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Material Religion

The Journal of Objects, Art and Belief

ISSN: 1743-2200 (Print) 1751-8342 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rfmr20

portable power, religious swag: mediating


authority in brazilian neo-pentecostalism

gavin feller

To cite this article: gavin feller (2018): portable power, religious swag: mediating authority in
brazilian neo-pentecostalism, Material Religion, DOI: 10.1080/17432200.2018.1488506

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/17432200.2018.1488506

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portable power, religious
swag: mediating
authority in brazilian neo-
pentecostalism
gavin feller

southern utah university, cedar city, utah


ABSTRACT
This study is an ethnographic and conceptual analysis of religious
objects, their uses, and mediation of authority within the Universal
Church of the Kingdom of God (Universal Church) in Brazil. Drawing
on scholarship within media studies, religion and media, and
material religion, I distinguish between artifacts used to cement
implicit contracts between Universal Church followers and their
church community, which I call contractual media, or swag, and
those that followers bring to meetings to be blessed and then take
home to mediate both good and evil forces in family, work, and
social life—these I call portable media. While portable object media
are seen by their owners as powerful tools, contractual media, on
the other hand, create implicit power relations that keep followers
tied to the institutional church in a reciprocal exchange predicated
upon expected prosperity as evidence of faithful attendance,
fidelity, and personal sacrifice. The physical exchange of material
goods in religious spaces constitutes a perpetuation rather than
a disruption of institutional religious authority. As infrastructure,
contractual object media establish and maintain conditions for
otherwise mundane materials to mediate power on a daily basis.
Through attention toward portable and contract object media, as
part of what I am calling material microstructure, we can further
complicate religious authority as it is mediated through objects,
not just in one-way flows but as dynamic exchanges and trade-offs
between personal empowerment and institutional control.

Keywords: religion and media; mediation; authority; religious


objects; material microstructure; Brazil; neo-Pentecostalism;
Universal Church of the Kingdom of God

Gavin Feller is an Assistant Professor of Material Religion volume 0, issue 0, pp. 1–000
­Media Studies at Southern Utah University. DOI: 10.1080/17432200.2018.1488506
His research focuses on media and religion.
gavinfeller@suu.edu
© 2018 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
Introduction
I stepped off an inner city bus onto a busy Brazilian sidewalk

Portable Power, Religious Swag: Mediating Authority in Brazilian Neo-Pentecostalism


bustling with the sounds and smells of street vendors. Taking my
time to observe the scene and distracted by the lure of cheap,
freshly fried pastries, I was passed on both sides by anxious
parishioners pouring from bus after bus behind me, clutching
various glass bottles filled with olive oil. As I neared the entrance
to the Catedral da Fé—the largest temple of the Universal
Church of the Kingdom of God (Universal Church) in Rio de
Janeiro, and former church headquarters—the number of ven-
dors selling oil multiplied as they repeatedly hailed the hurrying
mass, “who forgot their oil for the meeting?” Not a second after
finding a seat, attendees rushed to remove the bottles of oil
from their plastic bags. Others walked briskly but quietly to the
front of the large auditorium where they placed printed pictures
of loved ones and small notes of inscribed paper on the stage
before settling in for the service. Once blessed by the pastor, the
oil was transformed into a powerful spiritual tool—its owner
holding it a little more tightly as s/he left the cathedral for home.
As a visitor, the centrality of the oil in this religious ser-
vice—along with all the free materials I left with each meeting I

Gavin Feller
visited—was unexpected, given neo-Pentecostalism’s supposed
dismissal of materiality; for faithful followers, however, mate-
rial objects are the blood of daily devotion. Its incredibly rapid
growth, its knack for stirring public controversy, and its influence
on the increasing convergence of Brazilian politics, popular
media, and religion, have made the Universal Church the subject
of much scholarly attention in recent decades (Campos 1997;
Mariano 2004; Freston 1995; Chesnut 2011). The majority of
existing research has generally focused on the public influence
of the Universal Church’s political efforts, its polemical rheto-

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Issue 0
ric, and its robust media ownership from a critical perspective
­(Campos 1997; Birman and Lehmann 1999; Mariano 2004). Con-
troversy and corruption are catnip for journalists and scholars,
and rightfully so—particularly when a religious organization
such as the Universal Church grows in popularity in spite of,
or perhaps because of, such drama. Sensational scandals and
media showmanship, however, divert attention from the daily
and mundane use of taken-for-granted material artifacts and
3 objects so central to lived religion and scholars’ understanding
of mediation more broadly.
Attention to materiality itself, however, is not the end of
analysis but the beginning. Critiquing the increasing ubiquity
of material religion studies and the potential loss of purpose
therein, Bruno Reinhardt (2016) argues, “definitions of material-
ity become intrinsically and performatively bound to questions
Material Religion

of intervention—thus of normativity, authority, difference, and


freedom” (78). In this paper I will focus on one such intersection:
the articulation of religious objects and notions of religious
Article

power and authority. Paper handouts, handfuls of salt, plas-


tic bottles of water, and glass bottles of oil—together these,
alongside an array of ephemera, make up the under-studied
infrastructure, or what I am calling the material microstructure,
of Universal Church followers’ daily religious lives. As such, atten-
tion to the material microstructure of religion is attention to the
phenomenological conditions of possibility that mediate power
invisibly embedded in such seemingly unimportant ephemera.
This study contributes to research on religious objects in the
Universal Church and to our larger understanding of mediation
and infrastructure through both ethnographic engagement
and conceptual analysis. A handful of studies of the Universal
Church have noted the vital role material objects play in the
religion. Sansi Roca (2007), for instance, argues that money as an
object not only renews social and personal relationships, it also
contributes to the Universal Church’s larger goal to Christianize
Brazil. Kramer (2002) also pointed to religious objects within the
Universal Church as tools for individual empowerment tied to
Pentecostal ideologies of local-global relations. This study builds
on such work by more specifically focusing on religious objects
as a material network facilitating particular power relations.
By providing ethnographic detail of followers’ daily use
and relationships with the materiality of their faith I argue that
religious objects, inseparably linked to one another, make up
a larger mediating microstructure of power and authority with
individual and institutional articulations. I distinguish between
artifacts used to cement implicit contracts between Universal
Church followers and their church community, which I call
contractual media, or swag, and those that followers bring to
meetings to be blessed and then take home to mediate both
good and evil forces in family, work, and social life—these I call
portable media. Both types of objects mediate religious author-
ity in ways that complicate studies of material religion and medi-
ation. These object media simultaneously empower their users
while keeping them tied to the power of the institutional church.
Rather than discrete or mutually exclusive categories, my use
of portable and contractual media is meant to highlight biases
toward particular types of religious power and authority. The
ritual exchange of religious objects in everyday worship also has
important implications for exchange theory. Exchange theory
reminds scholars of religion and media of the centrality of reci-
4 procity and exchange in social relations, even when scholars of
Christianity traditionally focus on the symbolic and immaterial.
Because “a gift is received with a burden attached” (Mauss 1990,
53), the small objects given away at Universal Church meetings
should be understood as obligations—they place their receivers
in debt and therefore subservient to a debtor. Exchange theory
thus offers a critical lens for viewing the power relationships
implicitly embedded in religious ephemera. The specific enact-
ment of Universal Church ritual exchange, however, complicates
any simple notion of unilateral giving and receiving.
Though small, cheap, and otherwise commonplace, object
media—an overarching category of which contractual and
portable media are a subset—give us a new perspective for the
lived religion of those that belong to a church that prides itself

Portable Power, Religious Swag: Mediating Authority in Brazilian Neo-Pentecostalism


on the large, the luxurious, and the lofty—a church that, in spite
of public attempts to dismiss materiality as lifeless, nevertheless
exerts significant power through enlivened pedestrian objects,
power woven throughout its humble and hardworking material
microstructure.

