
Vote of Faith
Democracy, Desire, and the Turbulent Lives of Priest Politicians
Maya Mayblin(Author)
Fordham University Press
Published on 3. December 2024
Book
Paperback/Softback
240 pages
978-1-5315-0909-5 (ISBN)
Description
A richly cinematic and compelling look at priest-politicians in Brazil and their religious and secular entanglements
What does desire have to reveal about the nature of power? Through a detailed focus on the lives and loves of Catholic priests as they enter the profane world of party politics, Maya Mayblin explores the complex intersection of democracy, patriarchy, and religiosity in Brazil. For over a hundred years, Catholic priests have been running for government office, challenging Brazil's constitutional separation of church and state and its self-image as a modern, secular nation. Priests find themselves walking a tightrope between religious and secular demands in one of Brazil's poorest regions. Vote of Faith is a beautifully crafted ethnography based upon decades of fieldwork that tells the story of the ambiguous and frequently transgressive relationship between Catholicism and state governance, a relationship ultimately mediated by kinship, gender, and sexuality.
For the protagonists of Vote of Faith, democracy becomes a sphere in which divine will and human ambition compete with one another, a tension embedded in the vernacular concept of faith. In the Brazilian context, faith signifies a complex set of assumptions about the nature of the world, assumptions derived not just from Christianity, but also from Afro-Brazilian and secular ideas about power, causation, and human agency. In combining ethnographic, theological, and feminist perspectives, Vote of Faith places desiring bodies at the very heart of Catholicism's complex connection to multiple forms of power and offers provocative new angles on the question of the secular.
The first work by an anthropologist to explore the unique phenomenon of the mayor-priest, this book offers an essential new angle on emerging debates about secularity as the condition of separation of the religious from the political. Brimming with originality, Vote of Faith is required reading for those interested in the gendered and sexual dimensions of the secular, the plasticity of religion, and the fundamental nature of the world's largest religious institution.
What does desire have to reveal about the nature of power? Through a detailed focus on the lives and loves of Catholic priests as they enter the profane world of party politics, Maya Mayblin explores the complex intersection of democracy, patriarchy, and religiosity in Brazil. For over a hundred years, Catholic priests have been running for government office, challenging Brazil's constitutional separation of church and state and its self-image as a modern, secular nation. Priests find themselves walking a tightrope between religious and secular demands in one of Brazil's poorest regions. Vote of Faith is a beautifully crafted ethnography based upon decades of fieldwork that tells the story of the ambiguous and frequently transgressive relationship between Catholicism and state governance, a relationship ultimately mediated by kinship, gender, and sexuality.
For the protagonists of Vote of Faith, democracy becomes a sphere in which divine will and human ambition compete with one another, a tension embedded in the vernacular concept of faith. In the Brazilian context, faith signifies a complex set of assumptions about the nature of the world, assumptions derived not just from Christianity, but also from Afro-Brazilian and secular ideas about power, causation, and human agency. In combining ethnographic, theological, and feminist perspectives, Vote of Faith places desiring bodies at the very heart of Catholicism's complex connection to multiple forms of power and offers provocative new angles on the question of the secular.
The first work by an anthropologist to explore the unique phenomenon of the mayor-priest, this book offers an essential new angle on emerging debates about secularity as the condition of separation of the religious from the political. Brimming with originality, Vote of Faith is required reading for those interested in the gendered and sexual dimensions of the secular, the plasticity of religion, and the fundamental nature of the world's largest religious institution.
More details
Series
Edition
New edition
Language
English
Place of publication
New York
United States
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Edition type
New edition
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Illustrations
5 b/w illustrations
Dimensions
Height: 153 mm
Width: 229 mm
Thickness: 17 mm
Weight
396 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-5315-0909-5 (9781531509095)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
Maya Mayblin is Senior Lecturer in Social Anthropology at the University of Edinburgh. Her work explores religion, theology, politics, and gender in Brazil and beyond. She is the author of Gender, Morality and Catholicism in Brazil and co-editor of The Anthropology of Catholicism: A Reader.
Content
Introduction 1
1 Politics: Endless and Addictive 31
2 Celibacy as Theopolitics 53
3 Faith, Desire, and Machismo 75
4 Virile Celibacy 99
5 Votes of Faith: Force, Power, and Political Form 125
6 The Miraculous and the Mundane 150
Conclusion 177
Epilogue 187
Acknowledgments 191
Notes 193
Bibliography 217
Index 235
1 Politics: Endless and Addictive 31
2 Celibacy as Theopolitics 53
3 Faith, Desire, and Machismo 75
4 Virile Celibacy 99
5 Votes of Faith: Force, Power, and Political Form 125
6 The Miraculous and the Mundane 150
Conclusion 177
Epilogue 187
Acknowledgments 191
Notes 193
Bibliography 217
Index 235