The rural villages along Brazil’s Purus River have historically been Catholic, such as the settlement of São Miguel. But the grip of the Catholic Church is weakening in the country as a whole, and the residents of these rainforest communities have been converting to more “expressive forms of evangelical Christianity.” In his opening line, Terrence McCoy transports us deep into the Amazon, where this story takes place; we find ourselves on a boat next to a Catholic priest, Father Moisés, who is on his annual trip to the villages in the region. But more and more families have renounced their Catholic faith and begun to follow the new evangelical preacher who lives on the bluff above São Miguel—a man named Pastor Leudo who had been showing them “God in a new way.”
Father Moisés hadn’t met the pastor, nor heard him preach, but his charisma was no secret. Evangelicals said they’d never heard anyone speak of God as he did. Thin and tanned, hands calloused from years of wielding a chain saw, the pastor looked no different from thousands of others struggling to survive along the Purus. But followers said he’d been touched by divine providence. He was rumored to have banished malevolent spirits and cured illnesses. He claimed to be illiterate but somehow read the Bible with fluency. Wherever he went, Catholics renounced their church and followed him.
The unique challenges posed by the rainforest — immense size, wide dispersion of villages, few roads — had exacerbated the church’s shortage of priests. Some communities were going a full year without seeing a member of the clergy. The bishops urged radical change: Grant priestly powers to married men, breaking with the bedrock tenet of clerical celibacy, and increase the reach of the cloth. “We have to change,” pleaded one Amazon bishop, Wilmar Santin.
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