Political dispositions in Brazilian spiritism:

between conservative “neutrality” and socialist aspiration

Abstract

In this article we examine the conformation of a discourse of political neutrality, exemption and detachment in Brazilian Spiritism, accommodating it in a conservative way to capitalist society, as well as the production of a leftist Spiritism, minority, that shelters socialist ideas. Although dominant, the conservative disposition coexisted and confronted dissonant discourses of progressive bias, generally discrete and moderate, but sometimes expressed in more engaged and radicalized terms. The terms of the discourse of neutrality and alienation from politics include the loathing of “political passions”, an individualistic and reductionist conception of morality enshrined in a depoliticized formula of “intimate reform” and the sacred/profane dichotomy as a world-reading grid. From the lens of the middle class, ideological selectivity still operates on what is acceptable or not in terms of spiritist discourse on social issues. The production of a spiritist discourse on the left, otherwise, can be understood mainly from the areas of elective affinity or structural correspondence between Christianity and socialism, as well as the origin of spiritism in France in the midst of historical relations between utopian socialists and the spiritualist movement. Finally, we highlight the 1967-1974 Spiritist University Movement, for its clear break with the sacred/profane dichotomy and the consequent political densification of the socialist ideology within the scope of Brazilian spiritism.