Multiculturalism and Mainline Protestantism

Resumo: Este artigo traça alguns percursos da expansão das igrejas pentecostais
brasileiras em direção ao território português, analisando a assimetria no número
de denominações e fiéis entre as regiões portuguesas, defendendo a tese de que
certas conformações socioculturais mostram-se refratárias à implantação e limitam
o crescimento das igrejas pentecostais. Assim, mais que se concentrar nos fluxos
transnacionais e nas estratégias de religiões nascidas no Brasil para se estabelecer no
exterior, este trabalho trata das contestações e das resistências vernaculares a esses
fluxos. Para esta análise, utilizamos um duplo expediente metodológico: quantitativo,
em que foram utilizados dados provenientes principalmente do censo português, e
qualitativo, centrado sobretudo em depoimentos orais e análise de textos de jornais e
revistas.
Palavras-chave: Transnacionalização religiosa. Pentecostalismo em Portugal. Culturas locais.
Abstract: This article outlines some routes of expansion of Brazilian Pentecostal
churches into the Portuguese territory, analyzing the asymmetry in the number of
denominations and believers among the Portuguese regions, defending the thesis that
certain sociocultural conformations prove to be refractory to the implantation and limit
the growth of Pentecostal churches. In this sense, rather than focus on transnational
flows and strategies for religions born in Brazil to settle abroad, this paper discusses the
challenges and the local resistance to these flows. For this analysis we used a double
methodological resource: a quantitative one, namely data from the Portuguese census,
and a qualitative one, focused on interviews and the analysis of texts from newspapers
and magazines.

A Cosmopolitan Dichotomy: Mainline Protestantism and Contemporary versus Traditional Worship Music

Faced with a twenty-first century crisis of cosmopolitan identity, North American mainline Protestants have turned to dichotomized musical diversity.  For the better part of United States’ history, White-Anglo-Saxon Protestants had seen their identity and worship practices established as hegemonic norms. However, since the 1950s, these mainline denominations have been shaken by steady losses.  Taking stock and noting that their historical evangelical Others using more “contemporary” music were thriving, mainline churches soon had their own miked singers, guitarists, and drummers leading praise and worship choruses in addition to hymns, pipe organs, and chancel choirs.
Despite increasing relativism, globalized mainline cultural positions, and liberal theology, the musical expansion was quickly channeled into a Contemporary versus Traditional worship music binary that continues to dominate discourse and practice.  During the Worship Wars of the 1990s, the two styles came to be seen as largely incompatible and churches now often have separate Contemporary and Traditional services.  The first section of this chapter analyzes why, given the many styles, genres, and traditions actually played in these churches, mainline Protestants have essentialized the musical, cultural, and theological omnivorism of their ecumenical cosmopolitanism into an oppositional either-or choice. What prompts a local congregation choose to channel their music through this pervasive dichotomy?
In the second section, I draw upon Sznaider, Beck, Rommen and fieldwork among Presbyterians in Tennessee, to demonstrate how one mainline Protestant congregations has engaged with the Contemporary-Traditional dichotomy to position themselves within broader flows of Christian media and meaning. Analyzing repertoire choices, performance choices, and congregant reception, I demonstrate how this congregation embraces the broad label of Contemporary, but brings the details in line with their local vision of self-identity. This chapter provides an analytically contextualized case study of how, by adopting and adapting the symbolic categories of Contemporary and Traditional, mainline Protestant churches are using music to assert themselves as part of a dynamic Christian network engaged in a discourse of cultural vitality.

Workshop on “Transnational Periodical Counter/Publics”, 65th Annual Conference of the German Association for American Studies (DGfA) – “American Counter/Publics”, John F. Kennedy Institute for North American Studies, Freie Universität Berlin, May 24–27, 2018 (Lecture).