O mito familiar da Igreja Universal do Reino de Deus

Abstract

The second decade of the third millennium is brought to an end, and with it comes a conservative bent in the political scenario. In Brazil, the power of the BOB (Bullet, Ox, and Bible) parliamentary bench and presidential Jair Bolsanaro’s popularity attests that. This scenario is in part the result of the growing influence of Pentecostal and Neo-Pentecostal churches in the political arena, with a general convergence between the ideological positions of evangelicals and their family values. In order to understand this phenomenon, a case study was made of the family myth of a Neo-Pentecostal denomination in particular: the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God, the greatest religious phenomenon in Brazil in the last 30 years, taking as the object of study the literature about and by their leader, Edir Macedo, and members of his family. The theoretical frameworks of the study were: the ideas of Swiss psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung, analytical psychology’s founder and the sociology of Brazilian neopentecostalism. The IURDian mythology was mainly understood from the study on the IURDian family myth, divided into: the myth of the hero, the myth of the Eternal Feminine and the family myth properly said, a theoretical construct still unexplored in the Jungian community. Other interpreters of the myth were also included: Simone de Beauvoir, Joseph Campbell, MirceaEliade and James Hillman. A brief history was given of the three waves of Pentecostalism in the country and the trajectory of the IURD, from its foundation to the inauguration of Solomon’s Temple. The analysis focused on Edir Macedo’s idealized profiles of the man, woman and family of God. Some characteristics of IURDian theology: the submission of women, reason over emotion, the promotion of wealth and the constant clash against other religions, with evidence that the family myth of the Universal Church is a postmodern adaptation of the “traditional” Brazilian family. It’s a patriarchal family whose arrangement puts the personal myth of the father as the central myth of the family. This traditional family model helps IURD’s female churchgoers to recover family unity and to be valued in the face of economic and social exclusion. The contradictory positions of pastors, laborers and even the Bishop himself in the face of their family myth were also discussed.