The Universal Church and the Brazilian Religious Context


Brazil currently has the largest community of Pentecostals in
the world, and the Universal Church is the most notable of a
number of third-wave/neo-Pentecostal religions in the country
that focus on prosperity theology, are heavily invested in radio
and television, and share a global vision (Mariano 2004; Freston
1995; Freston 2005). The Universal Church, or simply ­“Universal”
as it is frequently referred to in Brazil, was founded in 1977 by
Edir Macedo, a former state lottery employee. Raised a Catholic,
Macedo once frequented the Afro-Brazilian religion Umbanda,
which has since become (among many other faiths) the target of
intense Universal Church criticism, before converting to Pente-
costalism and devoting his life to the ministry at age 33 (Freston

Gavin Feller
1995).
After more than a decade of steady growth, the number of
Universal followers increased most drastically between 1990 and
2000, rising to 2 million in just 23 years according to national
census data1 (IBGE 2000; Mariano 2004). Much of this growth
has been attributed to Macedo’s purchase in 1989 of what is
now the second largest television network in the country, Rede
Record, one among many radio and television stations used by
the Universal Church as tools for attracting followers (Mariano
2004; Birman and Lehmann 1999). Regular charges of fraud and

Volume 0
charlatanism have long accompanied Macedo and the Universal

Issue 0
Church, though the most controversial episodes—namely the
‘kicking of the saint’ incident2 and a widely circulated video of
Macedo instructing pastors in deceptive monetary collection
practices—appear to be behind the organization for now, at
least until Brazil’s lethargic legal system catches up (Mariano
2004; Cuadros 2013). The Universal Church’s use of mass elec-
tronic media as their chief forms of proselytizing also equates
5 with a stronger political presence due to Brazil’s network media
ownership laws (Campos 1997). Indeed, research on the inter-
section of Brazilian religion, politics, and media is a healthy and
growing area of academic study in the country.
However, two specific dimensions of the Universal Church
have received much less scholarly attention: its appropriation of
Judaica and its persistent use of small objects; in other words,
Material Religion

materiality and lived religion. In order to understand the role


of material objects in Universal Church followers’ lives and the
organization’s skill for synthesis, it is important to situate the Uni-
Article

versal Church within what Magali Cunha (2007) calls the matriz
religiosa Brasileira (Brazilian religious matrix): the mingling of
Indigenous, African, and Portuguese religious influences par-
ticular to Brazil. Cunha argues, the borrowing and blending of
objects, rituals, and beliefs—a process she calls “dialogic” rather
than syncretic in order to grant respect to the faithful by avoid-
ing the negative connotations of the latter—practiced by the
Universal Church is characteristic of all Brazilian religions.
According to Birman and Lehmann (1999), the Universal
Church rabidly consumes ideas and practices from neigh-
boring faiths, which are dismissed and rejected in nearly the
same breath—a theological and material looting followed by a
discursive burning. For example, demons possessing the bodies
of Universal Church adherents are frequently diagnosed as
evil spirits from the Afro-Brazilian traditions of Umbanda and
Candomblé—curses from a lower, primitive religious order.
However, Universal Church priests frequently use language and
objects originating from within these very same faiths to remove
such unwanted ghosts (Birman and Lehmann 1999). Such
appropriation can in part be explained as a need for familiarity
with Afro-Brazilian beliefs and lexicon in order to exploit them
for healing and exorcism rites (Da Silva 2007). In other words,
demons must first be conjured in order to be defeated (Meyer
2015).
The Universal Church’s dismissal of materiality, undermined
by its very dependence upon it, reflects the paradoxical nature
of anthropophagy and the Church’s adaptation to the Brazilian
religious milieu. “Even though Christian—and especially Prot-
estant—discourse employs an anti-idolatry and antiritualistic
rhetoric,” Meyer (2015) argues, “indigenous religious practices
are still regarded as powerful,” practices in which “human actions
and material objects are indispensable for getting in touch with
spirits” (232).
In recent work Cunha (2014) uses Peircian semiotics to
explain the appropriation of Old Testament signs and sym-
bols, which has become an increasingly important element of
Brazilian neo-Pentecostalism. Cunha argues that the Universal
Church and its religious marketplace rivals pull Old Testament
symbols—such as the Jewish temple, Israelite kings, ideas about
spiritual warfare and domination, musical instruments, and Jew-
ish festivals—from their context and re-signify them for practical
6 uses that resonate within Brazilian popular culture and mass
media. Although by no means the first to do so, the Universal
Church is certainly a recent leader in such re-appropriation,
evident in its adoption of the Ark of the Covenant, the Temple
of Solomon, and kings David and Solomon—all of which are
closely tied to Macedo’s longstanding focus on war and empire.
Old Testament symbols, Cunha maintains, are particularly useful
for demonstrating the success and power of those on God’s right
hand. These symbols—materialized in architecture, swag, and
merchandise—link to prosperity theology and the expansion of
the Universal Church empire on a global scale.3
As “faith artifacts,” tangible objects such as miniature Ark of
the Covenant replicas, anointed roses, and vials of oil imported

Portable Power, Religious Swag: Mediating Authority in Brazilian Neo-Pentecostalism


from Jerusalem act as “tangible symbolic constructs, which
direct and embody religious expectation and devotion” (Kramer
2002, 22). Although such objects can readily be recognized as
commodities within an ideology of exploitation, Kramer also
sees them as “faith-based vehicles of individual empowerment”
(23). For Kramer, such objects are more than merchandise: they
are intricately tied to economic exchange, individual empow-
erment, and the Church’s quest for global expansion. When
procured during worship, these objects act as evidence of
religious devotion, securing promised blessings for the faithful.
In her analysis of the material products based on the popular
Evangelical ant character, Smilinguido, Bellotti (2010) recognizes
three primary functions of religious objects in the Brazilian
context: reminders of faith in troubled moments, personalized
tools of evangelization, and the source of income, icons, and
­commodities (24).
The Universal Church’s use of religious objects is an appro-
priation not just of Judaica and Old Testament symbols of power
and empire, it also importantly taps into the rich material culture

Gavin Feller
of Afro-Brazilian religion. When it comes to ritual and enchant-
ment the neo-Pentecostal Universal Church arguably has more
in common with Catholicism and Afro-Brazilian religion than
it does with other Protestant religions (Sansi Roca 2007). Small
religious objects are particularly central to religious rituals in
the country’s two major religions of African origin—Umbanda
and Candomblé. In both traditions everyday materials such as
stones and pieces of iron act as tools for magical manipulation
of the mundane world (Sansi Roca 2005; Halloy 2013). More
importantly, religious objects are integral to “countless magical

Volume 0
practices oriented to prosperity” in Brazil (Sansi Roca 2005, 323).

