̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - David Lehmann

Belief and beyond

amb206 — Sun, 23 Oct 2011 06:13:06 +0000

In a BBC Radio 4 interview last month Imran Khan, cricketer and politician, described his family as living their religion - Islam. He went on to make a distinction between living a religion, which he did as a child, and holding a set of beliefs which he does today as a practising Muslim. For much of history, many communities have, like the traditional Pakistani society in which Khan was raised, lived the religion of their families, neighbourhoods or nations: a detailed code of behaviour, learned in early childhood, governed their everyday lives – from food and drink to education and work – and framed their relationships with the wider world.

In many parts of the world religion exerts far less of an influence on people’s lives today than it did in the past. In the UK, for example, a tiny trickle of people turn up each Sunday to worship in the huge parish churches built in mediaeval times in the wool-rich counties of Norfolk and Suffolk. Put crudely, materialism has replaced religion at the heart of our existence in the developed world. In 2007 a television documentary brought a group of forest-dwelling Papua New Guineans to the UK. Stunned by the glittering buildings of the City of London, one of the PNG men remarked that the famous spirit house (St Paul’s Cathedral) pointed out to him by the film maker was dwarfed by some of the big banks: this would not be allowed in his village.

Despite a long-term decline in numbers of worshippers and a long period of indifference, religion has once again become a contentious issue and is never far from the headlines. While mainstream religions have lost their appeal, there has been a worldwide rise in the numbers of people embracing charismatic and fundamentalist beliefs. These groups, though a minority, are highly vocal, and better organised and more committed than followers of mainstream religion or non-believers. ̽��ֱ��development of these new strands of religion in the midst of a secularised society has long fascinated Cambridge academic Dr David Lehmann who will give a public talk on the topic of Contemporary revolution in religious life at the Festival of Ideas on Tuesday.

Lehmann has a long and distinguished career in social sciences; he describes himself as part sociologist, part anthropologist, dedicated to ethnography and comparison. He has been doing research on Latin America for 40 years and has travelled there almost every year. His first research was in Chile on land reform in the years before General Pinochet’s military coup which overthrew Salvador Allende, but since the mid-1980s he has concentrated on religion. His research focused first on dissident Latin American Catholics struggling to apply a radical reading of the gospel known as Liberation Theology during the dark days of military rule; later he turned his attention to the dramatic emergence of charismatic Protestantism in Brazil, and then in the late 1990s he shifted his research to a completely different location, and began a study of the revival of strict observance among Israeli Jews of North African and Middle Eastern origin.

“Throughout my career studying religion I’ve been interested in people on the ‘outside’ of mainstream society, who are in one way or another going against the current of respectability and safe options,” he said.

Lehmann’s most recent project is on the Brazil-based neo-Pentecostal Universal Church of the Kingdom of God which now claims to have 8 million followers in 180 countries and is building the ‘Third Temple of Solomon’ in Sao Paolo, modelled on the proportions in the Book of Kings. Its vast façade will be 56 metres high, and faced in stone imported from Jerusalem; it will dwarf the city’s Cathedral and be larger than the iconic statue of Christ overlooking Rio de Janeiro.

“ ̽��ֱ��Universal Church’s ambitions know no bounds,” he said. “It has grown on the basis of spectacle, promise and fear: the spectacle is in the sumptuous scale of its temples, designed and located in such a way as to challenge the dominance of the Catholic Church, and also in the visual and oral manipulation of intensity in its meetings. ̽��ֱ��promise is of a comfortable life for those who believe in Jesus while also strengthening belief in themselves. ̽��ֱ��fear is of the devil who can poison their lives and the lives of families, embodied most especially in the witchcraft of indigenous religions. But the Church is also a managerial phenomenon: its leader and founder, Edir Macedo, may not be an unusually charismatic public speaker but he must be a genius at motivating his vast apparatus of pastors and church workers.”

As for the church’s constituency, Lehmann says that in Europe it consists mostly of immigrants, while in Brazil and Africa it is more varied, but the appeal is directed at people emerging from the lower income groups into the middle classes. " ̽��ֱ��church is notable for the sumptuous scale of many of its temples, often in former cinemas and placed in prominent locations designed to rival Catholic churches; a formula combining a spectacular emphasis on a promise of prosperity and on the presence of diabolic forces in people’s lives," he said.

Lehmann’s research into the upsurge of charismatic and fundamentalist movements suggests the great importance of conversion in contemporary religion: this refers either to people who have undergone a crisis conversion from no religion to one of the evangelical or fundamentalist movements, and also to those who, also in the wake of a crisis experience, have returned to the religion of their birth, taking on its values and norms with renewed intensity. This is particular evident among Jews and Muslims – especially Muslims in Europe. Like converts to evangelical Christianity, these ‘returnees’ tend to be people who have not only been non-believing, or non-practicing, but also people who have very little knowledge of religion at all, even of their ‘own’ religious tradition.

“Of course, this is not always the case, but the observation should give pause for thought to those who would abolish religious education in schools and it might even encourage the provision of a high quality religious education,” said Lehmann.

He points out that in Europe we have gone from mere toleration to positive commitment to religious freedom, allowing all religious traditions, and sometimes religions with no tradition, to claim the same exemptions and privileges long accorded, in this country, only to the Church of England. Yet the Church of England and the Catholic Church remain great institutions which, almost uniquely, command the respect of vast sectors who only go to Church, if at all, to be married and buried, and may not have any religious faith. This is important, for religion is a resource for society as a whole. Lehmann concludes, echoing the words of President Kennedy: “Think not what society can do for religion, think what religion can do for society.”

