A violência dos justos: Evang élicos, mídia e periferias da metrópole

Abstract

In the Assembly of God of the Last Days, former bandits, now missionaries, are central personages in the constitution of symbolic and territorial circuits in which criminality and religion are intertwined. In peripheral spaces, reconfigured by such evangelical imaginary, the politico-religious mediators of that church seek a redeeming transformation of the "bandits" and the crime territories. By means of rituals, Pastor Marcos forges an imaginary community strongly modeled on the life experiences of the dwellers of different peripheries. In this article, we discuss how the physic-moral constitution of the person redeemed by this church acts upon the sufferings not only of the former bandits, but of those identified with the larger scenario of crime and violence.