Table Of ContentBecoming Jewish, Believing in Jesus
Becoming Jewish,
Believing in Jesus
Judaizing Evangelicals in Brazil
MANOELA CARPENEDO
1
3
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Library of Congress Cataloging-i n- Publication Data
Names: Carpenedo, Manoela, author.
Title: Becoming Jewish, believing in Jesus : Judaizing evangelicals in
Brazil / Manoela Carpenedo.
Description: New York, NY, United States of America :
Oxford University Press, 2021. |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020001395 (print) | LCCN 2020001396 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780190086923 (hardback) | ISBN 9780190086954 |
ISBN 9780190086947 (epub)
Subjects: LCSH: Evangelicalism—Relations—Judaism. | Judaism—
Relations—Evangelicalism. | Evangelicalism—Brazil. |
Judaism—Brazil. | Women—Religious life—Brazil.
Classification: LCC BR1641.J 83 C375 2020 (print) |
LCC BR1641.J 83 (ebook) | DDC 278.108/3—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020001395
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020001396
DOI: 10.1093/ oso/ 9780190086923.001.0001
1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2
Printed by Integrated Books International, United States of America
Preface
Something is changing in contemporary religion. An unexpected
fusion of two major Western religious traditions, Judaism and
Christianity, has been developing in many parts of the world. There
is a noticeable worldwide growth of congregations and communities
that combine, in multiple permutations, beliefs, and rituals, identity
claims deriving from Judaism and Evangelical Christianity. While
ritual borrowing and the appropriation of Jewish tenets by Christians
are not new, the current adoption of Jewish narratives, rituals, and
even political anxieties by Christians is gaining more and more
relevance in the sociopolitical landscape. An example of the im-
portance and materiality of these religious inclinations on the geopo-
litical level can be seen in the intricate relationship between the US
administration’s decision, in a nod to its Evangelical base, to recog-
nize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital in 2017. Echoing such dispositions,
in Brazil, Charismatic Evangelicals are now demanding that the far-
right President Bolsonaro fulfils his campaign promises to follow the
U.S.’s move, despite Brazil’s decades-l ong pro-P alestine geopolitical
alignment. Even more surprising was the presence of Israeli prime
minister Benjamin Netanyahu at Bolsonaro’s inauguration, where he
announced that a new diplomatic era for both countries was about to
start: “Israel is the promised land, Brazil is the land of promise.”
This book investigates an unanticipated facet of this tendency
within Latin American Charismatic Evangelicalism. Based on field-
work conducted between 2013 and 2015 in Brazil, it explores why
a community of former Charismatic Evangelicals1 with no Jewish
1 I use the term “Charismatic Evangelicals” to refer to believers broadly identified
with the Charismatic Evangelical movement— either with early Pentecostal churches or
viii Preface
background are gradually embracing Jewish tenets and Jewish
Orthodox lifestyles, while still nurturing some Christian tenets
such as the belief in Jesus as the Messiah. During the course of my
fieldwork, I had the chance to witness how this radical religious
change was taking place in the lives of these former Charismatic
Evangelicals. Astonished, I watched as community members built
mikvot (ritual pools) in backyards; male adults, teenagers, and chil-
dren underwent circumcision; members incorporated kosher food
into their diets; and increasing numbers of women chose to respect
menstrual taboos and strict codes of modesty in dress (including
the daily wearing of headscarves)—a ll without showing any in-
terest in converting to or being recognized by mainstream Judaism.
Instead, according to them, their mission is to disseminate the
“Judaizing truth” in the Christian world. To differentiate these nas-
cent groups from other religious tendencies mixing Judaism and
Christianity, I have coined the term “Judaizing Evangelicalism.”
From the start of my years of fieldwork until the final compila-
tion of my research results in this book, my thoughts were occu-
pied with the question of why this group of former Charismatic
Evangelicals abandoned Christianity’s universal claims to embrace
the unaccountable rules of an ethnic religion that was not part of
their upbringing. Why would people, particularly women who hail
from backgrounds with more relaxed gender and moral norms,
want to live like Orthodox Jews, especially in Brazil!? Although
I am an experienced social scientist and ethnographer, it was not
easy to comprehend the rationale behind such religious transfor-
mation. When I first embarked on this project, my concerns were
very much connected with defining the proper “nature” and “iden-
tity” of the people I was working with. Blinded by a crystallized
binarism, I would try to classify the group either as “Jews” or
Neo- Pentecostal tendencies. In this form of Christianity, believers hold the tenets that
(a) Jesus offers salvation; (b) Jesus heals; (c) Jesus baptizes with the Holy Spirit; (d) Jesus
is coming again (Dayton, 1987; 19– 23). In Chapter 1, I offer a fuller description of the
“Charismatic Evangelical” label.
Preface ix
“Christians.” By tracing levels of cultural and religious authenticity,
I relied on fixed notions of culture and static interpretations of what
would be considered properly “Christian” or “Jewish.” Adopting
what I called a personal “cultural/r eligious intensity scale,” I en-
gaged in a feverish measurement of their levels of “Jewish au-
thenticity”; I carefully pondered the group’s remaining Christian
tenets and habits. Through these lenses, I analyzed a variety of
manifestations, ranging from theological documents to ritual
expressions, to clothing, gestures, language, and more. In this re-
search, I found a labyrinth of expressions, symbols, and intentions
that could not be encompassed by my pre- fixed “Christian” and
“Jewish” cultural categories.
