Políticas e práticas missionárias: discutindo a atuação de uma instituição missionária a partir da trajetória da missão novas tribos do Brasil

Abstract

This thesis consists of a reflection on the missionary activity connected to the evangelical fundamentalist tradition. The proposal here starts with a 'playing with scales' perspective to understand this phenomenon comprehensively from local to transnational relations. Using the workof the New Tribes Mission of Brazil (NTMB) - which is a mission whose main objective is the evangelization of all indigenous people in Brazil - as an object of study, we seek to understand this complex scenario, positioning these agents historically, socially, theologically, and politically within a larger arena of disputes in the field of indigenist actions. The interest here is to understand in the terms and intentions of these agents what they do and how they explain and define their actions. In this way, we based this thesis on five movements of analysis. In this way, this thesis is built on five analysis movements. The introductory one seeks to understand the mission category beyond the common sense of academics and society in general, locating in models and terms of the field. The second one presents the NTMB from a larger context of disputes in the indigenist action field, which allows the reader to realize the difficulties in facing this object. The third brings the institution's history and the formative process from an anthropological description. The fourth seeks to discuss the mission considering the fundamentalist tradition to which it is related, analyzing the native categories and the history of this tradition. And the last one deals with this object from its action in the context of political practices since we understand this as a political action based on faith that tries to present itself from a supposed apolitical perspective; however, that takes political, social, and economic forms and models with the religious scope. Therefore, understanding ethnographically the mission contributes to comprehending this universe, which is a constitutive part of the indigenist action field and has also become a significative figure in the national political scenario.