The Charismatic Gymnasium: Breath, Media, and Religious Revivalism in Contemporary Brazil

In The Charismatic Gymnasium Maria José de Abreu examines how Charismatic Catholicism in contemporary Brazil produces a new form of total power through a concatenation of the breathing body, theology, and electronic mass media. De Abreu documents a vast religious respiratory program of revival popularly branded as "the aerobics of Jesus." Pneuma-the Greek term for air, breath, and spirit-is central to this aerobic program, whose goal is to labor on the athletic elasticity of spirit. Tracing...