| Jair Bolsonaro, the president of Brazil, is – like Camacho and the others – rooted in these transnational evangelical neo-Pentecostal networks. But this is not an affliction of the fundamentalist versions of Christianity – such as neo-Pentecostalism – alone; there is evidence from around the world of these sorts of authoritarian religious movements that are pickled in hatred and rooted in praise of militaries and capitalism. It is no wonder that the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi – who emerges from his own authoritarian religio-political movement – invited Bolsonaro to be the Chief Guest at India’s Republic Day Parade on 26 January 2020. There is little that divides Modi’s fascistic Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and his Vishwa Hindu Parishad from the piety movements of Tablighi Jamaat (with its millions of Muslim followers) and these neo-Pentecostal formations.
There is an enormous amount that they share in common.
Our researchers in Buenos Aires (Argentina) and in São Paulo (Brazil) have developed a preliminary theory of these neo-Pentecostal movements in South America. The team in Buenos Aires has published a report (in Spanish) on the Evangelical Question, while the team in São Paulo has produced an as yet unpublished document on the rise of neo-Pentecostalism in Brazil (André Cardoso and Fábio Miranda, ‘Contribuições para entender o crescimento pentecostal e os desafios para o campo popular’).
One of the common features of the findings in Argentina and in Brazil is that these movements are growing at an astronomical rate, doubling in twenty years. In both countries, these movements have jumped into the electoral sphere, where they have begun to define an ‘evangelical vote’. This consolidation of evangelism in politics polarizes sections of the working class and peasantry. The analyses from our two offices are very close to each other, and they both point to at least five features of these movements:
Heart in a Heartless World
Over the course of the past few decades, as social inequality has increased, the purchasing power of the urban and rural poor has declined while the time and money for leisure activities has been reduced. With the cuts in social spending, State-funded community activities have also lessened. This has meant that in the neighborhoods of the poor, commercial and State-funded avenues for social life have vanished. Near Brazil’s favelas, the storefronts are now occupied by a line of neo-Pentecostal churches, by liquor shops, and by a few restaurants. It is these neo-Pentecostal churches that operate as one of the key places for social life in these working-class communities and as an employment agency for its members. As the Church becomes a hub for social life – including music lessons – it attracts young people into its ranks. Few other outlets are available for the working class.
‘Gender Ideology’
In South America, the feminist movement, particularly the movement for abortion rights, has strengthened. In reaction, these religious currents have consolidated a patriarchal response. They make the argument that the elite is trying to colonize the families of the poor by eroding the authority of the father. These piety movements and their political allies routinely uphold patriarchal attitudes towards women, seeking to retroactively control all aspects of their lives and keep them subdued and submissive.
RSS leader Mohan Bhagwat often says that women should not work, that they should rely upon their husbands. By putting the Father on a pedestal, these movements take their authoritarian ethos of the Strong Leader into the heart of the family. |
Things are tough all over. Even in the Beltway but the Beat goes on, let’s hope we don’t get beat on. What did Rick say in Casablanca? Try #1o or was …..? I came here for the waters? , I stick my neck out for no one? The Germans have outlawed miracles? It ain’t easy being easy ? No, that was Dandy Don on Monday Night Football. There is still hope, maybe? Not Rick, that was Uncle Joe. Peace on Earth. Goodwill to men.
Obama was at Modi’s Republic Parade in India in 2015, the first president to do so, but why is the author not concerned about that? He seems to cherry-pick who to be concerned about. He also fails to mention that Muslims support the Congress Party in India and not the BJP. Fewer minorities mean less Congress Party members. Religion ran daily life in India way before formalized Government. The majority of Indians have no intention of getting rid of their religious roots but the author would like them too.
Racism/Gender are not issues that drive the radical tablighi Jamaat, the article misinforms when considers those issues to compare with tabligh. Further, RSS has no strict religion, unlike tabligh, RSS accepts Muslim members who are not Islamist. The article is unreadable.
It is sad to see in-coherent Vijay Prasad article on the site where Robert Parry once wrote.
>‘The Bible has returned to the Palace’, she said as she seized power.
This from the woman whose home-made porn sex scene has made the rounds on “social media” ….
This is a very insightful piece by Prashad.
“When a Chief Justice Reminded Senators in an Impeachment Trial That They Were not Jurors”
The rule of law is a favourite cloak of the rule of men.
OlyaPola
December 19, 2019 at 12:09
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“How much more elegant to let the Left render itself toothless, forever atomizing
itself ”
Left/Right are enmazed in a linear frame/oxymoron sometimes known as
“represntative democracy” which is/was designed to facilitate linear modulations of
social relations; akin to a suspension system to dissipate energy in attempts to
“manage” oscillations/vibrations within “tolerances”.
