Evandro M. Camara on Religious Syncretism

In contrast with Thornton, sociologist Evandro M. Camara rediscovers the religious tradition established by Max Weber and believes that a Weberian perspective could explain Afro-American religious syncretism in Brazil and the United States. Focusing on the nature of ritual life and religious belief, Camara examines the relationship of Catholicism in Brazil and Protestantism in the United States with West African religions, in the framework of Max Weber's typology of religions of salvation and considers the impact of structural dimension on the interaction between the Christian churches and West African religious culture. Catholicism, according to him, “as practiced in colonial and imperial Brazil, differed from the orthodox version of Rome for having a complex of ritual and belief that brought it much closer to ‘primitive’ religion, as exemplified by the religious systems of the slaves. In reference to the category of this-worldly religion, this brand of Catholicism was a structural analogue to the West African religions. The other-worldly, ascetic Protestantism of the U.S., on the other hand, was antithetical to them. The basic dichotomy in the analysis, therefore, is not between Christian and non-Christian models, but between this-worldly and other-worldly ones.”  Camara argues Brazilian Catholicism aided the preservation of religious Africanisms via a strong structural parallelism. However, evangelical Protestantism in the United States was inimical to the continuation of African religious practices due to their structural incomspatibility, and to the resulting systematic suppression of African cultural traits by Protestant clergymen.   

        In the historiography of African religious syncretism, the 1980s is a turbulent era. During that time, although scholars from different disciplines criticize both the social structural and intellectualist approaches, they could not convincing their colleagues by providing a new method and persuade their critics. Although there are no authoritive cannons at this time, it asks scholars to explore the unknown field of religious conversion study and reexamine traditional methods, as well as their definitions on syncretism.