ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that the arrival and growth of Santo Daime across Brazil and countries around the world is linked to a very specific social and religious world context and that it is through this context that one can understand Santo Daime as a modern religion. Santo Daime has left the forest, has come to the large Brazilian cities, and now reaches countries around the world, abandoning its essentially regionalist character to enter the global religious context. Based on intensive fieldwork at various daimista churches between 2011 and 2014, the chapter illustrates Luiz Soares's argument by analyzing the plurality and reinterpretation of Santo Daime in the state of Minas Gerais, along with a subsequent comparison with both northern Brazil and parts of Europe. Although the discourses of legitimacy presented by churches are governed by the guarantee of religious freedom, Santo Daime's legal situation varies from one place to the next.