Issue 0
How objects acquire religious agency is key to under-
standing their role in the Universal Church. In her study of the
Candomblé cult Xangô, Halloy argues that social practices with
things traditionally produce distinct ontological relationships
between individuals, objects, and gods. However, Candomblé
ritual activity creates ontological hybrids precisely because the
multi-sensory experience of ritual blurs the ontology of objects.
7 Likewise, Roger Sansi Roca (2005) ties the agency of Candomblé
objects to their presence in ritual events. Object agency, accord-
ing to Sansi Roca, does not come from a mind; it comes from
a body at a particular time in a particular space. Ritual objects,
like all media, extend sacred events and spaces through durable
traces.
Religious objects cannot be separated from embodied prac-
Material Religion

tices and sacred spaces. They must also be understood as agents


of social and geo-political power. While the ritual objects of
Umbanda and Candomblé include natural materials like water,
Article

stones, and oil, in addition to these objects the Universal Church


transforms economic objects such as money into tools of divine
agency (Sansi Roca 2005). “Putting money at the centre of their
ritual practice,” Sansi Roca posits, “evangelical Christians are also
making a political statement: they are investing in a currency,
and they are giving it a superior form of value, a sacred value. In
so doing, their objective is not just to sanctify their money, but
to sanctify the country: appropriating money is a necessary step
in the direction of transforming Brazil into a Christian nation”
(321). In this way, the Universal Church moves beyond the status
of an economic organization with material returns in mind—as
is often the center of its criticism—to become a political system
infused with geo-political goals.
According to Da Silva (2007), neo-Pentecostalism “has trans-
lated the ethos of magical and personal manipulation to its own
system, but now under new management, replacing ‘favours’ with
‘rights’” (220). Everyday objects, therefore, enliven a core tenet
of neo-Pentecostal theology in which “the sacred assumes the
appearance of the mundane” (Da Silva 2007, 221). This banaliza-
tion of the sacred, and the concomitant sacralization of the mun-
dane, not only expands the place of religion in social life, it also
increases regular parishioners’ access to sacred power. De Abreu
(2009), for instance, has demonstrated that something as banal
as breathing has been appropriated by Catholic Charismatics for
sacred rituals. As part of a larger neo-Pentecostal effort to glo-
balize through neoliberal ideology, the banalization of mundane
materials makes the Universal Church system transportable on a
global scale.

Religion, Media(tion), and Authority


At some basic level media and religion both deal with metaphys-
ical questions of death and absence by producing technologies
and cultural techniques for holding time, overcoming space,
and building community through communication (Peters 2015;
Engelke 2007). As scholars of religion continue to turn their
attention toward practices of mediation and the material medi-
ators of religious communication and community—replacing
“religion and media” with “religion as media” (Stolow 2005)—
media theory becomes increasingly relevant and useful. While
nods from some of the most prolific scholars of material religion
are given to thinkers like Marshall McLuhan (1964) and Friedrich
8 Kittler, by and large, media theory and scholarship from media
studies more broadly have been underutilized.4
If we are to understand the mediating function of religious
objects and electronic media not as merely analogous but
as partner phenomena within the Universal Church’s larger
socio-political project, the concept of media must first be
redefined and expanded. Although a majority of media scholars
take forms of mass communication as their foci (e.g. newspa-
pers, radio, television, Internet), an influential strand of media
theorists challenges the traditional approach by expanding the
definition of “media” to address longer time scales and larger
historical and philosophical implications of the relationship
between humans and technology. From this purview, media
should not be studied merely as texts, audiences, or institutions,

Portable Power, Religious Swag: Mediating Authority in Brazilian Neo-Pentecostalism


as twentieth and twenty-first century electronic communication
technologies, but as “the strategies and tactics of culture and
society, as the devices and crafts by which humans and things,
animals and data, hold together in time and space” (Peters 2015,
18). More than neutral transporters of information or re-presen-
tations of experience across time and space, media perform a
constitutive role in the ritual of communication and the cultural
construction of community (Carey 1989).5
John Durham Peters’s concept of infrastructuralism, used
to study media, is also useful for the study of religious objects.
Infrastructures are large, complex, and transformative systems
that often only appear as small interfaces; they are water faucets,
gas pumps, electrical outlets, and cell phones—tiny tips of
titanic icebergs. Infrastructuralism’s “fascination is for the basic,
the boring, the mundane, and all the mischievous work done
behind the scenes. It is a doctrine of environments and small
differences, of strait gates and the needle’s eye, of things not
understood that stand under our worlds” (Peters 2015, 33). If
infrastructural media operate as “civilizational ordering devices”

Gavin Feller
(Peters 2015, 5), then religious objects can be seen as religious
ordering devices. In the case of the Universal Church, they are
the overlooked, in-between materials that help provide the
conditions of possibility for daily worship—the material micro-
structure of lived religion.
A focus on infrastructure highlights a fundamental tension
between mediation and immediacy in theories of media and
religion. Meyer (2011) coined the term “disappearing media” to
describe a phenomenon in religious settings when mediation
itself becomes sacred, the devices of mediation—which Meyer

Volume 0
terms sensational forms—“vanish into the substance that they

Issue 0
mediate” (32). De Witte (2012), for instance, argues that Pente-
costals orchestrate bodily techniques and media technologies
in order to facilitate personal spiritual experiences with God as
immediate and real. “That is,” she maintains, “technology has to
be naturalized, to appear unnoticed in a way, in order for the
divine to be identified as the true source of power” (82). Although
Protestants often treat media as human-made devices that
9 get in the way of an unmediated and therefore more intimate
relationship with God, Meyer (2011) insists this view is contradic-
tory—there is no “real” content beyond form, no divine message
without a medium. In its goal to enable ultimate immediacy with
the divine, Pentecostalism generates new forms of manifesting
religion as a material presence (Meyer 2015). Likewise, while the
process of mediation ideally erases the medium (Meyer 2011),
Material Religion

attacks on mediation in favor of immediacy—i.e. iconoclasm—


inadvertently bring more attention to it (Engelke 2007).
This dialectical tension between mediation and immedi-
Article

