Racism and Religious Intolerance: A Critical Analysis of the Coloniality of Brazilian Christianity

Abstract

Abstract This article examines the persistence of religious intolerance experienced by practitioners of Afro-Brazilian religions. Drawing from recent reports and historical resources on religious intolerance, it approaches religious diversity in Brazil from a decolonial perspective, pointing to the contradiction between the image of Brazil as a place where religious change and plurality occurs with minimal conflict and the painful reality experienced by practitioners of Afro-Brazilian religions. Picturing religious intolerance and racism as two faces of the same coin, it argues that both must be resisted. The article concludes with a call for a religious-racial literacy which is intercultural in nature and promises a path to overcome the insidious persistence of racism and religious intolerance. Such a way forward, however, demands a de-centering of Brazilian Christianity, despite its religious majority status, in favor of an epistemic humility which gives full consideration to the knowledge, memories, and lived experience of Afro-Brazilian religious practitioners.