In Struggle for the Spirit, David Lehmann compares and contrasts the progressive Catholicism of Christian base communities (which he calls basismo) with the growing Brazilian Pentecostal movement. His goal is to explain the popularity of the latter and the apparent decline of the former. As with others before him, Lehmann argues that the Pentecostal emphasis on personal conversion, on free will, and on self-empowerment promises an immediate change and immediate improvement in one’s life. By contrast, progressive Catholicism’s emphasis on the “caminhada,” the long path toward structural transformation, offers a better life that is much too far into the future for increasing numbers of poor Brazilians.
Lehmann’s more forceful argument is that “Pentecostalism is operating a cultural revolution” by rejecting “Brazil’s shakily dominant Catholic culture” (p. 167). Pentecostalism openly attacks feasts, rituals, dress, and other components of popular culture. Lehmann then powerfully argues that despite its claims to radical change and politicized and political action, and for all of its reformist talk of an option for the poor, basismo is simply one more example of an age-old Brazilian practice of cultural borrowings across race and class. It is, like populism, another attempt on the part of intellectuals to define and shape “the concept and even the reality of the people.” (p. 227). Brazil, Lehmann continues, has a long history of intellectuals who have invoked “the people” in order to authenticate their own actions and ideas by linking them to the popular elements of society. From this perspective, then, basismo is not radical: it does not offer the poor a significantly different option than those available in the past. Pentecostals, however, “bring about a radical cultural change because they break not with either popular or erudite culture, but because they break with this dialectic” (p. 228).
Lehmann strives to show how as part of the cultural revolution Pentecostal rituals and organizations have drawn strict spatial and social boundaries. As he notes, “Pentecostals trade in absolutes. They develop very clear lines of demarcation” (p. 154). Thus, “[the] mere knowledge that, unlike a follower of Catholicism or umbanda or candomblé, a Pentecostal would find a question about dual adherence acutely embarrassing is enough to tell us that conversion to Pentecostalism does represent a real rupture” (p. 146). Yet, this insistence on strict divisions strikes me as overdrawn. What, for example, are we to make of my Brazilian wife’s sister-in-law who (shall I dare say) religiously attends Catholic mass and services at the Pentecostal church?
Lehmann’s book is based on a handful of secondary sources and an unstated number of interviews. One annoying feature of the book is the author’s tendency to base sweeping generalizations on what appears to be a tiny number of sources (perhaps one or two interviews with unidentified subjects and one or two unpublished manuscripts). The text is peppered with vague source references such as “Pentecostals talk as if . . .” (p. 149), and “Men tell of . . .” (p. 196). He never tells the reader just what questions he asked his informants, and thus we are unable to judge how he himself might have shaped their responses.
Struggle for the Spirit is an interesting inquiry into the workings of the two most important religious movements in Latin America today. Specialists will need to consider its provocative assertions. Others will want to consult it as they prepare their survey lectures on religion in modern Latin America.
