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Paper short abstract:

This paper examines how debates between state legislators on how the state should understand and respond to religious violence have come to operate as a site for (un)doing recent social and political transformations in Brazil.

Paper long abstract:

This paper examines how debates between state legislators on how the state should understand and respond to religious violence have come to operate as a site for (un)doing recent social and political transformations in Brazil. In May 2021, the Legislative Assembly of the State of Rio de Janeiro inaugurated a special parliamentary commission of inquiry that was tasked with developing a deeper understanding of and proposing a solution to an explosion in Evangelical Christian attacks on African origin religions in the state. The commission was composed of legislators from across the religious spectrum, all of whom were committed to resolving the problem of religious violence. However, on closer examination, they did not all share an understanding of what the commission should focus on. Was it to be delimited to the analysis of violence against African origin religions or was it to forward a proposal for addressing religious violence more broadly? These differences of perspective were encapsulated in a debate on what term – “religious intolerance” or “religious racism” - was to be used to describe the commission’s object of inquiry. To understand the stakes of the debate and how it participated in broader efforts to (un)do recent social and political transformations in Brazil, I examine how arguments for each term worked to construct and in so doing anchor the commission and its purpose within different religious and racial imaginaries of the nation and its social problems.