Paper short abstract:

This paper examines how the activist phrasing "religious racism" has come to be adopted by public prosecutors and legislators in Brazil. In so doing, it elucidates the processes of "clasping" and "bundling" that characterize the movement of activist concepts into legal arenas.

Paper long abstract:

In Brazil, "religious racism" has entered the agenda of a wide array of legal actions and institutions in the past few years. Public prosecutors' and lawyers' associations alike have positioned it as a concern warranting their members' serious attention. The phrasing "religious racism" refers to attacks on Afro-Brazilian religions performed by Evangelical Christian groups who profess a theology of spiritual warfare against the devil. While these attacks have been steadily increasing in Brazil since the 1990s, in the past few years they have reached alarming numbers in cities like Rio de Janeiro. Until recently, however, the term of choice for legal actors for this phenomenon was "religious intolerance." The phrasing "religious racism" was coined by religious and black movement activists in the mid-2000s who sought to highlight the systemic and racially motivated character of Evangelical Christian attacks on Afro-Brazilian religions. This paper examines how the phrasing "religious racism" has come to be adopted into the parlance of public prosecutors and legislators in Brazil. The broader aim of the paper is to elucidate the semiotic processes of "clasping" and "bundling" that characterize the movement of activist concepts into state speech.