Religião, poder e conflitos de gênero: estudo sobre as missionárias da AIECB (Aliança das Igrejas Evangélicas Congregacionais do Brasil).

Abstract

In the Congregational Alliance of Evangelical Churches of Brazil (AIECB) rights acquired by the holders of diploma in Theology are regulated depending on the gender of the bearer and receive different classifications. Only men are allowed to exercise leadership of churches and institutions. These are ordered pastors. Women with the same diploma are accredited as missionaries and can only assume roles conceived as strictly "feminine." According to their leaders, female ministries are restricted to household (as wife and mother) and their lay ecclesial ministry should be only an extension of home activities, namely, teaching children, teenagers or assisting the pastor. The whole structure of the institution is directed accordingly and the missionary women incorporate this as something "natural". We assume that there are power relations engendered on this "regulation" whose purpose is to prevent women theologically qualified to assume the leadership of churches and institutions. Although the practice of Christ has emphasized a "discipleship of equals", from first century, the Christianity adopted patriarchal values. The AIECB is still regulated by these values. In the current context, even though the formal differences remain, some forms of resistance take the domination by surprise, mainly by the subtlety with which they assert themselves. We argue that the missionaries´ claims for greater visibility to their ministries and financial recognition, rare in the past, can be conceived as strategies to break the domination by challenging the male hegemony. Similar to Bourdieu (2003), we wonder about what mechanisms or historical forces have been responsible for both de-historicizing the structures and perpetuation of the sexual division until today, as the maintenance, the hegemony and the public valuation of the masculine over the feminine do not stand anymore as natural and incontestable.