Dechristianizing to decolonise
We live here in Brazil especially distressing nowadays. We are under the threat that the Bolsonaro government, one of the most perverse we have ever had, will be re-elected.
If we ask the more than 50 million people who voted for Bolsonaro in the first round why they made their decision, most will answer that they did so in defence of the family, the church, for the end of communism, gayism and the like.
These are millions of impoverished people, who have had no real improvement in their working conditions, nor in their access to health, education and housing. So why do you defend this government?
The force of fundamentalist Christian morality is what moves them.
If we ask: in which ideology are LGBTS condemned to hell? In which one women should be submissive to their husbands? In which ideology the world and all of nature were made for humans to dominate and control? In which ideology is hunger cured if you "have faith?" Which ideology inspires its followers to destroy indigenous prayer houses and religious cults because they believe that their god is the only true one and all the others must be destroyed? And which one believes that there is only one way to exercise sexuality (theirs)? And which one that does all this in the name of love, good and salvation?
Machismo, lgbtphobia, environmental violence, religious racism, all have the same colonial root in our context.
All Bolsonarism is nothing more than the same Christian fundamentalism that since 1500 has been imposing its monoculture on the planet.
This defence of the good, of love, of the family is what bleeds our lives.
Unfortunately, a good part of the institutional left is also Christian and despite all the violence intrinsic to it, they continue to defend it. Even those who already recognise the violence of Christianity still persist in defending the image of Jesus. They insist in saying that what the Church, the right and the fundamentalists have done with the name of Jesus is an offensive deviation to what he really preached: love, forgiveness, charity. The great trap of this is that violence is not in hate, anger and the like but above all in what they call love, good, moral and good manners.
Yes, Jesus is love. But what kind of love? He said: whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not want to is already condemned (to hell) - John 4. That is Christian love, that of conversion and obedience.
Christian salvation only exists because there is condemnation; heaven, because there is hell; this love, because there is hatred.
In a way, the way out of Bolsonarism is simple but at the same time complex.
Bolsonaro does not guarantee that people will vote for him on account of his labour proposals but by his moral propositions and this has more force than any concrete argument.
So this is where we should focus. Curbing the growth of the monoculture of faith is urgent.
This involves the exercise of ceasing to defend, looking for the good and beautiful side in the colonial Christian ideology and then countercolonising its monoculture. Who is willing to do this?
May our belonging be with cosmogonies of the forest and of diversity and not with the system of monocultures (of faith, sexuality and affections).
Geni Núñez is a Guarani indigenous activist, writer and psychologist. She is a doctor in the Interdisciplinary Postgraduate Program in Human Sciences (Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina), Master in the Postgraduate Program in Social Psychology (UFSC) and graduate of the Psychology course at the same university. She is a member of the Brazilian Articulation of Indigenous Psychologists (ABIPSI).
Photo: header: Thiago Japyassu (Pexels)
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