Page 71 - Religion, Media, and the Public Sphere

The ¤rst entry to this new world is provided by rituals delivering the incomer
from evil forces. Emphasis is given to the follower’s potential to transform his
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or her social and economic life by exorcising his or her demons. In a report
from the UCKG newspaper entitled “Unburden: Against the Threats of De-
mons,” we read:

Bishop Romualdo reminds us that people must struggle not against the ®esh but
against the evil spirits that relentlessly use people to transform life into a living
hell.
—Your struggle is not against your boss who refuses to give you a raise, against
your husband’s mistress, or against your neighbor, it is against the demons who
take possession of people’s bodies and make everything in life turn bad. . . . The
demon takes possession of body and mind, bringing illness, fear, doubts, anxiety
and much pain. Then there are also external problems, which include ¤nancial
dif¤culties, for example. . . . Thus, either the person rids him or herself of the
demon, expelling it from his/her life, or he/she will be defeated by it. (Folha Uni-
versal, September 15–21, 2002)
However, the exorcism activities of the church are not the monopoly of its pas-
tors. The latter share this task with church lay members who, by offering a ritual
service to their neighbors and families, connect them to the evangelicals’ bene-
¤ts. These connections produced by local mediation to some extent recover tra-
ditional religious repertoires and transform them within a process extending
from the small mediator to the church to large-scale media events. Exorcism
thereby attains different meanings as it progresses from the local scene, associ-
ated with violence and poverty, to a broader public space, where the UCKG fol-
lower is endowed with an image that associates him or her with symbolic capital
and prosperity.
The ritual activities of the UCKG establish a certain continuity with posses-
sion cults. Its followers can appropriate its rituals as a form of interlocution
with santos and orixás (Afro-Brazilian deities) from the Afro-Brazilian cults.
The intense circulation of objects and images within its rites enables its follow-
ers to recognize within them a power of agency and intervention in social life
that was previously attributed to possession cults alone. The ritual practices of
the Universal Church are especially suited to the interests of women, many older
women having been sacerdotes in possession cults in the past. As evangelicals,
these women are able to retain their powers of religious mediation among their
family and friends, protecting them through the rituals of the church and in-
tegrating them within the latter’s campaigns as benefactors of its circuits of
donations and miracles. Acting in this way, they succeed in attracting their rela-
tives into the church. In turn they are able to join other social networks, par-
ticipating, as we shall see, in their rituals, “chains,” and “campaigns” (Birman
1998).
The followers are invited to become part of a national and transnational re-
ligious community. The most recurrent image of this religious community is
provided by photos of multitudes packing stadiums in different capitals around

60 Patricia Birman