“Tenha fé no capital”: as práticas estranhadas produzidas pela Igreja Universal do Reino de Deus

Abstract

Nowadays religion has been the subject of numerous studies, mainly due to the growth of the Pentecostal and Neopentecostal Evangelical Churches, which has been considerably accelerated since 1980. Faith is related to being a believer, to believing in something beyond the materiality of human life and this leads us to the question of how this is able to guide human actions based on precepts well defined by the churches, as well as constituting human subjectivities. To think of subjectivity, in the Marxian sense, is to think of a reciprocal and complex relationship between subject and object, where they are constructed and transformed at the same time, however, understanding that the ontological priority is given to the object. Therefore, investigating the practice of the faithful allows us to study this dialectical relationship between objectivity and subjectivity. Focusing on the religious context, we understand that in the actions and thinking of working class individuals who preach the evangelical faith, there is an intentional practice operates guided by a set of precepts mediated by a relationship of certainty in the power of an extra-human being, god. In this work, our goal is to apprehend the objective possibilities produced by the Igreja Universal do Reino de Deus, a Brazilian neo-Pentecostal reference, which constitute the subjectivity of the faithful. Therefore, we investigate the religious ideal that guides the fhaithful practices; we learn these practices; and we analyze the relationship between ideology and practices produced by the Igreja Universal do Reino de Deus. We also discuss some categories from a Marxist perspective, such as practice, subjectivity-objectivity, consciousness, affectivity, ideology and religion. We understand how the god fetishization creates the ideology of faith that produces the strange practices of the faithful. The being who produces religious activity is not recognized as a producer itself. This is the phenomenon of strangeness. The alien being to whom religious activity and religion belong, for which religious activity is at the service and for the enjoyment of religion itself, can only be the human being himself. In religious activities, the human being stops relating as a human with humanity itself. Thus, the effectiveness of humanity occurs when recognizing humanity in the other, but the other, in religion, is not another human being, it is god. And it is the clearest, current expression of humanity's lack of effectiveness. The human being, therefore, engenders his own production [religion] for his deseffectivation. For this reason, we affirm the need to overcome religion, but we believe that this is not enough. Our goal must be human emancipation. We must overcome the conditions that keeps necessary the human relationship with religion, here, the capitalism. Religious activity is, therefore, a contribution to our dehumanization, but we are already in inhuman conditions since our condition-determination to reproduce life in the capitalist system. Religion is just another tool developed to keep us strangers and without an effective awareness of capital. However, we will not accept these conditions. When we are aware of material reality, it is necessary to fight against these ideological forms that chained us to the feet of the greatest fetish, the father of all fetishes, capital. And this fight is not done in heaven or in hell, it is made here and now.