and ethnicity, religious identity, and pluralism in the Brazilian religious field.