Conservatives vs. liberals in Brazilian spiritism: an attempt at historical-hermeneutic interpretation

Abstract

A division has been taking place in Spiritism in Brazil, dividing in terms of morals (sexual and reproductive) and social vision, its leaders and members in diametrically opposed positions, classified as "conservative" and "progressive". In view of this reality, this text intends to discuss the implications of these conceptions and attitudes of spiritists, considered dogmatic or heterodox, in terms of their doctrine, within their own environment and for Brazilian society. I will try to interpret this cleavage, through the localized examination of a controversy. The one who put Divaldo Pereira Franco, one of the main Brazilian spiritist mediums, on one side, when he spoke out against the so-called “gender ideology” and “Marxism”, reproducing a conservative moralist discourse and on the other, the so-called “progressive” spiritists, who reacted to these declarations, basing their positions on a vision of Spiritism in tune with the libertarian and insubmissive currents of Brazilian society. As a resource for analyzing these antagonistic positions at stake, I make a brief journey through the history of Spiritism in Brazil in order to map the genesis and development of “conservative” and “progressive” positions within it. And also from a Social Sciences perspective I try to examine how “hermeneutic” or “providentialist” readings of cosmology and spiritist doctrine end up guiding a definition by one of these positions.