Asserting Protestant legitimacy in a Catholic context: rhetorical strategies of the Confederação Evangélica do Brasil, 1930s–1950s
Date
2025
Authors
Version
OA Version
Published version
Citation
Melkonian MC. Asserting Protestant Legitimacy in a Catholic Context: Rhetorical Strategies of the Confederação Evangélica do Brasil, 1930s–1950s. Church History. 2025;94(2):321-337. doi:10.1017/S0009640725102527
Abstract
During the first half of the 20th century, Brazilian Protestants turned to their pens and periodicals to defend the legitimacy and beneficial nature of their presence in a majority Catholic nation. This period—spanning Brazil’s first republic, Getúlio Vargas’s authoritarian Estado novo, and the developmentalist era of Juscelino Kubitschek (1956–1961)—witnessed several regime changes and new national constitutions. Amid these political shifts, the Brazilian Catholic church sought to increase its cultural and symbolic dominance in the country. Meanwhile, several Brazilian Protestant groups came together to form the Confederação Evangélica do Brasil (CEB) in 1934, both to coordinate Protestant educational and social work and defend freedom of Protestant religious expression. With their denominational roots in Brazil extending less than one hundred years and their ties to US mission boards making them appear suspiciously foreign, Brazilian Protestants vehemently defended their patriotism. Relying on the writings of many CEB leaders, the organization’s periodical Unum corpus, and biannual reports, I argue that the Brazilian ecumenical leaders used several strategies to create a rhetorical defense of Brazilian Protestant legitimacy. They expressed occasional appreciation for Brazilian Catholics, celebrated Brazilian Protestant history and public recognition of contemporary Brazilian Protestants, and stridently opposed Catholic attempts to achieve cultural or social dominance. I also argue that because they maintained a constant defensive posture, the Brazilian Protestant ecumenists of the 1930s–1950s embraced a vision of ecumenism that explicitly excluded Roman Catholicism.
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License
© The Author(s), 2025. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of American Society of Church History. This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided that no alterations are made and the original article is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University Press must be obtained prior to any commercial use and/or adaptation of the article. This article has been published under a Read & Publish Transformative Open Access (OA) Agreement with CUP.