Page 81 - Religion, Media, and the Public Sphere

peted within the evangelical movement, on the one hand, while at the same time helping
to dissipate the image of a religion that “exploits” the poor (cf. Birman and Leite 2000).
12. All original Portuguese sources have been translated by the author.
13. Among the evangelical churches, the UCKG, together with the Assemblies of
God, has the highest number of readers, even though its followers have the lowest level
of education (Fonseca 2003).
14. See Corten and Marshall-Fratani’s (2001) analysis of the media and the processes
involved in creating “new imagined communities” linked to Pentecostalism in Latin
America and Nigeria.
15. Possession cults are an even more popular topic on radio programs, and refer-
ences to the person being occupied by demons are more frequent than in the church’s
newspaper, A Folha Universal. In the latter we ¤nd an effort to introduce a psychological
mediation between one’s mind and the devil. As a consequence, an increasing importance
is attached to a closed inner self. As Birgit Meyer (2002) points out in reference to Pen-
tecostalism in Ghana: “The notion of personal choice and responsibility is increasingly
popularized, without however neutralizing the notion of possession. What is emphasized
here is the ideal of a closed inner self which is not vulnerable to any intruding, evil forces
from outside (from witchcraft to local village—or family-based gods, from Mami Water
to Indian spirits, from ancestors to black magic) and able to act in a morally sound way
on the basis of inner re®ection.”
16. André Corten (1997) describes the elaboration of these new spaces as the emer-
gence of a new religious imagination that creates an equivalence between the temple and
the stadium as a consequence of the proximity of the religious activities to a “show.”
17. See the Folha Universal’s headlines from August 19, 2001, and the photos that
invariably accompany the reports.
18. According to Daniel Dayan (2000), what we have here is the broadcasting of an
event produced by using certain procedures similar to those found in “rituals,” as for-
mulated by Victor Turner: one builds a moment of suspense, a “suspension” of common-
place time, during which the very matrix of the programs is altered, a collective partici-
pation of the spectators who generally attend these events, a constructed image that is
produced in real time, binding the event together with a narrative that accompanies
things as they happen. Events/spectacles produced in this way cross territorial frontiers
but at the same time reinforce social links on a local scale: they involve various small
gatherings that watch the same event together. The “community” used as a reference for
the ritual are all these combined, participating simultaneously on various planes.
19. During a period of electoral campaigning, the propaganda of Bishop Crivela as
candidate to the Senate was based primarily on presenting the Projeto Nordeste and the
images of the Fazenda Nova Canaã.
20. I am indebted to Regina Novaes for pointing out the powerful mythical dimen-
sion of the theme of land possession appropriated by the Universal Church. In her work
Regina Novaes (1997) analyzes the religious foundations of the claims for social “rights”
in peasant movements. Pursuing the same topic, Otávio Velho has pointed to the impor-
tance of biblical culture in the peasant movements, in which the notions of cativeiro (ser-
vitude) and “The Beast” are found in continual transformation. Liberation from the
lands of servitude is thus a classic theme with a powerful religious and political evoca-
tion. See, too, Lehmann 1996, on religious transformation in Brazilian popular culture.
21. This CD, entitled The Messenger of Solidarity, has sold more than one million cop-
ies and was awarded with a “diamond record.” As a follow-up, Bishop Crivela launched
two other CDs: Vamos irrigar o sertão (Let’s irrigate the backlands) and Irmão do Sertão

70 Patricia Birman