O “fim do mundo” e os “desbravadores da fé”: a disciplina como meio de salvação na escrita de Ellen White.

Abstract

This work analyses the different pedagogical strategies conducted in the Pathfinders Club, a departament from the Seventh-day Adventist Church, focused on teaching and entertainment of children and teenagers. Considering the club of Pathfinders as an appropriation of the club of scouts and their ideology, which suits with the context of modernisation and social hygiene of the 20th century, we discuss as such ideals were remeant by giving rise to this institution. We analyze how the rules of the body, established by this entity, are used as mechanisms to form a generation of strong and healthy believers, differentiating them from the secular society that, in their vision, are increasingly sick, weak and decadent. Therefore, we understand the creation of the Pathfinder Club as a reception by the Adventist Church of Ellen White's writing, which in her eschatological narrative, associates the history of the end of the world to the necessity of a preparation, by the Christian, to resist physical and spiritually the persecutions of the recent times. As a result, the figure of the Pathfinder is characterized as an Adventist representation of excellence, a model that brings up the main Adventist cultural symbols, collaborating with the consolidation of the identity of this religious group.