A Christian Politics of Friendship on a Brazilian Frontier

Abstract

This paper explores ethnography of municipal elections, promise-making and miracles to show how Christians problematise both friendship and politics on a settler frontier in Brazilian Amazonia. Bringing these themes together generates new anthropological perspectives on each, while complementing Derrida's critique of Schmitt's friend–enemy distinction – his definition of the political. Yet the main ethnographic point complicates the argument that both Schmitt and Brazilianist anthropologists critiquing clientelism have made: that Christianity reflects and legitimises the political order. In contrast, I show how the problem of friendship, produced through Christian concerns with the constancy of presence, legitimises and deligitimises politics at once. The overarching message is that politics, friendship (sociality) and Christianity – usually kept analytically separate – are uniquely clarified where they intersect, as they pass through persons, who foreground and background these domains themselves.

Keywords:

• Christianity
• friendship
• politics
• miracles
• political theology
• Brazil

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Erratum

Acknowledgements

The research on which this paper is based was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), The Cambridge Commonwealth Trust, Fonds de Recherche sur la Société et la Culture (Québec) and The William Wyse Fund. Postdoctoral Fellowships from SSHRC and the São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP) supported important phases of writing. A version of this paper was first presented in April 2009 at the conference Foregrounds and Backgrounds: Ventures in the Anthropology of Christianity, organised at the University of Copenhagen by Andreas Bandak and Jonas Jørgensen. I am grateful for the encouraging discussions of this paper in Copenhagen and of different versions and parts of it in subsequent presentations: at ‘Friends, Patrons, Followers’: Anthropological and Cross-cultural Perspectives, organised in July 2009 by Eric A. Heuser, Caroline Krüger and Thomas Loy for the similarly-themed Research Group at the University of Freiburg; at Friendship and the Nation in the Modern World, organised by Danny Kalpan and Thomas Kühne at the Leir Foundation/Clark University, Luxembourg, in March 2010; at (Extra)ordinary Miracles: Explorations in Traditional Christianities, an invited session at the 2010 AAA in New Orleans organised by Anthony Shenoda; and also at From the Mouth of God: ‘The Political’ from a Post-Secular Perspective, a 2010 EASA session organised by Alice Forbess and Lucia Michelutti. Finally, versions of this paper have also been read by insightful and generous colleagues at the University of Tornoto who participated in the Socio-Cultural amd Linguistic Anthropology Discussion Paper Series, the Religion, Culture, Politics Works in Progress Seminar and in the Discussion Group on Ethical Life. My gratitude for fine-grained input regarding this ethnography goes to Stephen Hugh-Jones, Michael Lambek, Simon Coleman, Girish Daswani, Marlene Goldman, Kevin Lewis O'Neil, Ana Claudia Marques, Valentina Napolitano, Anthony Shenoda, Jorge Villela, Zoe Wool, and of course the editors of this special issue and the three anonymous reviewers who pushed me in the right directions. My interlocutors in Marabá of course deserve special thanks as – I hope they will agree – they effectively taught me the ropes.

Notes

This version has been corrected. Please see Erratum (http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00141844.2013.764712).

Derrida shows the friend to be a ‘brother’ and potential enemy – not a sister or a stranger – thus compromising ‘democratic’ politics.

Although the concept of ‘popular’ as a descriptor of religious forms has been critiqued for incorporating value judgements and for being non-specific, I do not think that either points are intrinsic to the concept. Neither do I feel that I can do without it. I am describing social forms drawing on the spectrum of Spiritism, Catholicism and Pentecostalism, while operating unquestioningly under the sign of Jesus/God with irregular Church attendance.

The ‘frontier’ concept for Amazonia has been questioned (Cleary 1993), yet as a heuristic it usefully highlights major in-migration and state promotion of development (Léna & de Oliviera 1991).

I conducted 21 months of research (2004–2005 and 2006) on an urban periphery, in a land occupation and in a regularised land settlement (Lebner 2009).

Amerindianist scholarship is uniquely notable for exploring the non-Christian cosmological bases of friendship and enmity (Viveiros de Castro 1992; Fausto Forthcoming).

This also follows calls to study ‘outwards’ from pilgrimage to society (Coleman & Eade 2004).

Although it is part of official Catholic doctrine that humans have ‘free will’, the nature of this will has been debated and interrogated by Catholic and Protestant theologians alike (Sproul 1997). And so it should be no surprise that my interlocutors wonder about it (see below).

It is worth recalling that there are conflicting ‘orthodox’ Chrisitan views of the devil and evil. On the one hand, the liberationist Church post-Vatican-II sought to terrestrialise otherworldly images of hell and the devil (Boff 1973). On the other, Pentecostals and Catholic Charismatics are bringing the devil decidedly ‘back’. Affirmed certainties in either regard by Brazilian Christians elsewhere may have to do with adherence to one of these orthodoxies (e.g. Mayblin 2010). Yet my interlocutors embrace the potentials of both discourses while allowing for a higher degree of Spiritism: that evil comes from without (the devil and his spiritual agents) and within (the nature of the weak, porous or susceptible body and the unequal human world itself).

See Anidjar (2003) on how the commandment to love your enemy generalises enmity.