{"id":10371,"date":"2017-11-04T17:29:17","date_gmt":"2017-11-04T17:29:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/?p=10371"},"modified":"2017-11-04T17:29:17","modified_gmt":"2017-11-04T17:29:17","slug":"in-brazil-religious-gang-leaders-say-theyre-waging-a-holy-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/in-brazil-religious-gang-leaders-say-theyre-waging-a-holy-war\/","title":{"rendered":"In Brazil, religious gang leaders say they’re waging a holy war"},"content":{"rendered":"

Robert Muggah<\/a>, Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio)<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

The expression \u201cevangelical drug trafficker\u201d may sound incongruous, but in Rio de Janeiro, it\u2019s an increasingly familiar phenomenon.<\/p>\n

Charismatic Christianity<\/a> is on the rise across Brazil<\/a>. Even Rio, a famously libertine city, elected an evangelical mayor<\/a> last year. Now, evangelical Protestantism is so far-reaching in Rio that even some of the city\u2019s most notorious drug dealers claim to be spreading the gospel. <\/p>\n

I study violence in Latin America<\/a>, and I\u2019ve observed a sharp increase in reports of religiously motivated crimes in Rio de Janeiro over the past year, in particular attacks on \u201cterreiros\u201d<\/a> \u2013 the temples belonging to the Candombl\u00e9 and Umbanda faiths. <\/p>\n

Brazil\u2019s evangelical turn<\/h2>\n

Persecution of these Afro-Brazilian religions<\/a>, whose adherents are largely poor black Brazilians, has been around since the 19th century<\/a>. But studies in Rio \u2013 both mine and those of other crime researchers \u2013 suggest that the current wave of religious bigotry is more pointed, and more violent, than in the past. <\/p>\n

While statistics confirming this new trend are still poor, the increase in religious hate crimes appears to coincide with the spread of evangelical Protestantism in Brazil.<\/p>\n

Today roughly a quarter of all Brazilians identify as Protestant, up from 5 percent in the 1960s. Many Brazilian Protestants attend mainstream services. But the fastest-growing denominations in Brazil<\/a> are the hard-line Pentecostals and Neopentecostal churches<\/a>
\n\u2013 including the wildly successful Assembly of God and the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God.<\/p>\n

\n <\/a>\n <\/p><\/blockquote>\n