Abstract
This text will analyse how the secular/religious binarism came to operate in the context of the recent rise in Evangelical dominance among the urban poor in Rio de Janeiro. By focusing my interest on this social sector, I take it to be constituted through specific religious policies relating to distinctions and associations between practices identified as secular and religious. I suggest, therefore, that the relations between religion, violence and governance of the poor feed back one upon the other. Policies promoting the death of ‘society’s enemies’ are linked to policies of religious, social and moral protection, on these uncertain and slippery boundaries between good and evil, the religious and the secular, morality and sin, and marginality and citizenship.
Text translated from the Portuguese by David Rodgers
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Notes
- 1.
Talal Asad et al. (2009) analyse freedom of expression through the reactions of Muslims to the caricatures of Mohammed. They debate the character of secular critique, analysing the supposed impartiality and neutrality of the West: ‘I hope it is clear from my arguments that the secular liberal principles of freedom of religion and speech are not neutral mechanisms for the negotiation of religious difference and they remain quite partial to certain normative conceptions of religion, subject, language, and injury’ (Mahmood 2009).
- 2.
As William Connolly (2006, 78) observes ‘the best definition of Europe itself—as presented by those constituencies assuming themselves to be qualified to define its core authoritatively—is the idea that to be European is to express religious beliefs in the private realm and to participate as abstract citizens in the public realm. This innocent and tolerant-sounding definition promotes Christian secularism into the centre of Europe and reduces Islamic peoples into a minority unlike others minorities; they are distinctive because they alone are unwilling or unable to abide by the modern agenda.’
- 3.
As Giumbelli suggests: ‘First, instead of considering secularism as a heuristic tool, I opt to approach the idea of a regulation of the religious. What interests me, in other words, is understanding how “religion” is defined and managed in public spaces (Giumbelli 2002; Montero 2012, chapter 10). Second, as part of this analytic endeavour, secularism appears in a plural form, in the two senses evoked above—i.e., both as a positioning and as a configuration. In the situation explored later, we shall see that different understandings of secularism emerge alongside distinct different forms of translating these into concrete arrangements’ (2014, 170).
- 4.
For a recent version of this myth, mobilized in the commemorations for the 500 Years of the Discovery of Brazil, see Kelly (2003).
- 5.
The Catholic Church fashioned its intellectuals within a ‘European’ model: that is, as Catholics they accepted the secular nature of public space and a political intervention based on theological precepts taken as humanist. Only popular Catholicism, filled with imagery and rituals, provided space for religious behaviours that involved an embodiment of the religious. However, this faction would go on to lose many of its followers to the Pentecostal churches.
- 6.
See Das and Poole (2004).
- 7.
See the works by Taniele Rui and Fábio Mallart (2015) who studied various institutions in relation to Cracolândia in the centre of São Paulo. The authors analyse the existence of a large circulation of people through the prisons involving all the agencies that include mechanisms for dealing with the population of São Paulo’s Cracolândia region.
- 8.
See the special issue about UPPs in Rio de Janeiro (Machado da Silva and Leite 2014).
- 9.
The arguments and examples used here are taken from the very perceptive and excellent thesis of Palloma Menezes (2015), who I thank for her permission to cite the work.
- 10.
See the article by Cecília Mariz (1999) which presents the theology of the Spiritual Battle, strongly anchored in the dualism between good and evil. This theology was inaugurated by the UCKG and expanded by various other churches, some but not all of which use practices of exorcism.
- 11.
Here I reproduce part of the descriptions and examples from the article wrote by Carly Machado and myself. See Birman and Machado (2012).
- 12.
A phrase printed on the enveloped for donations distributed to the congregation during the church service that we attended, signed by ADUD Productions (see Birman and Machado 2012).
- 13.
- 14.
See note 12.
- 15.
In this media intertwining of the secular and the religious we can pick out the ready flow of imagery produced by the church to the secular reports on Pastor Marcos and his activities (seen in the programmes Fantástico and Conexão Repórter), which made use of footage ‘kindly provided by Pastor Marcos’ (see Birman and Machado 2012; also see Birman 2012 on pacification of favelas).
- 16.
Christina Vital (2014) describes in great detail the experiences and dramas lived by the young drug traffickers in the favela, which expose new meanings and desires to redemption.
- 17.
BOPE is the main force responsible for extermination attacks in the favelas. Recognized for its violence, the unit provokes terror in people when it arrives, with the foot soldiers typically accompanied by a war tank called the Caveirão, named after the corporation’s symbol: a skull (caveira) with crossed revolvers (Farias 2007; Machado da Silva 2008).
- 18.
An excerpt from this prayer is published in her article (Vital 2014): ‘Lord, make the twisted life that I lead serve to help people life a better and upright life. Lord//I ask for your protection, not for me but for my friends.//Save them from death, Lord, so that they are not killed in a cowardly way and they do not kill a police officer or enemy who comes to attack our favela.//Lord, it is all I ask of You…’
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Birman, P. (2017). Governing the Poor: Secular and Religious Practices in Debate. In: Mapril, J., Blanes, R., Giumbelli, E., Wilson, E. (eds) Secularisms in a Postsecular Age?. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-43726-2_9
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