acy, however, generally conceives of media in the traditional


sense discussed above—as channels of modern electronic
communication. Therefore, a pressing conceptual challenge is to
evaluate how religious objects, through their visible and tangi-
ble material presence, complicate the tendency for media to dis-
appear in the mediation process. I will explore this conundrum
later in the article, particularly as it relates to the way parishio-
ners view the purpose of everyday objects in religious contexts.
Most importantly, the construction of immediacy must also be
understood in relation to the mediation of religious authority.
Toward that end, I offer the concept of a material microstruc-
ture—an infrastructural network of religious ephemera.
In the case of the Universal Church, the material network of
traditional media consists of the cameras, computers (hardware
and software), buildings, satellites, electronic cables, fiber optic
cables, for example, that facilitate the broadcasting and record-
ing of religious texts, images, sounds, and altogether events. The
material microstructure—as it undergirds everyday religious
life—is made up of paper flyers, trinket-like talismans, salt, water,
and oil, for example. In other words, the many objects integral
to religious practice in institutional worship settings and the
ephemera followers take home from worship meetings.
On a larger scale, some anthropologists of religion interested
in materiality have already hinted at the notion of a material
microstructure. For example, Reinhardt (2016) argues: “Pente-
costal intercession articulates a great variety of material forms
interchangeably as points of contact: ranging from somatic
matter like breath (De Abreu 2009), ‘thing-like’ words of faith
(Coleman 2000) and laying on of hands, to substances like oil,
water, and honey (Engelke 2007), and a number of artifacts, like
handkerchiefs and shofars” (84). Using images as an entry point,
Angie Heo (2012) likewise explains, “As the material substrate
of intercessory activity, images form an integrated network of
saintly ‘likenesses’ whose efficacy depends upon other like-
nesses: apparitions, icons, oils, and relics, and bodily practices
of remembrance and virtuous imitation” (376). I am therefore
giving a name—the material microstructure—to these inter-
connected points of contact, situating them in the context of
Brazilian neo-Pentecostalism, and offering a conceptualization
of their systematic role in religious power and authority more
specifically.
10 Attention to the material microstructure complicates reli-
gious authority by challenging traditional notions of power as
embedded primarily in sacred texts, discourses, and organiza-
tional hierarchies. My goal here is precisely to begin appreciat-
ing how religious objects both resist and support institutional
control in dynamic ways.
To be useful, my concept of material microstructure must
address a critique of religion as media raised by Charles
Hirschkind (2011) who warns of a potential conflation of fun-
damentally different modes of mediation into a single phe-
nomenon. Hirschkind is right to note that mediation assumes
an a priori distance or separation between entities that is
subsequently bridged by a mediator. The danger, Hirschkind
argues, is in confusing forms of mediation with elements that

Portable Power, Religious Swag: Mediating Authority in Brazilian Neo-Pentecostalism


constitute religious experience in the first place. For example,
“the Quran,” says Hirschkind, “does not mediate the tradition of
Islam; the variety of ways the Quran is touched, held, cared for,
read, recited, cherished, as well as printed and circulated are
simply part of what is entailed in living as a Muslim” (93).
Here Hirschkind is primarily arguing against a division of
internal and external religious experience characteristic of West-
ern Christianity, not against the fact that “the materialities of
religion are integral to its constitution” (Asad 2001, 132; Engelke
2011). However, what Hirschkind overlooks, as I am arguing
through media theory, is the more fundamental and historical
role various technologies and their accompanying cultural
techniques play in connecting otherwise separate entities, and
how their doing so creates conditions of possibility. The Quran,
to use his example, connects readers separated by geographic
distance to its author(s), to other readers, and to sacred spaces.
In other words, its constitutive role in religious practice does
not preclude its role as a mediator. And as a mediator the
Quran is also a container of possibility (Peters 2015). Just as its

Gavin Feller
material presence preserves and perpetuates hierarchies of
religious knowledge and practice through time and space, its
proliferation as an object that can be purchased produces a rich
polysemy in the hands of its various owners. The Quran, like
the religious objects used in the Universal Church, contains the
possibility for different sorts of power relations. Hence, the pri-
mary goal of this paper is to begin the conceptual work toward
understanding how particular power relations play out through
religious objects in lived religion, specifically in the case of Brazil-
ian neo-Pentecostalism.

Volume 0
Religious objects do not merely re-present religious experi-

Issue 0
ence and religious power—they continually constitute it in the
lives of those who hold, touch, and care for them.

Portable Media
I now return to the worship service at the Catredal da Fé I began
with, to offer the descriptive detail necessary to understand
more concretely the institutional authorization of portable
11 media and followers’ uses of them beyond the walls of the
church.
There I was, eagerly watching—notepad in hand—as the
frantic shuffling slowly settled and the meeting formally began.
The collective energy was as palpable as the crowd at a small
town university sporting event. Seizing the energy like a veteran
emcee the pastor called upon the group to hold their oil in the
Material Religion

air. Heavy, rolling organ pitches provided a deep and steady


rumble beneath the crescendoing voice of the pastor, reverber-
ating through the deafening sound system. Like a talented rap
Article

musician and an experienced auctioneer, the pastor inhaled


air only momentarily to maintain momentum, channeling the
concentrated rhythm toward a consecration, a blessing, a sanc-
tification of the oil firmly grasped within the hands of audience
members whose arms held it high and throbbed with bodily
momentum. The intensity of the drama lasted nearly 10 minutes
before the pastor gradually calmed and began instructing his
audience to use the now blessed oil regularly, daily, in their hair,
and on their hands and foreheads in preparation for the spiritual
battles of each day.
As owners of the holy oil—whose monetary purchase
further increases one’s investment—Universal Church followers
were then empowered with a sacred tool, a medium connecting
them to their religious community capable of facilitating the
attainment of individual health and wealth and the warding
off of one’s regular adversaries. The sanctified oil also acts as a
memento of sorts, a tangible reminder of the power of God in
the details of the daily and the otherwise mundane. When asked
about the social life of the oil, several followers compared it to
the Holy Spirit, the ultimate Christian disappearing medium.
Some believe in different kinds of oil. For example, that red oil is
for spiritual uses and green oil for secular pursuits such as cook-
ing. One follower told me that writing the name of a person or a
situation giving you trouble on paper and then immersing that
paper in the oil will bring desired relief. Others closely followed
their pastors’ instructions, ritually combing the oil through their
hair or rubbing it into their hands or foreheads at the start of the
day. I witnessed in several meetings oil being touched to follow-
ers’ foreheads after giving a monetary offering.
The olive oil followers bring to the Catedral da Fé and other
Universal Church temples is just one example of the many
mundane religious objects that become individuals’ porta-
ble mediators of spiritual power. In other meetings I watched
pastors encourage congregants to hold up various objects to be
blessed. In one particular case followers were in a prior meeting
asked to bring light bulbs and lamps in order to receive added
spiritual light and illumination. Some eagerly reached into their
bags to retrieve a bulb—again, an ordinary object purchased
and owned by the individual, an investment. For those who did
not bring the requested light-producing object, other items on
one’s person qualified, including articles of clothing, purses, and
12 even key chains—all were to be blessed and sanctified for the
domestic combat of daily spiritual warfare. Many of the meeting
attendees either missed the previous directions or had simply
forgotten. Regardless, they quickly combed through whatever
they had to find a suitable object, comfortably improvising for
fear of missing out.
Exactly what makes a particular object suitable for parish-
ioners is somewhat unclear. On one hand, the light bulbs and
lamps were requested specifically for attaining spiritual “illumi-
nation.” The bulbs work like McLuhan (1964) once described all
media, “as active metaphors” (63). On the other hand, any object,
it seems, can take on spiritual powers in the proper context and
through the proper authority. Below I draw on Webb Keane’s
concept of semiotic ideologies to discuss further how material

