Reading Galina Krasskova’s blog a few days ago, I was surprised to see the headlines “One can always expect a monotheist to behave according to type,” and “A Candomble priest martyred for Jesus.”((Shouldn’t that read, “Martyred by Followers of Jesus”? But the text clarifies it: “Álisson stood fast in devotion to the Orixa and was butchered in the name of Jesus.”))
Candomblé is the most West African of the Spiritist religions in Brazil. In the 17th and 18th centuries, Brazil’s sugar plantations brought in more African slaves than anywhere else in the Western Hemisphere. Because of the size of the plantations and the lax oversight by stretched-thin Catholic clergy, the Brazilian slaves more easily retained their traditions than did those in mostly Protestant North America.((Whereas a “big” American tobacco or cotton plantation might have had dozens of slaves, a big Brazilian sugar plantation might well have had hundreds.))
Most of us might think of Brazil as a largely Catholic country with other interesting things going on: the vegetalista churches organizes around ayahuasca/hoasca, Candomblé and its more Europeanized cousin Umbanda, and even a fledgling Wiccan movement. But the growth of evangelical Protestant churches is changing the mix, as this Washington Post story explains:
Candomblé survived centuries of slavery, but the quasi-respectability it has gained in recent decades is now under concentrated attack from radical Evangelical Christians, a growing force in Catholic Brazil, who regard it as the devil’s work and its priests and priestesses as little more than neighborhood witches.
Tactics range from propaganda blitzkriegs launched on blogs and YouTube videos to threats, violence and expulsions from drug gangs. Afro-Brazilian religious leaders and sympathizers are fighting back in court. A low-intensity war is being fought for Brazilian souls. . . .
Last year, Rio prosecutors launched a civil action to require Google to remove videos attacking Afro-Brazilian religions from YouTube. A judge ruled against them, writing that Afro-Brazilian religions could not be considered true religions because they lack a written text, a hierarchical structure and a god.
This article (in Portuguese) explains how worshipers were attacked at one temple and how the priestess was forced to destroy images of the gods at gunpoint. There is video at the link.
This is 2017 Rio de Janeiro, not late 4th-century Alexandria or Antioch. But it’s all the same story. As Krasscova comments, “A monotheist is a monotheist wherever you go.”
In the floating world of the Internet, Afro-Brazilian religion is more popular than ever. I sent the links above to a friend who has lived in Brazil (she has a PhD in Luso-Brazilian literature), who writes on the religion, and who herself is a Pagan Witch.
She replied, “[This is] weird because so many more people here [USA] and elsewhere are getting involved in Candomble, etc. For example, now when I Google Pomba-Gira, there are more than 5,000 sites dedicated to her. In my day, nobody had even heard of her around here.”
Maybe there’s Tumblr Candomblé, and then there is the kind that brings Jesus-loving gangsters to your door.