‘And Ye Shall Know the Truth, and the Truth Shall Make You Free’. Evangelical Christianity and the Heuristic Notion of Dissolution
摘要
This article proposes the concept of dissolution—in its threefold dimension as cessation, suffusion, and dissipation—as a heuristic analytical key for the study of (neo)Pentecostal and charismatic Christianity in Brazil. After introducing the main themes that will be developed in the discussion, the article presents ethnographic insights from the author’s long-term field research with quilombolas in the eastern Amazon (Maranhão). These are then discussed in relation to the notion of dissolution in the literature on evangelical Christianity. Finally, the article attempts some exploratory connections between the notion of dissolution, the New Right, and evangelical Christianity, pointing to the usefulness of this analytical concept for gaining insights into the interplay between religion and politics as it currently unfolds in Brazil.