“Mistura na cabeça”: Religion, Spirituality, and Affiliation in São Paulo's Devotion to Souls

• In Event: Spiritual Exchanges: Invisible Powers, Confrontations and Syncretism

Abstract

The Igreja Universal do Reino do Deus’s recent attacks on Afro-Brazilian religions—and the subsequent judicial ruling that called these traditions’ status as religion into question—suggest that contestation and boundary maintenance remain salient in the Brazilian religious field. At the same time, Brazilian religiosity can be markedly fluid and eclectic. This paper explores that fluidity through an examination of the devotion to souls in São Paulo. Though the devotion consists of prayer, offerings, and requests to dead human souls in distinctly Catholic spaces, it attracts Brazilians with non-Catholic and/or multiple religious commitments. While more orthodox Catholic laypeople tend to lament that the devotion perpetuates unwelcome “mistura na cabeça” (mixture in the head), many religious authorities are surprisingly permissive of such mixture. This paper compares these eclectic Brazilian devotees with Americans who identify as “spiritual but not religious.” Whereas being “spiritual” in America often connotes opposition to institutional religious authority, Brazilian religious eclectics exhibit little anxiety about institutional participation. Thus, this paper interrogates the categories of “religion” and “spirituality” by challenging the modern, North American assumption that “religiosity” is concomitant with institutional affiliation.

Author

• Michael Amoruso, University of Texas at Austin