Those so enmazed are always rendered petitioners/supplicants denied their own
agency whether they are workers or not as illustrated by the Bolshevik project which
is in lateral process of transcendence through portals such as the Russian Federation.
Agency can be expressed in various modes including but not limited to, “pretending
to work for which others pretend to pay” – a significant component of the ongoing
lateral process of the transcendence of the “Soviet Union” through the portal of the
Russian Federation, whilst Mr. Gorbachev and his associates attempted to “reform”
the Soviet Union and external opponents sought to undermine the “Soviet Union”,
both acting as accelerants and multipiers in the on-going lateral process of
transcendence.
In order to mask the agency of others opponents have resorted to questions such as
“Who lost China?” and mantra such as “America won the “Cold War””
“Exploring unknows there are varying methods including but not limited to
embracing doubt, resorting to belief to bridge doubt to attain confirmation/comfort
including by projection, or resorting to oxymorons such as “precautionary principle”
of apres nous le deluge-ness.” (e.g. demonisation of “the other”), and hence in part
why the benefits of “dumbing down” do not accrue solely to those engaged in
“dumbing down” since attempts at doing so in some assay undermine suspension
systems.
Consequently the “headline writer’s” assertion that “Corbyn’s defeat has slain the
Left’s Last Illusion” is mistaken and your own contribution edited to read “”How
much more elegant to let the opponents render themselves toothless “
whilst time and tide continue to wait for no men.
They essentially have created another means to divide us! All while at the same time they have also created the very reason we must now have that war
Religion is the most dangerous cancer on this earth. Forget money, religion is the root of all evil. How close we are in America to living under these same fascist conditions is plain to see in who is our Vice President, who is our Secretary of State, and how many in Congress, military, and “security” agencies are “born-against” evangelicals, or Zionists. These are extremely dangerous people – they have clout and they have money, and their goal is to implement God’s Plan for America (and the world) and especially God’s Plan for Women. For the last three decades, in the shadows they have been worming their way up from local government positions, school boards, etc.,creeping into the highest halls of power. Americans for the most part, being Christians themselves, do not see the danger posed by these fanatics and either partly agree with them or simply ignore them as crackpots – which they are – but very, very dangerous ones.
Your overwrought first sentence is challenged by the existence of Quaker’s, the Ba’hai faith, Zen and other “religions” that counsel and model peace and inclusion. Hatred leaks from your diatribe. Which is – ironically – part of the glue and the allure of all “extreme” organizations. As I think Jung commented, whatever you worship is your God. Whatever the outer organizational garb – political or religious – when power and money are God, then you have extremism and patriarchy. Dominance over. No wonder Jesus threw the money changers out of the Temple. And in those terrible 40 days and 40 nights in the Wilderness, Jesus remembered and knew the difference between God’s voice and that of the fallen angel, Lucifer. His choices in that harrowing Wilderness demonstrated his honoring relationship with God, with profound Wholeness and a deep consciousness of the nature and place of the ego in the cosmic/earth design.
well put William
This is a fascinating and informative article up until approximately the point in which the “Prosperity Gospel” is introduced. At this point, the prose collapses, it become almost unreadable, the we are suddenly advised to watch the Glen Greenwald interview of Evo Morales. I get the feeling that somehow the article has been hijacked.
Couldn’t someone – maybe Prashad – explain what happened?
4200 religions to help save us from?
Not sure I can buy into the idea that there is an active partnership between capitalism and evangelism but there is little doubt that they are sympathetic in many ways. What the evangelicals are about here and in Latin America is attracting people who have been passive Catholics and offering a more vibrant alternative using the modern tools of communication. One cannot miss the growing power of Protestant evangelism in the United States as well as in the countries south of us. Zionist Christians are but one example. Trump has climbed aboard and much of what he claims to believe is attentive to the Evangelical political aims.
As a sympathetic Catholic, I lament the passivity, along with its mea culpa posture, which has captured the Catholic Church. Pope Francis has tried to put some backbone into Church leaders under him but so far it is not evident in the words and actions of the bishops and archbishops where I live. The Catholic Church is more than sexually abusing priests and that is understood by hundreds of millions of practicing Catholics around the world. Catholicism has much to offer and offers much. To outsiders looking in, they must wonder if that is true.
The narrative of a war on Christianity, I believe, has finally been exposed. As I have often stated on this forum, the establishment and their media engage us in a checkers game while they are playing chess. Years ahead of us they have been waging a false pretense of some moronic war against Christians for several years. Turning what has been essentially a large cultural assimilation, due to their very own actions around the world, into a manufactured war against the working class against each other under a facade of a religion war. They essentially have created another means to divide us! All while at the same time they have also created the very reason we must now have that war! For their chosen secular religion is endangering our existence as a free and civil society as it is compliant to the destruction of democracy. What little we have of those fake titles today anyways.