Portable Power, Religious Swag: Mediating Authority in Brazilian Neo-Pentecostalism


affordances and symbolic language contribute to the authori-
zation of particular objects. What is significant is the ownership
of these objects and the role they play in daily life as portable
protectors, charms, and tokens of faith and loyalty.
Portable object media are personally purchased for a specific
meeting, or are items already owned, which are carried on the
person to and from worship services, and used regularly at
home. I once witnessed a parishioner, for example, after giving
an offering, remove his shoe from his foot and hold it up for the
pastor to touch and bless. The power of portable object media,
such as this person’s shoe, is both divine and mundane in origins
and uses. Without the ritual blessing of a formal pastor in a com-
munal meeting the shoe is merely an object—in other words, it
needed to be activated or enlivened. And yet the shoe, if simply
left behind at the meetinghouse, would likewise offer little to its
owner. Rather it, like all the portable religious objects of the Uni-
versal Church, must be transported and mobilized by its owner,
an individual acting in devotion, sacrifice, and faith.
After another meeting at Catedral da Fé, I interviewed two

Gavin Feller
women, distinguished from the majority of followers by their
clothing and expensive mobile phones: Luciana, a successful
middle-aged entrepreneur, and Tatiana, the young wife of a suc-
cessful Universal Church pastor. They were educated, articulate,
and friendly—eager to testify to an outsider of the blessings of
the Universal Church. Both attributed their success to finding the
Church. And yet, both emphatically emphasized that it was not
the pastors casting out demons that I witnessed, but the people
themselves through their faith, with the pastor’s help. The
Church, I was told, teaches you how to build and “channel your

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faith.” Rather than glamorize their leaders or speak of the power

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held within particular materials, the empowered individual was
their focus. Certainly entrepreneurialism is a manifestation of the
Universal Church’s use of global neoliberal discourse.
Despite the entrepreneurial rhetoric of Universal Church pas-
tors, and the empowerment Luciana and Tatiana experienced,
the power of the individual must be curbed to necessitate
collective worship. “Why can’t I watch the services from home,
13 alone? Why do I need to physically attend?” I asked the women.
Tatiana answered by analogizing watching a music concert on
television versus attending the concert in person. The palpable
“energy” of the collective cannot be replicated, she insisted.
When asked about the need for so many material things, Tatiana
explained, “the people need to take part to believe. They need
something visual to believe. They need to touch something in
Material Religion

order to believe.” The tactility of collective worship, of sacred


architecture, of religious objects confirms parishioners’ faith,
offering visible and tangible evidence of the divine on earth
Article

(Robles-Anderson 2011). The Church, the pastors, even the


material objects are, to these women and several others I spoke
with, pontos de contacto (points of contact) with God—a phrase
I heard from many parishioners on several different occasions.
So, while Universal Church discourse locates the individual
as the agent of social, political, and economic change, individu-
als implicitly need a ritual community, and central to that com-
munity are religious objects. Although parishioners often speak
of the everyday material ephemera they help circulate as merely
mediators, ultimately facilitating the connection between an
empowered individual and the divine, what they overlook is
the role these objects play in bringing individuals together for
collective worship. In this McDannell (1995) is right, “religious
goods not only bind people to the sacred, they bind people to
each other” (45).
The authority of these portable objects is constructed within
what Webb Keane (2003) calls a semiotic ideology. Keane brings
attention the physical affordances and sensuous qualities of
a given material and its role within a religious value system
in order to understand how certain materials become suited
for religious practice. In Meyer’s words semiotic ideologies
help us “get a clearer understanding of the status that is being
attributed to words, things or images, from the perspective of a
particular, historically situated religious tradition” (Meyer 2011,
30). The semiotic ideology undergirding religious objects in the
Universal Church can be understood through the global culture
in the Brazilian urban context, which Kramer (2002) argues has
been fashioned on premises that “centre on the properties of
biblical text and biblically-authorised speech upon the world
(e.g. ‘Word of Faith’ doctrine), on individual relations to produc-
tion and consumption in an extremely unequal and status-ori-
ented society, and on Brazilian folk/popular conceptions of
relations between mind, matter, and spirit” (23). Like Pentecostal
materiality Reinhardt studied in Ghana, religious objects in Bra-
zilian neo-Pentecostalism are often understood as homologies
between substances—such as oil, water, and salt—and Biblical
passages. For instance, when I asked a local Rio de Janeiro pastor
of the Igreja International da Graça de Deus (International Grace
of God Church), a close cousin to the Universal Church6 and in
this case even a neighboring building, about the materials used
in worship services he reassured me they are all things talked
14 about in the Holy Bible.
Portable objects, then, require a type of authorization or
enlivening that takes place within the setting of in-person
communal worship. Objects are not blessed through a collec-
tive power, per se, but because pastors of the Universal Church
often note the crowd of believers present in a worship service
as evidence of God’s power and the success of the church, the
presence of others constituting a large body energizes the ritual.
Once blessed, an objects’ agency is not just tied to the pastor
and the congregation; it depends upon their owners carrying
them from place to place, utilizing their power in domestic
spiritual affairs. The material empowerment portable object
media offer reflects a simultaneous need for community and an
unflinching faith in the power of the individual—a give and take

Portable Power, Religious Swag: Mediating Authority in Brazilian Neo-Pentecostalism


analogous to the larger theological reciprocity of sacrifice and
blessing.

Contractual Media
It is by no means uncommon to receive a flyer advertising an
upcoming religious service while visiting or even passing by
a church in Brazil, regardless of the particular denomination.
The regularity and high volume of such flyers and many other
materials should, however, not be overlooked in the study of
authority and lived religion. At a given Universal Church service,
followers collect as many as eight to ten objects, ranging from
small vials of holy oil to plastic bags of blessed water to printed
promos for future meetings. A meeting is simply not complete
without such swag. The term swag has many cultural meanings,
each of which has some relevance for understanding the role
of contractual media in the construction of Universal Church
institutional authority. Swag, variously defined, can mean free
stuff for promotional purposes, stolen stuff, a confident attitude
or street credibility, or a large number or variety. I use the term

Gavin Feller
intentionally to illustrate the potential value and meanings
assigned to religious objects given away at Universal Church
worship services. To reiterate, portable media are objects owned
by parishioners previous to worship meetings, which are ritually
blessed for personal uses and taken home from services as such.
Contractual media, on the other hand, are objects given by the
Universal Church to meeting attendees. I understand swag as a
type of what I am calling contractual media, leaving the latter as
a broader category in which other material forms of mediation
might reside.

