God should love Brazil

From October 2014 till April 2015, I am conducting field research in Brazil. In this period I will post reflections on Linkedin, aimed at a broader audience. However, these reflections will also be posted here, but with reference to academic litterature relevant for the post. As my training comes from social anthropology and social work, most references will naturally be based in these disciplines. Readers are more than welcome to add their references also from other disciplines in the commentaries below and by this help me to learn more about Brazil and human societies

Brazil is among the top 10 religious countries in the world. According to the Global Index of Religion and Atheism, 85% of the population claims to be religious and only 1% are convinced atheists. And this is visible, especially for someone coming from Scandinavia, one of the more non-religious corners of the world. And I discover that as a foreigner, I am not really accustomed to deal with such a visibility of religious expressions in daily life.

The expressions of religion are everywhere. Not only on maps with names referring to saints and deities, but also in everyday life. I have the pleasure of going by night bus between Rio de Janeiro and Vitória every now and then. It is an eight our drive along the BR-101, a 4800 kilometers coastal road considered to be one of the most important roads in the country, and the traffic can be quite fast and furious. The first time I saw dead people in the traffic, was actually at the BR-101. So, you should not be surprised when the driver welcomes everybody onboard, ending his greetings with a short prayer calling for God’s blessings upon the trip. In Norway, you can be sure that at least one of the passengers would complain formally to the bus company. In Brazil, at least one of the passengers will reply, “Amen!”.

No matter which denomination God himself actually follow, whether he prefers Afro-Brazilian religions, Catholicism, the Pentecostal evangélicos or more blurry spiritual movements, he will find a large and devoted crowd of worshippers here. He should love Brazil, because there seem to be many who loves him.

In my country we are quite trained to respect, or maybe refrain from, getting involved in people’s personal beliefs. Of course we engage in conversations and discussions about religion and God like people do in most of the world, but we usually talk about it in objective ways that do not reveal our own religious ponderings that easily. Especially if we actually hold some beliefs.  So, public religious expressions are often more polemic and not as common as we find them in Brazil. And Brazilians seem to accept religious variation more easily than the Norwegian do.

This can lead to some interesting situations. Like when I try to explain what I do not believe in without telling what I believe. One example was when I tried to explain that I do not share the views of a certain Christian denomination even though my children attend their school. I have given up on that. Because the Brazilians do not really seem to judge me personally any differently whether I am a Catholic, a Protestant, an Evangélico, or if I believe that God is a rock in the mountains. What they think is stranger, is when they get the impression that I do not believe in anything.

Given the strong presence of religion in everyday life in Brazil, I would like to get to know better the social role that religion plays. And maybe my biggest challenge as a researcher in the social sciences, is to not do it in the comfortable Norwegian way, where focus tend to be on the negative consequences of organized religion (yes, of course it is an aspect of religion also). My challenge here will be to see if religion plays a role in interaction, what reference does it play morale, and how does conceptions about “The Other World” matter? After all it is one of the most religious countries in the world. That should not be ignored.  

See also:
The Economist, July 2013: Religion in Brazil Earthly concerns