Transmitting the Spirit

Religious Conversion, Media, and Urban Violence in Brazil

Martijn Oosterbaan

• Publisher: Penn State University Press
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9780271080666
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Denominations

Pentecostalism is one of the most rapidly expanding religious-cultural forms in the world. Its rise in popularity is often attributed to its successfully incorporating native cosmologies in new religious frameworks. This volume probes for more complex explanations to this phenomenon in the favelas of Brazil, once one of the most Catholic nations in the world.

Based on a decade of ethnographic fieldwork in Rio de Janeiro and drawing from religious studies, anthropology of religion, and media theory, Transmitting the Spirit argues that the Pentecostal movement's growth is due directly to its ability to connect politics, entertainment, and religion. Examining religious and secular media—music and magazines, political ads and telenovelas—Martijn Oosterbaan shows how Pentecostal leaders progressively appropriate and recategorize cultural forms according to the religion's cosmologies. His analysis of the interrelationship among evangélicos distributing doctrine, devotees' reception and interpretation of nonreligious messaging, perceptions of the self and others by favela dwellers, and the slums of urban Brazil as an entity reveals Pentecostalism's remarkable capacity to engage with the media influences that shape daily life in economically vulnerable urban areas.

An eye-opening look at Pentecostalism, media, society, and culture in the turbulent favelas of Brazil, this book sheds new light on both the evolving role of religion in Latin America and the proliferation of religious ideas and practices in the postmodern world.

Table of contents

• COVER front
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Notes to Introduction
• Chapter 1: The Manichean City: Socio-Spatial Segregation
• Notes to Chapter 1
• Chapter 2: Sonic Struggles: Sound, Religion, and Space in the Favelas
• Notes to Chapter 2
• Chapter 3: Mass Mediating Spiritual Battles: Pentecostalism and the Daily News
• Notes to Chapter 3
• Chapter 4: “Deliver This Favela”: Space, Violence, and Hypermediated Conversion
• Notes to Chapter 4
• Chapter 5: Spiritual Attunement: Pentecostalism and Listening
• Notes to Chapter 5
• Chapter 6: “Written by the Devil”: Suspicious Television
• Notes to Chapter 6
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index
• COVER back