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Typically, parishioners receive swag at regular intervals

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during worship, most often as a kind of material receipt for a
monetary offering, but also as a souvenir of sorts for meeting
attendance. Universal Church meetings consist of short sermons,
lasting five to ten minutes, broken up by offerings and prayers.
Upbeat recorded music, often dangerously loud, cues and then
accompanies the offering. The pastor, microphone in hand, sings
along to the music intermittently, mixing calls to the audience
15 to come and give with a passionate vocal performance. Parishio-
ners regularly give dizimo (tithe)—one tenth of their income—
but are also relentlessly encouraged to give an offerta (offering)
as a demonstration of faith (see Chesnut 2011). Pastors chal-
lenge their congregants’ faith by continually raising the stakes,
“this person gave ____, who can give ______?”
After placing coins and bills into church-produced paper
Material Religion

envelopes and other designated containers, givers form a line


through the middle of the congregation leading to the front
of the room where obreiros (trained helpers) wait to receive
Article

with cloth bags, and at bigger temples credit card machines,


the offering. Once the offering is deposited, either a drop of
oil is touched to the giver’s head or a physical object, such as
a water bottle, a handful of salt, or another trinket is given in
return. After making their way back to their seats, congregants
often join the pastor in singing while still standing, sometimes
clapping or shouting praises. Though I never gave an offering,
I was surprised to be handed the physical object the rest of the
congregation received on several occasions, after the line of
givers was dissolved.
Many of the objects given acted as announcements and
reminders of upcoming worship services. There is no future
Universal Church meeting unworthy of a material promotion.
In fact, the University Church weekly worship schedule, which
features a different theme for each day, is considered part of its
lasting appeal and success (Freston 1995). Variations of existing
weekly themes—from healing day to financial success to “love
talk live”—provide exigence for an endless stream of swag, each
item differing according to the theme of the day’s meeting, and
often in anticipation of a future service. For instance, behind
every seat at the Templo de Salomão—the new Universal
Church headquarters in São Paulo—is a small bag of goods for
each attendee: a tiny goblet-shaped plastic cup of purple grape
juice, a saquitel (sachet) to place offerings and tithing in, and a
felt kippah labeled with the given day of the week in stitched
lettering. The swag bag not only proved proof of attendance but
marked the specific service and day attended, implying a need
to return to attend each day of the week.
I asked participants about the piling up of these things. What
do they do with them? I wondered. Sitting outside the enor-
mous temple, making small talk, some people were surprised I
asked. Most told me they simply kept them at home, several said
in a special place as a sort of special collection. A former devoted
Universal Church member turned Mormon, whose brother is a
successful church pastor, described his mother to me as a loyal
follower who attended worship services daily, often several
meetings in a single day. He spoke of his mother’s collection of
items from the church, which she keeps all huddled together on
a table in her home, including several copies of Macedo’s auto-
biography. The book itself mattered less than the faith required
of her to purchase it—a faith she apparently needed to repeat-
16 edly rekindle. One obreiro, when I asked about what I should do
with the objects I had collected at a service, made it clear that I
was not to throw them away. Somewhat ambiguously, she told
me instead to use them for “meditation at home.” In my many
conversations and observations, participants kept the swag not
because, as with portable object media they had specific uses
of it in mind, but because they felt guilty discarding it. Throwing
away a gift, particularly one from a respected religious figure, is
a sign of ingratitude. In this sense, keeping the swag—if for no
other reason—demonstrates one’s gratitude and loyalty. When I
asked if the objects should be kept forever, I was told on several
occasions, by obreiros and followers, that I needed to return with
them as soon as possible. Their efficacy, then, is but temporary,
and will be replaced with future swag at a future meeting.

Portable Power, Religious Swag: Mediating Authority in Brazilian Neo-Pentecostalism


Somewhere in between advertisements and souvenirs, these
objects remind followers of the commitments they have made;
they serve as evidence of faithful attendance, they keep the
connection to their pastor and congregation alive in followers’
hands, purses, and homes. Objects not only remind their owners
of religious devotion generally, but because they are often
received after giving a monetary offering they reactivate the
memory of the sacrifice they have given and the awaited, prom-
ised blessing of health and wealth, a promise further amplified
by being placed in close physical proximity to the desired
blessing. For instance, I once witnessed a man, after returning to
his seat from giving an offering, dump a handful of special salt
received from his pastor directly, and without hesitation, into his
bifold wallet, covering both bills and cards, before returning it
to his back pocket. The salt’s position, in this specific case, inside
the man’s wallet is, it seems, but a temporary placeholder for the
money the man will obtain in the near future.
As tangible tokens of frequent and faithful worship, contrac-
tual object media act as mementos. The word memento, derived

Gavin Feller
from the Latin meminisse, is more than a gentle reminder; it
is an imperative to remember, a warning. In the tradition of
memento mori, objects—most notably the human skull—act as
vivid reminders of the impending death that awaits all humans.
Contractual media likewise face backward and forward. At once,
they encapsulate and memorialize the past—as assurances con-
tinually, physically piling up—even as they extend an uncertain
future requiring continual action on the part of the faithful. They
are, we might say, memento reditio: reminders to return.
Because the Universal Church has formalized an already

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established cultural connection to religious objects with a spe-

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cific tie to giving and receiving money, the word contractual—
with all of its legal and corporate connotations—is quite fitting.
Brightly colored silicone wristbands with the words “pacto com
Deus” (pact with God) were given to adherents near the close
of some meetings I attended at the Templo de Salomão in São
Paulo. The sachets for tithes and offerings given away at the
Temple often had similar contractual messages derived from
17 scriptural passages. The phrase “aliança com Deus” (alliance
with God), which I heard pastors repeat regularly, was printed
on one sachet above an image of two gold rings connected to
one another—a play on the word alliance, aliança means both
wedding ring and covenant in Brazilian Portuguese. Another
example, the Ark of the Covenant, according to Kramer (2002),
symbolizes an individual’s sacrifice to God and the formation of
Material Religion

a covenant with him with an expectation of prosperity. In one


Universal Church meeting Kramer attended, miniature arks were
sold to members in order to “put the presence of God in your
Article

