Page 66 - Religion, Media, and the Public Sphere

Catholic God seemed quite at ease with the innumerable syncretic gods (or san-
tos) and the myriad other supernatural beings attributed with the power to in-
tervene in their lives. The relative unimportance attached to theological rigor
underlay an ethical order in which good and evil were far from clearly de¤ned.
Saints and demons lived cheek to cheek, and the capacity of these spirits to re-
solve daily problems was a crucial aspect of people’s lives (Birman and Leite
2000). Until quite recently, to be Brazilian naturally meant to be Catholic but
with the leeway to participate in other beliefs, such as spiritualism, umbanda,
or candomblé—the so-called Afro-Brazilian cults. This theme of syncretism
and its deep ties to the myth of nation building was enhanced by the idea that
Catholicism—like an enormous nationwide umbrella—provided shelter for
other minority religious beliefs.
However, the Pentecostalists and above all the Assembly of God, a frankly
minority group, did not try to assume the universal and all-embracing position
of the Catholic Church. For decades they grew hidden from the world, challeng-
ing the Catholic environment as numerous small-scale “communities of be-
lievers” set apart by their different lifestyle. The UCKG, however, contrary to
these groups of believers (crentes: a term used in Brazil in a slightly disparaging
sense), has entertained more universalist pretensions: it therefore tends to clash
head-on with the Catholic Church as a national and international hegemonic
force. The lifestyle of the new believers far more closely approximated that of
Catholics.
By confronting the possession cults through its routine practice of exorcism
and the identi¤cation of cult divinities with demons, the Universal Church op-
poses the syncretic bonds that made the Afro-Brazilian cults Catholic, albeit
nonpracticing. It vigorously denounces Catholicism for its idolatry and compla-
cency in the face of the many forms of evil, and it has launched a holy war, as
the Universal Church calls it, against the umbanda and candomblé cults, en-
couraging the destruction of images and performing exorcisms to cast out the
demons possessing individuals who attend their meetings.
This war against the demonic forces of evil pursued by churches rooted in
the popular sectors has shaken a range of assumptions embedded in the every-
day life of a once stable and harmonious Catholic country. In an oblique way
the use of exorcism in the war against syncretic gods has constituted a broader
attack against the general premise of tolerance which survived under the pro-
tective mantle of Catholicism, a tolerance based on the popular sectors—or
those among them who profess a religious af¤liation—accepting a relationship
5
of dependency on a superior and all-encompassing Church. This association
between tolerance and syncretism was a core element in imagining the nation
as a hierarchical but harmonious whole. As a result, there have been strong re-
actions from various sectors of Brazilian society against the Universal Church,
whose propagation of a theology of prosperity and a belief in social mobility
challenges the idea of poverty as natural and ineradicable and thus threatens
the stability of the social hierarchy.
Reaction came initially from the communications media because of the com-

Future in the Mirror 55