Protestants and the public sphere in Brazil, c.1870 - c.1930

This dissertation examines the circulation of Christian print and the making of Protestant thought in Brazil in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It investigates one of the central methods of Protestant evangelisation deployed in the country: the production and diffusion of evangelical literature. On the one hand, this work analyses the ideological and doctrinal contents of the literature circulated by evangelical agents in Brazil, showing how foreign missionaries and Portuguese-speaking ministers actively engaged with debates circulating in the country’s public sphere. On the other hand, it pays close attention to the trajectories of evangelical literature and takes into account the materiality of the books, tracts, and Bibles set in motion by evangelists and ministers. The expansion and consolidation of evangelical churches and societies in Brazil gave rise to new forms of religious sociability with their distinctive practices and identities, distinguished from the Catholic Church, the state, and the aristocratic institutions of the secular public sphere. By means of a complex and far-reaching network comprising churches, evangelical libraries, and colporteurs, Protestants circulated Christian literature widely in the country. Missionary societies and their transnational circuits connected the missionary work in Brazil with Portugal, Britain, and the United States, generating a Lusophone evangelical transatlantic public sphere. This dissertation pays close attention to the intellectual dimension of this movement, examining how Brazilian Protestant ministers modified concepts and ideas taken from a wide variety of intellectual and theological traditions to craft their own body of thought and doctrine. In this sense, this dissertation locates the evangelical work in Brazil, its ideas and practices, on both national and transnational scales, examining how evangelical agents mediated between different cultures, navigated through various intellectual landscapes, and domesticated evangelical Christianity.

Name dc:type.qualificationname

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Level dc:type.qualificationlevel

Doctoral

Grantor dc:publisher.institution

University of Cambridge

Year dc:date.issued

2019

Author dc:creator

• Feitoza, Pedro Barbosa de Souza

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Maxwell, David

• Brazil
• Protestantism
• Evangelicalism
• World History
• World Christianity
• Bible societies
• Protestant missions
• Global Intellectual History

Licence

• https://apollo8-f-pro.lib.cam.ac.uk/bitstreams/d5061c87-df9f-4650-8775-cc555a55dcfd/download
• https://www.rioxx.net/licenses/all-rights-reserved/

Language dc:language

en

DOI dc:identifier.doi

https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.40719

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.repository.cam.ac.uk:1810/293586