O sagrado selvagem e a teologia radical do presbiteriano Richard Shaull: aproximações possíveis

Abstract

The study aims to analyze the concept of the Sacred Savage, systematized by the French sociologist Roger Bastide, relating it to the so-called Radical Theology, from one of its greatest exponents, the American missionary Richard Shaull. Linked to the Presbyterian Church of the United States, the theologian remained in Brazil for a decade, working in the teaching of the Southern Presbyterian Seminary in the city of Campinas in São Paulo, and above all, a strong political performance in the midst of leftist student movements. Between 1952 and 1962, a period of great political and social effervescence in Brazil and in the world, when Latin American societies were experiencing what was called a “revolutionary process”, Richard Shaull “shook” the conceptual structures about the ideal predominant social politician in the Protestant environment at the time, by proposing that Christians and churches take an active part in the ongoing revolutionary movement, contributing to overcoming the social inequalities so characteristic of developing societies, such as the Brazilian one. From a brief bibliographic review, we seek to understand to what extent the theological radicalization of Richard Shaull, consisted of an expression of the sacred savage in terms of its characteristic of breaking with the established and “domesticated” institutional structures, expressed mainly in the world-dichotomy. church, so striking in the theology of the Protestant milieu at that time.

Keywords: Sacred Wild. Protestant. Theology.