ABSTRACT
The Igreja Universal do Reino de Deus (Universal Church of the Kingdom of God-UC) is a Brazilian Neo-Pentecostal church, founded in Rio de Janeiro in 1977.1 According to census data, the UC grew from 269,000 members in 1991 to 2.1 million in 2000, making up for 12% of all Pentecostals in Brazil, with a growth rate three times the average among all Pentecostal denominations (Jacob et al. 2003, 42). It draws disproportionately on poorer, less educated, non-white sectors of Brazilian society; and it has founded hundreds of churches in dozens of other countries (Freston 2001, 198-200). The dramatic growth of the UC has been characterized by its consistent opposition to Afro-Brazilian religions. Denigration of these competing religions is prominent in its theology and rituals. The same spiritual entities that play central, positive, healing roles in Umbanda and Candomblé are present, under the same names, in UC rituals: but they are reframed as “demons”; they are blamed for fi nancial, interpersonal, psychological and other problems; and their ritual exorcism is central to the church’s conception of salvation. In other words, the UC frames Afro-Brazilian spirit possession as a social problem in order to claim that it has a monopoly on the means of addressing that problem.
