Page 76 - Religion, Media, and the Public Sphere

by the Church in Brazil and in foreign countries, including the Catedral Mundial
da Fé in Rio de Janeiro, involving more than 55,000 square meters of construction.
As a pastor, he presented the program “Vigésima Quinta Hora” on the televi-
sion network Record for more than three years. When the work of the Universal
Church started in Africa seven years ago, Pastor Marcelo Crivela was sent there
with his wife, Silvia Jane and their three kids. Africa is made up of countries with
tribal practices, where parents can legally sell their daughters and men can have
several wives. There are 34 million people infected with the HIV virus (¤gures
from the WHO [World Health Organization]) and the in®uence of sorcerers,
witches, sects and even black magic is huge. It was here in this hostile environ-
ment, ¤lled with prejudice, wars and poverty, that Bishop Marcelo lived, preach-
ing the equality of all men, opening churches for black people, bringing the word
of God to places where white people did not go, like the Soweto township in
Johannesburg, South-Africa. The Universal Church grew and spread all over the
African continent, establishing hundreds of support centers for the poor, supply-
ing meals, medical and hygiene services, as well as spiritual guidance. Today there
A
are 700 UCKGs in 23 countries. (Folha Universal, August 19, 2001, 7 )
The missionary work described here is pursued in a continent, Africa, which has
always haunted the Brazilian cultural and religious imaginary. As a sacred place
for the possession cults, Africa constituted one of the mystical sources of Bra-
zilian nationality. In this way it supposedly contributed to the “formation of
Brazilian culture” in its origins in relation to Europe. Africa is presented as his-
torically related to a large number of national symbols, like feijoada, candomblé,
and carnaval (Fry 1982).
From the Pentecostal perspective, this African heritage—a much-desired ob-
ject in the dispute between religious movements in Brazil, Latin America, and
the United States—becomes synonymous with a backward civilization. From
being the object of missions sent out by European and American Christian
churches, religious Brazilians for the ¤rst time assign themselves the role of mis-
sionaries. The ®ow between donors and receivers of spiritual gifts is redirected
through the UCKG’s mediation. The country’s change of image disseminates
beyond the Pentecostal environment: instead of being the contributor to Afri-
can tradition in the positive elaboration of its image, Brazil becomes the source
of the moral and material progress of a “backward” continent.
This investment in Africa is largely made by Brazilian pastors, coming from
subaltern social groups, many of them practically illiterate or often from a low
social and cultural level, former habitants of the periphery or the suburban
zones (Freston 2001). A barely hidden pride among persons of different social
origins can be perceived when they comment on the fact that this religious “con-
quest” of other continents has been carried out by a national church. “Although
Bishop Crivela was adapted and devoted to the work he went to do in the Afri-
can continent,” continues his biography,
in 1999, Bishop Macedo sent for him as he had an important mission for him
to undertake: to coordinate an agro-industrial kibbutz in Irecê, in inland Bahia,
which would help improve the nordestino’s quality of life. In this region of the

Future in the Mirror 65