home” (33). Like the Catholic promessa, one seeks a blessing


through a specific saint, in this case King David, in return for
recognizing and thanking the saint through a sacrifice or pil-
grimage. The Ark as a material object mediates the promise.
Through the exchange of small contractual media Univer-
sal Church followers construct binding relationships with God,
wherein their sacrifices are rewarded in financial wealth and
career success. The branding of the Church’s swag indirectly
reflects the Abrahamic covenant wherein Yahweh enters into a
legal relationship with Israel. In some Christian religions, con-
tractual discourse surrounds sacred ordinances such as baptism,
with an emphasis on symbolism and ritual embodiment. In the
Universal Church, however, this contractual binding depends
more upon on material exchange, at a micro level, which must
be regularly renewed.
The residual giving of money and taking of swag empha-
sizes a systematic reciprocity built into public worship. Such
reciprocity is foundational to social life for exchange theory
anthropologists. What is important here is not that exchange
exists in the Universal Church, but the type of exchange and its
implications for understanding materiality and mediation in reli-
gious contexts in particular. Universal Church followers literally
never go home empty handed; and they are in turn promised
to never be left empty handed spiritually. Theirs is an exchange
with God, marked and mediated by material objects. According
to Leonildo Campos (1997), the Universal Church’s success can
be attributed to its ease in attracting people who see their home
of worship as a theatrical place within a ritualized and symbolic
exchange of money for goods and objects. Although of little
monetary value, the consistent receipt and steady accumulation
of material objects ensures that God recognizes each individual
and rewards each for, if nothing else, their physical presence at
worship meetings.
To be clear, the distinction I have created between portable
and contractual media is not meant to be completely rigorous
or mutually exclusive. The material ephemera I call contractual
media are by nature portable—they are designed to flow among
and between parishioners and their material and social worlds.
Their mobility is key to the liquidation of their aura and the
ability to extend the power of the institutional church. Yet, their
unique place within both a material and symbolic system of
18 exchange implies reciprocity and demands, albeit subtly, a level
of devotion and commitment as a prerequisite for the receipt of
promised health, wealth, and spiritual salvation. Although they
move to and fro, the center of their power resides within the
traditional authority of the church—the source not only of their
material production, but also of their spiritual significance.
Portable media, too, share many of the characteristics of
contractual media. For instance, although they empower their
individual owners, they nonetheless rely on the formal authority
of the church to initiate such power in the first place. Without
the consecration of their pastor, the glass bottles of oil I wit-
nessed so carefully clutched and so diligently cared for, would
be just that: glass bottles of oil. However, the owner of portable
media is not the Universal Church; it is each faithful follower—so

Portable Power, Religious Swag: Mediating Authority in Brazilian Neo-Pentecostalism


often middle-aged, working class women for whom the pur-
chase of the oil is no doubt one among many sacrifices of faith.
While parishioners are instructed and directed in the use of such
objects, my observations of and conversations with Universal
Church adherents indicate that the owners of portable media
indeed enliven them with a power unique to each individual.
Most importantly, portable media primarily remain in the hands
of followers—touched only symbolically or spiritually by church
pastors.
Consider a daily worship meeting. Followers might bring dol-
lar bills to tithe and donate, and objects to be blessed—either
knowingly at the previous request of the pastor, or unknowingly,
as when objects on the person are spontaneously put to use
during a worship service. Contractual and portable object media
should be seen not as distinct categories without overlap, but
as biases toward particular power structures that activate one
another in their ritual exchange.

Mediating Exchange and Religious Authority

Gavin Feller
While research on material religion has granted power to
the user of religious objects (McDannell 1995; Houtman and
Meyer 2011; Morgan 1999), my analysis complicates questions
of power and authority by distinguishing between different
types of religious objects and different types of power in lived
religion.
The materiality of media matters, not only because of their
biases toward time and space, but also because these biases
have important implications for religious tradition and author-
ity (Innis 1951). According to Innis, because of their durability,

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materials such as stone and clay have a time-bias, while papyrus

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and paper, in their light weight and mobility, are space-biased.
Writing on stone and clay, for instance, more effectively pre-
serves hierarchical authority over long periods of time because
of the life of the medium—such media are better suited for the
continuity of religious traditions. The Universal Church’s recent
construction of its $300 million replica of King Solomon’s ancient
temple—equipped with state of the art audio-visual technology
19 and imbued with Jewish symbols and artifacts—adds historical
authenticity to the Church by tangibly linking it to ancient Israel
while also serving as visual testament to the institution’s success
and power. The Universal Church translates the ecclesiastical and
spiritual authority of the Bible as a canonical text to contempo-
rary architecture and exhibitionism. Its showmanship is hard to
miss. Its architectural grandeur and physical durability ensure an
Material Religion

enduring presence into the future—a strategy harkening back


to the Emperor Constantine’s building of grandiose churches in
the third century (Horsfield 2015). In other words, the Universal
Article

Church’s media network is its empire in space,7 and its recent


temple its empire in time.
Much like Innis argued, Stolow (2005) posits that institu-
tional religious authority is challenged through the repro-
duction of religious texts and objects. Rather than destroying
their aura, the object media of Universal Church lived religion
are enhanced through their extension, particularly because
their material proliferation can—through the lens of pros-
perity theology—be seen as evidence of the Church’s ubiq-
uitous cultural presence. Such media fit Morgan’s argument
that “mechanical reproduction has magnified rather than
eliminated the aura in Protestant visual piety over the last
two centuries” (Morgan 1999, 7). Printed religious materials
hold power precisely through the mobility of their material
presence. Though often overlooked, their ubiquitous pres-
ence—in people’s hands or even when littering the city’s dirty
cement8—is evidence of their power. Religious objects, like
relics, are “media of ­expanding power of divine origins,” which
means their empowerment of individuals can “disrupt ecclesi-
astical unity” (Heo 2012, 388, 384).
While a level of power to imbue religious objects with aura
may reside in their users—as Morgan, McDannell, and others
argue—in the case of the Universal Church, the Church also
maintains power through the production and dissemination,
and perhaps most importantly through the ritual exchange
of certain religious objects. This is precisely why a distinction
between differing types of religious objects and the power
they mediate is helpful in understanding their relationship with
religious authority. In short, some objects empower their users
while others exert power over them; Brazilian neo-Pentecostal
religious objects often function as both, dialectically, within a
larger system of exchange.
Much of the work on religious objects in lived religion has
concerned itself with “how people activate or enliven objects”
(McDannell 1995, 18). For example, Stolow points out that media
and mediation more generally “constitute inherently unstable
and ambiguous conditions of possibility for religious signifying
practices” (2005, 125). Morgan argues, “most objects acquire
their significance through engagement with people”—a poten-
tial democratization of authority, then, takes place through
mass reproduction. “Physical objects,” McDannell likewise insists,
20 “become holy not by what people say about them but by how
they are manipulated and used” (McDannell 1995, 210). In my
analysis, what I am calling portable object media in lived Brazil-
ian religion empower their users by transporting authority over
unwanted evil and negative influences from the temple and
worship house to their owner’s home and daily social sphere.
These media certainly function, at least in part, in the ways out-
lined by the scholars above.
But the type of religious objects I call contractual object
media function much differently, and it is their mediation of
religious authority that is largely overlooked in material religion
studies. To take media theory seriously we must consider media
as extensions not just of the individual human sensorium as
McLuhan (1964) insisted, but also as extensions of institutional

Portable Power, Religious Swag: Mediating Authority in Brazilian Neo-Pentecostalism


religious power. Innis’s space-biased media reflect what I am
calling contractual media.
Drawing upon exchange theory can help explain how
materiality mediates social relations, particularly in a religious
setting ostensibly opposed to such materiality. As Mauss (1990)
argued, there is no free gift—even the offering Universal
Church followers make is in anticipation of a deferred spiritual
and financial reward. As Simon Coleman (2000) has observed
in both American and Swedish Pentecostalism, “The idea of
giving can therefore refer to the investment of many different
kinds of ‘resource,’ ranging from money to other goods” (189).
On the other end of the exchange, receiving a gift—or swag
at a Universal Church meeting—always imposes a burden to
return the favor. From my study, parishioners are expected not
only to return to subsequent meetings in exchange for swag,
but also to return ready to give monetary tithes and offerings.
In the case of the sachets, the gift parishioners receive is given
them precisely to enable them to give further. Thus, a cycle is
born.