I was not alone in this dualistic approach. When discussing my
work with other scholars or presenting it to academic audiences,
the same question echoed: What could be appropriately interpreted
as “Jewish” or “Christian”? Some would argue that the community
I studied could not be considered Christian anymore, mainly be-
cause of their divergent theological ideas and embrace of Jewish
lifestyles. Others would point out that this “Christian community”
had taken cultural appropriation to an unusual extreme, especially
in adopting the practices of a minority that had been historically
persecuted for being Jewish.
My scholarly aim is not to classify this community according
to any pre- fixed Christian or Jewish cultural notions. Instead of
providing ultimate categorizations, this work presents a sociocul-
tural picture of the process of religious change undertaken by this
community. By closely analyzing the radical Judaizing experience
of former Charismatic Christians, this book captures people’s re-
ligious journeys, their subjective transformations, and the moral
learning processes which are inevitably embedded in the develop-
ment of their new religious tendency.
Although this book is about an unexpected identification of
Christians with Judaism, its origins can be traced to my engagement
x Preface
with left- wing feminist politics in Brazil, my home country. I am
part of the generation that witnessed not only the Brazilian eco-
nomic boom of the first decade of the 2000s, but also the social
and moral shifts that accompanied the administrations of former
Presidents Lula (Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva) (2003–2 011) and Dilma
(Dilma Roussef) (2011–2 016). In a climate of drastic reconfigu-
ration of habits and traditions within Brazilian culture, one could
observe Brazil’s gradual transformation primarily through the
development of particular social policies. Initiatives with goals
ranging from the elimination of famine, to income redistribution,
to the extension of access to education, to the development of iden-
tity politics and the implementation of affirmative action in the
public sector all had a profound impact on Brazil’s sociocultural
landscape. Following the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, as
a student of social and clinical psychology I was deeply involved
in the embryonic circles concerned with women’s issues and diver-
sity that were arising in some Brazilian universities and that later
influenced today’s “feminist spring” movement in Brazil.
Born and bred in a socioeconomically privileged milieu, it
took me a while to become aware of the uneasy place that the re-
ligious Other occupied in this climate of rampant sociocultural
transformation. While Brazil is recognized for its myriad of reli-
gious expressions existing side by side with its colonial Catholic
foundations, one can say that the Brazilian intelligentsia privileges
secular positions and secular modes of living. We cannot deny that
some forms of religious expressions are widely celebrated in this
environment, such as indigenous religions and Afro- Brazilian pos-
session cults. Even some streams of Christianity enjoy a respectable
place: the Marxist leanings of liberation theology are a good ex-
ample. In these circles, however, it is the crente, the fervent Brazilian
Charismatic Evangelical, who is cast as the religious Other, a source
of repugnance.
Susan Harding was the first to notice this phenomenon in
North America. Working in the context of the United States, her
Preface xi
fascinating work explored the ways in which the modernist project
has constructed the fundamentalist Christian subject as the “re-
pugnant cultural Other.” While Charismatic Evangelical Brazilians
cannot be socially and religiously compared to American funda-
mentalist Evangelicals in almost any aspect, the same discursive
practices that distinguish the “us” of modern educated seculars
from the “them” of backward religious believers apply here. Crentes
not only are seen as ignorant, conservative, and prone to mass
manipulations by the Brazilian intelligentsia, but also are viewed
as situated within the financially disadvantaged and marginalized
sectors of society. Although solid research complicating these ster-
eotypical notions has in recent decades been conducted by bril-
liant and innovative scholars, the image of the brainwashed, highly
emotional, patriarchal, and working- class Charismatic Evangelical
continues to prevail. New frameworks like the Anthropology of
Christianity are gaining steam in some academic circles, but the
Christian Other is still not very easily understood.
While these characterizations might indeed partly reflect the
reality of many Brazilian born- again believers, I gradually came
to find them inadequate. I was studying in Europe, trying to un-
derstand the lives of overburdened, undocumented Brazilian
women who packed the Charismatic Evangelical churches in
global capitals every weekend. In my search for more nuanced
perspectives on the religious Other, I was lucky enough to find
Saba Mahmood’s seminal work, Politics of Piety. Basing her ar-
gument on her fieldwork within women’s mosque movements
in Cairo, Mahmood challenges the limits of the progressive sec-
ular premises which assume that life in religious worlds must be
inferior, and that the secular imaginary offers the best lifestyles
and ways of existing meaningfully in the world. When I first
encountered these debates, I was shocked and intrigued. More
than ever, I wondered why some women, instead of embracing
progressive feminist views like mine, would prefer to submit to
rigid, nonsensical religious norms?
xii Preface
This book, in part an exercise in self-s crutiny, aims to answer
this question. The austere religious movement mixing Judaism and
Christianity that I encountered in the South of my country proved
to be an ideal environment for analyzing these pressing issues.
Why would Brazilian women be willing to adhere to numerous
religious norms, including menstrual and sexual taboos, dietary
requirements, and strict modesty codes? In the following pages,
I explore the reasons that motivate these women when they decide
to adopt strict observance of elements of a religious tradition that
was not a part of their upbringing.
