A Brazilian Way of Reading Jacob A.Belzen’s “Para uma Psicologia Cultural da Religião"

Abstract

The article presents a brazilian reading of the recently translated Belzen’s book “Para uma Psicologia Cultural da Religião” (original in English: “Towards a Cultural Psychology of Religion”). Taking into account the religious pluralism of Brazil the author presents a short overview of Belzen’s main concepts of Culture and Religion, showing a possible interdisciplinary approach to the relations between both in the Psychology in general and more specifically in the Psychology of Religion to. The author comments also the usefulness of the belzian principles, approaches and applications to other non European cultural and religious contexts, like ours. Following his indications, Valle shows its effectiveness in today’s increasing complexity of the Brazilian religious field, going back to a famous and well studied high pathological case of milenarism in a lost and small place of Minas Gerais, called Catulé. He tries at the same time to show that many theoretical and methodological hints suggested by Belzen about the relations between psychology, culture, religion and history can be a very useful instrument in order to bring in a new light to some otherwise hidden psychosocial and cultural aspects of religious tragedies like this happened in Catulé in the fifties.