Vote of Faith: Democracy, Desire, and the Turbulent Lives of Priest Politicians
A richly cinematic and compelling look at priest-politicians in Brazil and their religious and secular entanglements

What 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.

1145113816
Vote of Faith: Democracy, Desire, and the Turbulent Lives of Priest Politicians
A richly cinematic and compelling look at priest-politicians in Brazil and their religious and secular entanglements

What 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.

35.0 Out Of Stock
Vote of Faith: Democracy, Desire, and the Turbulent Lives of Priest Politicians

Vote of Faith: Democracy, Desire, and the Turbulent Lives of Priest Politicians

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

Vote of Faith: Democracy, Desire, and the Turbulent Lives of Priest Politicians

by Maya Mayblin

Paperback

$35.00 
  • SHIP THIS ITEM
    Temporarily Out of Stock Online
  • PICK UP IN STORE

    Your local store may have stock of this item.

Related collections and offers


Overview

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

What 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.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781531509095
Publisher: Fordham University Press
Publication date: 12/03/2024
Series: Catholic Practice in the Americas
Pages: 240
Product dimensions: 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.00(d)

About the Author

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.

Table of Contents

Introduction | 1

1 Politics: Endless and Addictive | 31

2 Celibacy as Theopolitics | 53

3 Faith, Desire, and Machismo | 75

4 Virile Celibacy | 99

5 Votes of Faith: Force, Power, and Political Form | 125

6 The Miraculous and the Mundane | 150

Conclusion | 177

Epilogue | 187

Acknowledgments | 191

Notes | 193

Bibliography | 217

Index | 235

From the B&N Reads Blog

Customer Reviews