The commemoration on display: the exhibitions of the 500 years of the Protestant Reformation in Brazil in 2017

Abstract

Throughout 2017, the 500 years of the Protestant Reformation were commemorated. In Brazil, among other commemorative activities, a wide range of exhibitions were set up, from local displays to itinerant ones,exhibitions organized by churches of different confessions to those undertaken by public and private institutions. What exhibitions were these? Why was the image of the Reformation so requested and in so different exhibitions in 2017? Was such interest a result of the changes experienced in the Brazilian religious field of that time? To discuss these questions, this article uses as its main source websites and banners of the exhibitions, prioritizing the study of two cases in particular, through which a more complex universe unfolds. It argues, taking the notion of religious field, formulated by Bourdieu, as its main theoretical reference that the exhibitions of the 5th Centennial of the Protestant Reformation gained momentum in Brazil in 2017 especially because they are associated with disputes and tensions between mission evangelicals and Pentecostals within Brazil’s religious field, but also due the broader appropriation of the date in the secular sphere as one of the symbols of the evangelical social expansion experienced in the period.