Gavin Feller
To compete in the so-called religious marketplace—in this
case a larger Pentecostal-Charismatic movement that has signifi-
cantly increased the ubiquity of Evangelical Christianity in Brazil
in recent decades—churches must not only attract parishio-
ners to regular worship services but also ensure their frequent
return. The active distribution of swag in exchange for tithes
and offerings should therefore be seen as part of an institutional
strategy to maintain a steady flow of followers who contribute to
the Church’s collective energy and visibility as well as its financial
stability. With church hopping among Pentecostal-Charismatic

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meetinghouses a common and expected phenomenon, the

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church one attends on a given day perhaps matters less than the
one receiving regular tithes and offerings.
Small, ephemeral handouts and cheap distributed religious
goods create implicit power relations that keep followers tied
to the institutional church in a reciprocal exchange predicated
upon expected prosperity as evidence of faithful attendance and
personal sacrifice. In this case, the physical exchange of material
21 goods in religious spaces constitutes a perpetuation rather than
a disruption of institutional religious authority. As overlooked
infrastructure, contractual object media establish and maintain
conditions for otherwise mundane materials to mediate power
on a daily basis.
Through attention toward portable and contract object
media, as part of what I am calling material microstructure,
Material Religion

we can further complicate religious authority as it is mediated


through objects, not just in one-way flows but as dynamic
exchanges and trade-offs between personal empowerment and
Article

institutional control.
Conclusion
As the study of material religion continues to grow, analysis of
religious objects and their role in the construction of religious
authority will become increasingly important. The concomitant
rise of the theory of religion as media demands a more robust
application of media theory. This ethnographic study of Univer-
sal Church object media in Brazil is one example of how scholar-
ship moving forward can address the intersection of materiality,
authority, and media in religious contexts.
By distinguishing between portable media and contractual
media, I offer a new approach to understanding the infrastruc-
tural role various materials play in the mediation of religious
authority. In the case of the Universal Church different objects
facilitate different power relationships within a larger system of
material exchange tied broadly to Christian prosperity theol-
ogy, but also unique to the Brazilian religious matrix. To some
extent, many of the objects I have discussed can be found in all
Brazilian religion.9 The regular dissemination of small objects in
ritual exchange for tithes and offerings, however, is of particular
significance in the Universal Church precisely because of the
unique combination of the church’s appropriation of Old Testa-
ment symbols and language (contracts with the divine under-
gird the global empire), its use of prosperity theology (righteous
sacrifices are rewarded with tangible, material manifestations),
and its adoption of neoliberal discourse (success is an individual
endeavor). The material microstructure of the Universal Church
at once upholds and undermines the very power relations
embedded within these intersecting forces.
The Universal Church’s harsh rhetoric, monetary corrup-
tion, media management, and its new Temple of Solomon all
illustrate the powerful influence the institution exercises in Brazil
and beyond. This much is obvious. What is subtler, and therefore
perhaps more powerful, is the material microstructure under-
girding the international enterprise.
Perhaps Universal Church followers, many of which are
traditionally low on the socioeconomic ladder, subconsciously
see the piling up of bric-á-brac collected from worship services
and given in exchange for monetary offerings and tithes—as an
increase in material possessions, as a symbolic foreshadowing of
22 the financial accumulation awaiting them. What is swag now will
ultimately be health, wealth, and spiritual salvation. To be clear,
I am not saying that the popularity of swag can be attributed
solely to the poverty of Universal Church parishioners. The prac-
tice is certainly tied to the banalization of sacred power within
a global neoliberal ideology of expansion, empire, and entre-
preneurialism. I am instead arguing that the steady material
accumulation of small objects given away at meetings subtlety
reinforces a theology of prosperity—literally taking something
home from each meeting continually reminds followers that
when they give they will always receive. Even giving of one’s
time and energy to be at the worship meeting ensures that they
will not go home empty-handed. Thus, objects mediate a spiri-
tual and physical reciprocity, and unnoticed power relationships.

Portable Power, Religious Swag: Mediating Authority in Brazilian Neo-Pentecostalism


The mundane ephemera are metonyms for larger unseen
spiritual transformations expected to take place. As Mauss
(1990) put it, “those gods who give and return gifts are there to
give a considerable thing in the place of a small one” (22). The
exploitative danger in this is, of course, the underlying logic
that if one has not yet received, perhaps one has not yet given
adequately. Religious swag—whether intended as a temporary
placeholder for future health and wealth, a material reminder of
religious commitment, or a physical receipt of monetary dona-
tion and worship service attendance—is never completely “free,”
like the salvation to which it is tied.
Religious media are more than electronic communication
channels; they are also pedestrian objects and ephemera; they
are points of contact that not only connect followers to the
divine they seek, but also to each other and to institutional
religious authority. Day-by-day and bit-by-bit, the microstruc-
ture of religious object media gradually and inconspicuously
blurs material and immaterial, absence and presence, giving and
receiving.

Gavin Feller
notes and references
1
According to the 2010 census, the fundamental media that organize (not
number of Universal Church followers just traverse) time, space, and power
declined by nearly 230,000 between such as clocks, calendars, and catalogs
2000 and 2010 (IBGE 2010). (Peters 2015).
2 6
The publicly televised kicking of The International Grace of God Church

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Brazil’s patron saint, Nossa Senhora was founded by Romildo Ribeiro Soares

Issue 0
Aparecida, was an attempt both to (R.R. Soares) in 1980 after Soares and
demonstrate the lifelessness and insig- Edir Macedo went their separate ways.
nificance of the material statue and to 7
The Universal Church’s media empire
attack the country’s dominant Catholic
includes Rede TV along with 30 radio
tradition.
stations, two publishing houses, and
3
Religious merchandise utilizing Old several recording studios (Reis 2006).
Testament and even Hebrew symbols 8
After all, only a big king can afford to
is a growing industry in Brazil (Cunha
waste.
2014).
23 4
9
For instance, Padre Marcelo Rossi, an
Reflecting on the first decade of
extremely popular Brazilian priest with-
Material Religion, editors noted that
in the Catholic Charismatic movement,
only four articles from scholars in
used to encourage his media audience
media studies had been published. As
to place a glass of water near their
a point of comparison, anthropology
home radio or television to receive the
and religious studies dominated the list
Holy Spirit’s curative powers (De Abreu
with 49 and 31 articles from each field
2005; Campos 1999).
respectively (Meyer et al. 2015).
Material Religion

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End of Religion.” In Religion and Media,
nication, as defined by Raymond
edited by Hent de Vries and Sam Weber,
Article

Williams (1974), is an historic anomaly


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