Entre campos : o intercâmbio espírita Brasil-Portugal e a (re)construção do movimento espírita português (1940-1980)

Abstract

The Book of Spirits, written by Allan Kardec, was published in France in 1857, in connection with the nineteenth-century "scientistic" context, aiming to bring answers to the phenomena considered "supernatural". A few years after its launch, there are reports of the insertion of Spiritism in the Brazil and Portugal. In both religious scenario, mainly local highbrow elite welcomed Spiritism. Its diffusion was evidenced from an opposition press, which aroused the popular curiosity. The spiritist expansion in Portugal and Brazil had specific characteristics: whereas in Portugal we saw a spiritism more linked to the scientific bases, in Brazil the spiritist movement was strengthened through a social and Christian bias. In Brazil, this emphasis was consolidated by the work of Francisco Cândido Xavier and Brazilian Spiritist Federation - FEB, by the time of the publication of Brazil, Heart of the World, Homeland of the Gospel (1938). This book founded the construction of a Brazilian spiritist tradition. After its release, it was considered Brazil as having a "mission spiritual", a spiritist resignification of the founding myth of Brazil "Land of Promise". Supported on this spiritual mission, the Brazilian Spiritist authorities intensified their work in the Portuguese religious field, especially after the 1949 Gold Pact. The Portuguese spiritist movement had a significant expansion mainly in the early twentieth century. However, between the years 1933 and 1974, the Salazar regime, supported by the ICAR, dominated the political field. In 1953, the Portuguese government suspended the activities of the Portuguese Spiritist Federation - FEP, since it did not recognize it as a pedagogical and scientific institution. Several spiritist centers also had their suspended activities, restricting the Portuguese spiritist movement to a few spiritist centers and family services. Only the Revista Estudos Psíquicos was in circulation during the period, which was founded by Isidoro Duarte Santos (1939). This journal was the main source for the historical understanding of the encounter between these two religious fields (BOURDIEU, 2004), Brazil and Portugal, in the process of (re)construction of the Portuguese Spiritist movement (1940-1980). We are based in Arribas (2014) to understand the role of the Brazilian, Portuguese and Luso-Brazilian Spiritist authorities and their actions in the specific types of authorities: intellectual, institutional and charismatic. Those types of authorities have strengthened the exchange between those fields and guided historical religious references of experiences consolidated in the Brazilian Spiritist Movement for Portugal, as pointed out by Bernardo Lewgoy (2008), adding the transcendental “spiritual mission” category. The historical link between Brazil and Portugal was culturally resignified and allowed the construction of specific(s) representation(s) of Spiritism in those fields. The exchange of their thoughts united convictions, which are historically reassured and “spiritually” connected, making Brazil a protagonist on the religious field, as a discourse that represents the “religious” Spiritism (social and Christian), which we believe influenced not only the Portuguese, but also on the international religious field, that is in progress nowadays.