For a generation, the Catholic Church in Brazil has enjoyed international renown as one of the most progressive social forces in Latin America. The Church's creation of Christian Base Communities (CEBs), groups of Catholics who learn to read the Bible as a call for social justice, has been widely hailed. Still, in recent years it has become increasingly clear that the CEBs are lagging far behind the explosive growth of Brazil's two other major national religious movements―Pentacostalism and Afro-Brazilian Umbanda . On the basis of his extensive fieldwork in Rio di Janeiro, including detailed life histories of women, blacks, youths, and the marginal poor, John Burdick offers the first in-depth explanation of why the radical Catholic Church is losing, and Pentecostalism and Umbanda winning, the battle for souls in urban Brazil. "One of the best books that has been written on religion and politics in Latin America. It is theoretically deft and empirically rich." Scott Mainwaring, University of Notre Dame "One of the best books that has been written on religion and politics in Latin America. It is theoretically deft and empirically rich."―Scott Mainwaring, University of Notre Dame John Burdick is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Syracuse University. Looking for God in Brazil Progressive Catholic Church Urb By John Burdick University of California Press Copyright © 1996 John Burdick All right reserved. ISBN: 9780520205031 Introduction Paradoxes in a Religious Arena For over two decades, in what some have called the most revolutionary Catholic movement since the Reformation, priests throughout Latin America, inspired by liberation theology, have preached the Gospel as a call for social justice and the democratization of religious authority.1 Their message springs from the same founts that have watered Christian radicalism for nearly two millennia. Liberation theologians argue that the prophesies of both the Old and New Testaments promise a Kingdom in which humanity will live in peace, equality, and justice, and, as foretold by the Apocalypse, that this Kingdom will be realized, not in Heaven, but on earth. Moreover, just as God used Moses to free His people, so too will He establish His Kingdom with the assistance of human agency. This is why, liberationists declare, it is up to humanity to struggle for the coming of the Kingdom.2 While liberation theology has familiar roots, its branches are new. One of those branches is the belief that in the struggle for the Kingdom, the poor are pivotal actors. It is "the poor, the little people, the anonymous ones," who are faithful "to the contract with God of equality and brotherhood"; it is they who are "the natural bearers of the utopia of God's Kingdom."3 In place of the traditional Catholic vision of charity, in which the better-off receive religious merit by giving to the poor, liberation theologians substitute a new vision of social rights, in which the poor struggle to bring about the Kingdom by demanding their just deserts. In this struggle the poor confront institutionalized violence andsocial injustice, which threaten to beat them into passivity, fatalism, and apathy. It is, therefore, up to the Church to help the poor overcome their fear, rediscover their spirit of community, and develop a critical understanding of the social nature of the violence they face. Such conscious Catholics will then fulfil their role in the battle for the Kingdom, by entering political and social movements for progressive societal change.4 The burden of realizing this vision falls to the Christian Base Communities, known throughout Latin America as "CEBs," the acronym for comunidad(e) eclesial de base . CEBs are Catholic congregations in which clergy and pastoral agents are engaged, in one way or another, in efforts to raise political and social awareness. The most distinctive aspect of the CEBs is the presence of small reflection groups, in which, with the help of liberationist study guides and pastoral agents, members read the Bible together, discuss its implications for their everyday lives, and are inspired by it to struggle for social justice.5 "After centuries of silence," writes Leonardo Boff, the People of God are taking over the word; they are no longer simply a client of the parish, but are reinventing the Church in a concrete historical sense . . . the people, motivated by a faith illuminated in the Bible circles and lived in the CEBs, are organizing themselves, no longer accept to die before their time, and are struggling for better alternatives.6 Nowhere in Latin America have CEBs become as numerous or received more official support from the hierarchy of the Church than in Brazil.7 In the 1950s, many Brazilian bishops began turning away from the urban, elitist model of the Church toward a vision of themselves as the "voice of the voiceless." With the repression of the late 1960s, many bishops became outspoken in their denunciati