Vote of Faith : Democracy, Desire, and the Turbulent Lives of Priest Politicians / Maya Mayblin.

Unlimited

Authorized users

DRM-Free

Can lend chapters, not whole books

Vote of Faith : Democracy, Desire, and the Turbulent Lives of Priest Politicians / Maya Mayblin.

9781531509118

New York, NY Fordham University Press, [2025]

©2024

English

In English.

1 online resource

10.1515/9781531509118 doi

A richly cinematic and compelling look at priest-politicians in Brazil and their religious and secular entanglementsWhat 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.

Access limited to authorized users.

Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.

text file PDF

Mayblin Maya : 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.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.

OCLC-licensed vendor bibliographic record.
Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed November 08 2025)

Online Resources > Ebooks
All Resources