The critical study of the history of Protestantism within Religious Studies

reflections from Richard Shaull’s trajectory in Brazil

Abstract

The public presence of evangelical churches is a matter of academic interest in their current social relations and their historical origins in Brazil. Through a bibliographic review, this article aims to reflect on the area of Religious Studies in Brazil, as an area for the critical investigation of multiple Christianities; the work interrogates the interdisciplinary interfaces of Religious Studies regarding the study of Protestantism; it problematizes the research on representative figures of Protestantism as a way to analyse their contexts; and finally, it reflects on the place of theology within religious studies. To this end, the trajectory of Richard Shaull (1919-2002), an American missionary, is chosen as a research path that allows access to the issues of Brazil in the 1950s and 1960s in their historical, political, social, religious, and theological dimensions. As a result, it is understood that an attentive reading of the Shaull’s trajectory demonstrates the multiplicity of relations of a historical subject and opens complementary paths of investigation that help to think about the religious data in its complexity and in specific temporal cuts. Through Shaull, it becomes possible to investigate the relations between American and Brazilian Protestantism; the development of the ecumenical movement and the movements of youth and students; the consolidation of the social responsibility of the churches within Brazilian ecumenical Protestantism; the history of public theologies developed in a Latin American context, such as the Theology of the Revolution; the social engagement of Protestant actors and their connection with the struggles of the period; the institutional and theological tensions between antagonistic sectors within Brazilian Protestantism.