Symbolic arena: a reflection about religion and violence based on the case of the Assembly of God of the last Days
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Abstract
Based on a case study this article analyzes the (re)building of (neo) Pentecostal religious symbols and a (neo)Pentecostal religious grammar in a context of violence. Therefore, we presented a brief background of the Church of God of the Last Days (Igreja Assembleia de Deus dos Últimos Dias – ADUD) and its charismatic leader, pastor Marcos Pereira, as well as his performance and relations in a territory of extreme violence, with the purpose to contextualize his trajectory. The pastor’s narrative about himself – in terms of “testimony” – shows a symbolic grammar which represents the experiences between religion and violence. The argument is that the building of a religious grammar, although it seems to be always against the grammar of violence, keeps relations in a symbolic arena (sometimes arriving at praxis). Therefore, they are not distinct spheres, as the ambiguous trajectory of the pastor Marcos Pereira shows, but spheres whose borders are movable.
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