Abstract
This chapter develops in narrative nonfiction style a portrait of Brazilian evangelicals that leads into a historical and theological critique of the nascent evangelical left in Brazil. While rendering in journalistic fashion varying instances of the self-consciously “social politics” of this progressive wing of Brazilian evangelicalism, this chapter places the emergence of such conceptions of politics in historical perspective within the broader flow of Western political and intellectual history. In the end, this chapter highlights the tenuous relationship between religious faith and progressive politics. To do so, it turns to the history of base communities in Brazil during the 1970s and 1980s, which too sought to unify leftist politics with Christian mission. Just as leaders of those Catholic efforts encouraged the faithful to remain grounded in a conception and practice of their faith that remained independent of politics, this chapter urges a similar ecclesiocentric vision for those seeking maximum political effect.
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Notes
- 1.
This vignette and those that follow took place in July, 2013 during the Nagel Institute’s seminar on Brazilian evangelicalism.
- 2.
Not his real name.
- 3.
Daniel T. Rodgers, Atlantic Crossings: Social Politics in a Progressive Age (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998), 1.
- 4.
Rodgers, Atlantic Crossings, 2.
- 5.
Rodgers, Atlantic Crossings, 14, 15.
- 6.
Rodgers, Atlantic Crossings, 51.
- 7.
John Lynch, New Worlds: A Religious History of Latin America (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012), 187, 229, 255.
- 8.
Ann Mische, Partisan Publics: Communication and Contention Across Brazilian Youth Activist Networks (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008), 124.
- 9.
Paul Freston, Evangelicals and Politics in Asia, Africa, and Latin America (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 36. For the Lausanne Covenant, see https://www.lausanne.org/content/covenant/lausanne-covenant.
- 10.
See, for instance, Christopher H. Evans, The Kingdom Is Always but Coming: A Life of Walter Rauschenbusch (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004).
- 11.
Nikolas Kozloff, Revolution! South America and the Rise of the New Left (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 59.
- 12.
See, for instance, Claudio Véliz, The New World of the Gothic Fox: Culture and Economy in English and Spanish America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994).
- 13.
Freston, Evangelicals and Politics, 33, 35.
- 14.
Yuval Levin, The Great Debate: Edmund Burke, Thomas Paine, and the Birth of Right and Left (New York: Basic Books, 2013). For a discussion of the relationship of religion to the nascent ideological spectrum, see Eric Miller, “In the Beginning Was … the Left and the Right,” Comment 32, no. 1 (Spring 2014): 44–52.
- 15.
James Turner, Without God, Without Creed: The Origins of Unbelief in America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985); see especially the Epilogue, 262–70.
- 16.
Raymond Williams, Culture and Society, 1780–1950 (New York: Anchor Books, 1960), 151, 168, 169, 352.
- 17.
The political theorist Patrick Deneen warns that “Modern deliberative liberalism lays claim to the most idealistic, even ‘religious’ transformative impulse, but in so doing jettisons the accompanying religious belief in ineradicable human sinfulness, self-interest, and self-deception.” For Deneen, apart from religious reorientation, these malign human tendencies invariably lead to civic disrepair and dissolution. In the end, democracy all too often “appears to be too good for the people and must be salvaged in their name.” See Patrick Deneen, Democratic Faith (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005), 26, 28.
- 18.
Mische, Partisan Publics, 124.
- 19.
The Youth Pastoral was a Catholic effort launched in the 1970s to spearhead the work of Catholic youth in behalf of the poor.
- 20.
Mische, Partisan Publics, 129.
- 21.
Ibid.
- 22.
Doug Rossinow, The Politics of Authenticity: Liberalism, Christianity, and the New Left in America (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998).
- 23.
Mische, Partisan Publics, 129. James Davison Hunter’s analysis of varying forms of Christian political activism in the USA serves as a warning to Christians anywhere. “The consequence of the whole-hearted and uncritical embrace of politics by Christians has been, in effect, to reduce Christian faith to a political ideology and various Christian denominations and para-church organizations to special interest groups. The political engagement of the various Christian groups is certainly legal, but in ways that are undoubtedly unintended, it has been counterproductive of the ends to which they aspire.” James Davison Hunter, To Change the World: The Irony, Tragedy, and Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 172. The evangelical progressive movement in Brazil seems to share the same tendency of North American Protestant progressives, what Hunter terms the “‘relevance to’ paradigm of engagement,” in which, while its partisans are politically engaged, “the truth and integrity of faith is mostly assumed to take care of itself,” Hunter, To Change the World, 216.
- 24.
James K. A. Smith, Desiring the Kingdom: Worship, Worldview, and Cultural Formation (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 2009), 126, 224.
Bibliography
Deneen, Patrick. Democratic Faith. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005.
Evans, Christopher H. The Kingdom Is Always but Coming: A Life of Walter Rauschenbusch. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004.
Freston, Paul. Evangelicals and Politics in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001.
Hunter, James Davison. To Change the World: The Irony, Tragedy, and Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010.
Kozloff, Nikolas. Revolution! South America and the Rise of the New Left. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008.
Levin, Yuval. The Great Debate: Edmund Burke, Thomas Paine, and the Birth of Right and Left. New York: Basic Books, 2013.
Lynch, John. New Worlds: A Religious History of Latin America. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012.
Miller, Eric. “In the Beginning Was … the Left and the Right.” Comment 32, no. 1 (Spring 2014): 44–52.
Mische, Ann. Partisan Publics: Communication and Contention Across Brazilian Youth Activist Networks. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008.
Rodgers, Daniel T. Atlantic Crossings: Social Politics in a Progressive Age. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998.
Rossinow, Doug. The Politics of Authenticity: Liberalism, Christianity, and the New Left in America. New York: Columbia University Press, 1998.
Smith, James K. A. Desiring the Kingdom: Worship, Worldview, and Cultural Formation. Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 2009.
Turner, James. Without God, Without Creed: The Origins of Unbelief in America. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985.
Véliz, Claudio. The New World of the Gothic Fox: Culture and Economy in English and Spanish America. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994.
Williams, Raymond. Culture and Society, 1780–1950. New York: Anchor Books, 1960.
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Miller, E. (2019). What I Saw at the Revolution. In: Miller, E., Morgan, R. (eds) Brazilian Evangelicalism in the Twenty-First Century. Christianity and Renewal - Interdisciplinary Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-13686-4_6
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