The thaumaturgy in the World Church of the Power of God: magic and magical thinking?

Abstract

That Neopentecostalism using substrate own magical matrix Brazilian religious, no doubt. Researchers like Ari Pedro Oro, Antonio Gouvêa Mendonça and Maria das Dores Campos Machado, for example, have worked this theme under the scrutiny of the Social Sciences. Thus, this brief essay is scope to bring back to the fore, the well-crafted question of the relationship between religion and magic, circumscribed here, the neo-Pentecostalism of the Worldwide Church of God's Power. From the anthropological locus seek to verify, first, the existence of magic in Pentecostal worship, whose focus is the role of the pastor-mage healing ritual in which such practices are more strongly evident, and, secondly, we check through the ethnographic evidence collected in the field, ie, fetishes, magical thinking that permeates the symbolic imagery of the faithful customers, the IMPD.