Dr Paula Montero, Professor at the State University of São Paulo, on syncretism and pluralism in the configuration of religious diversity in Brazil
On February 16th the series of research seminar of the Center for Historical Research and the Department of History is continuing with the paper "Syncretism and Pluralism in the Configuration of Religious Diversity in Brazil" by Dr Paula Montero, Anthropology Professor at the State University of São Paulo (Brazil) and Senior Researcher at the Brazilian Center of Analysis and Planning.
Registration
When: February 16, 18:00 (UTC+3)
Format: hybrid. Please fill in the form to participate.
Working language: English
Speaker
Anthropology Professor at the State University of São Paulo
Dr Paula Montero is an Anthropology Professor at the State University of São Paulo (USP – Brazil) and Senior Researcher at the Brazilian Center of Analysis and Planning (Cebrap). She was Visiting Scholar at Institute of Latin American and Iberian Studies at Columbia University in 1984 and Tinker Visiting Professor of the University of Chicago in 1996. She participates as a principal investigator of the Nonreligion in a Complex Future project (Ottawa University). Her research interests are focused on the interface between religion, law, and pluralism.
Abstract
Syncretism and Religious Pluralism are two distinct ideological models in the history of Brazilian religious diversity. With the first Brazilian republican constitution (1891), the Catholic religion ceased to be the country's official religion, and all religious denominations gained the freedom to hold public worship. Religious Freedom was legally constructed as a way of distributing, in the field of religion, popular practices, especially “black" ones, generally perceived as dangerous and superstitious. Despite this, "religious diversity" was not then established as a republican value given that it was organized under the aegis of Catholicism, within the ideology of syncretism.
Almost a century later, with the Constitutional Chart of 1988, pluralism became instituted as the primary legal and political means to structure differences, including religious diversity. Associated with the decline of the hegemony of the Catholic Church, this principle promotes competition among religious organizations for social influence including their relationship with the state. In this context, the Catholic Church led an "inter-religious dialog” — political strategy for the construction of civic unity. The paper discussed these two models based on ethnographic and historical materials.