MUDANÇA DE ETHOS DO PENTECOSTALISMO CLÁSSICO PARA O NEOPENTECOSTALISMO. ESTUDO DE CASO: A ASSEMBLEIA DE DEUS EM IMPERATRIZ-MA

Abstract

By completing 100 years of its implementation in Brazil, the pentecostalism is presented in its several settings (classic, of divine healing and neopentencostal) as one of the most significant religious phenomena which happened in Brazil during the twentieth century. In its history goes through profound changes, modify its ethos and sets new ways of relationship with society. The classic Pentecostalism, represented by God s Assembly and by the Christian Church of Brazil, since its inception in 1910 and 1911, respectively, is characterized by the adoption of an ethos based on the sectarian asceticism. In this study, we sought to investigate the transformations and changes occurred in the Evangelical Church God s Assembly in the city of Imperatriz, located in the southwest state of Maranhão. We defend the idea that the transformations and changes which happen in the beliefs and practices of the God s Assembly in Imperatriz IEADI mean a change of ethos. This changing of ethos must be realized as a process of neopentecostalization and not only a natural development, internal to Pentecostalism. This neopentecostalization means a process of accommodation to the consumer society and a response to the worsening of the conflicts in the competitive market for good of salvation. The neopentecostalism, which the whose major representative are the Universal Church of God s Kingdom and International Church of God s Grace, reflects in their beliefs and practices an ethos of world s affirmation which exists in neopentecostal environment the Theology of Prosperity as one of the biggest means of propagation and legitimation. In this dissertation, seeks to analyze, by bibliographical research and empirical field, the influences exerted by neopentecostalism on this church, where is registered the modification of an ethos before characteristic of the classic Pentecostalism, and now, influenced by a process of neopentecostalization, it is presented as a new ethos, of world s affirmation. The presence of the elements which characterize the neopentecostalism, mainly the Theology of Prosperity, in the beliefs and practices of IEADI, as well as its influence in the believers everyday life, causing considerable transformations in their stereotypes uses and customs, is determinant to state that the Church God s Assembly IEADI, really goes through an ethos changing, through a process of neopentecostalization, We understand that this phenomena, it is not an isolated fact, because occurs in all the religious Pentecostal protestant Brazilian field.