SACRASEC workshop “Religious discrimination in urban Brazil: representations and everyday realities”
January 30th, 2025, 09:30-13:00
Location: Drift 23, room 0.12, Utrecht

This workshop is dedicated to the (tragic) intersection of religious marginalization and structural racism in urban Brazil. Following the constitution of 1889 that separated church and state, the Roman Catholic church managed to present itself as privileged partner of the Brazilian nation state and as such maintained a favored position. During the modern shift, Afro-Brazilian religious practices were presented as backward “customs” instead of “religious” practices, which barred the legal protection of such practices according to new legislations. Furthermore, identifications of Afro-Brazilian practices as feitiçaria (sorcery) remained dominant. Governmental changes at the turn of the twentieth century enforced the description of “customs” of urban, black populations as typical of Brazilian national “culture”.  The rise of evangelical Protestantism in the latter part of the 20th century has punctured the Roman Catholic hegemonic constellation in which Afro-Brazilian religious practices could appear under the umbrella of popular Catholicism. In the past 30 years, the country has witnessed a steady increase of born-again Protestant and Pentecostal adherents, commonly identified as evangélicos – evangelicals.  During this workshop we discuss this religious-political history in relation to aggressive attitudes of (some) evangelical churches that demonize Catholic and Afro-Brazilian religious figures and incorporate Afro-Brazilian religious practices in a dualist cosmology which regards the world as an arena for the spiritual battle between God and the devil.

Program
09:30 Walk-in and coffee/tea
09:45 Welcome by Martijn Oosterbaan (Utrecht University)
10:00 Leonardo Vasconcelos de Castro Moreira (KU Leuven) – “The Serial Killer’s Religion: Religious Racism in Brazil”
10:30 Wania Mesquita (Universidade Estadual do Norte Fluminense) – “Religion, Conflict and Violence: Pentecostalism and Afro-Brazilian Religions in Northern Rio de Janeiro”
11:00 Break
11:15 Jolien van Veen (Utrecht University) – “Pentecostalism, Crime and the making of the Israel Complex”
11:45 Discussion
12:30 Lunch