From the community of faith to politicized religiosity

Political instrumentalization of religion in Brazil

Abstract

The religious experience of people in Brazil has been undergoing accelerated transformations for a few decades. Roman Catholicism ceased to be the official religion almost a century and a half ago, and the country had many of its traditional social contexts challenged by modernization processes. The consequence, however, has not been the secularization of the public sphere nor the massive abandonment of the cultivation of faith, but the pluralization of the ways of living it, the sources from which it is nurtured and the goals to be achieved with it. Most people have begun to commit themselves less to religious organizations and doctrines and adopt an autonomous election of diverse and individualized selection of religious elements that satisfy their spiritual and even material desires and needs, replacing the bond with a community of faith with the experience of a particular and specific religiosity. They have increasingly come together more by virtue of affinity and a religiously based political militancy than of traditions, ethics or hopes informed by a religion. The text seeks to contribute to the understanding of this transformation.