Dr David Lehmann will give his talk Contemporary revolution in religious life at the Mill Lane Lecture Rooms, 8 Mill Lane, Cambridge, 5.30-6.30pm on Tuesday (25 October). Free of charge, no need to book. For a full Festival of Ideas programme go to www.cam.ac.uk/festivalofideas.

In a Festival of Ideas talk for the public this Tuesday, Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� academic Dr David Lehmann will discuss the enduring power of fundamentalist strands of religion within an increasingly secular society. His most recent research focuses on the phenomenal rise of the neo-Pentecostal Church in Brazil where a ‘Third Temple of Solomon’ is under construction in Sao Paolo.

Throughout my career studying religion I’ve been interested in people on the ‘outside’ of mainstream society, who are in one way or another going against the current of respectability and safe options.

Dr David Lehmann

Kosuke Arakawa

̽��ֱ��Third Temple of Solomon under construction in Sao Paolo

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New perspectives on Latin America

lw355 — Thu, 17 Mar 2011 14:44:59 +0000

Shaped by indigenous cultures and colonial influences, and with a contemporary history that encompasses acute political competition, social unrest and economic change, Latin America is a stimulating region for academic enquiry. Cambridge’s Centre of Latin American Studies – with its extensive library and one of the largest collections of Latin American films in the UK – provides a hub to link the many Latin Americanists based in faculties across the ̽��ֱ��.

For researchers such as Dr Charles Jones, who is based in the Department of Politics and International Studies and will take up the Directorship of the Centre at the start of the academic year, the region provides unique insights into international relations. ‘ ̽��ֱ��republics of Latin America became independent from their European colonisers 200 years ago,’ he explains. ‘After two centuries of separate existence, they are still largely dominated by elites of European descent, yet conduct their relations with one another very differently, holding distinctive views about international law, diplomacy and conflict resolution. Being able to compare regions is fascinating – it’s rather like being able to conduct a laboratory experiment in international relations.’

Research linked through the Centre is diverse: ranging from the study of modernist architecture to the colonial history of the Andes; and including, as highlighted here, cinema, violence, religion and multiculturalism.

Visualising Argentina

̽��ֱ��study of Latin American film and visual arts is a particular area of expertise at the Centre. Drs Joanna Page, Geoffrey Kantaris, Erica Segre and Rory O’Bryen are shedding light on the region’s vibrant creative legacy and opening up Latin American culture to a wider audience.

Dr Page has focused on Argentina, where the visual arts have responded in innovative ways to the experience of dictatorship, rising costs, unemployment and crime. Argentine cinema, which entered a boom period in the 1990s, is a compelling period of film-making for her, as she explains: ‘Film directors had to create a new kind of aesthetic, born of economic necessity. They often shot in black and white, on streets with natural lighting or in a single apartment, using friends as actors. ̽��ֱ��films register the anxieties and fears, civil unrest and social disintegration in contemporary Argentina.’

Other forms of visual culture have also been important vehicles for social and political critique in Argentina, especially in response to the military dictatorship from 1976 to 1983, a period of state-sponsored violence. ‘One example is the post-apocalyptic comic El Eternauta written by Héctor Oesterheld,’ she explains. ‘It typifies the intellectual and philosophical heritage of the science fiction genre in Argentina in engaging with political issues and was written before Oesterheld himself was kidnapped and became one of the disappeared.’

‘Argentina’s appropriation of science fiction is often heavily ironic given the genre’s strong association with European and North American imaginaries,’ adds Page. ‘ ̽��ֱ��result is a radical form of social critique.’

Violence in ‘Black Rome of the Americas’

Social anthropologist Dr Marta Magalhaes works in Salvador, Bahia. This UNESCO World Heritage Centre, once capital of colonial Brazil, is often referred to as the ‘Black Rome of the Americas’ because of its strong Afro-Brazilian heritage. ̽��ֱ��aim of her research was to examine what the ongoing urban regeneration of the colonial historic centre meant to its original, now-displaced, residents, but what she found instead was that Bahians wanted to speak about their experiences of violence in the city.

‘Brazil is a powerhouse – a resource-rich, technologically competent, vigorous democracy that has made great strides to close the gap between rich and poor,’ she explains. ‘But it also suffers from a persisting cocktail of violence, drugs, gangs and police intervention.’ In recent months, escalating violence in the favelas (shantytowns) of Rio de Janeiro has taken centre stage as police operations have attempted to take control.

Dr Magalhaes’ fieldwork in Salvador has uncovered a perception by its inhabitants of violence as a constant presence. ‘My research has focused on understanding what this sense of violence does to people’s relation to themselves. On my last trip, I was struck by the fact most Bahians I spoke to were articulating their views on violence as an epidemic, not as a war as in Rio. By sensing violence as an epidemic that can claim them at will, they became potential victims of this faceless phenomenon, effectively feeding the fear.’

As her work continues, she hopes that a better understanding of the complexities of how violence is perceived and affects different people in practice might inform discussions on the effective solutions to bring about its reduction.

Born again in Latin America

In recent decades, predominantly Catholic Latin America has undergone what has been referred to as ‘the largest mass conversion in history’, as Pentecostalism has grown explosively across the region and beyond its shores.

Dr David Lehmann, from the Department of Sociology and Acting Director of the Centre, was among the first to draw attention to this apparent revolution in Latin American culture: ‘Pentecostalism, which had been growing gradually, exploded into the public consciousness in the 1980s, and grew to number almost 20% of the population in some countries. In recent years, Latin American Pentecostalism has been exported, and churches such as the Brazilian Universal Church of the Kingdom of God are now present worldwide.’

Pentecostalism has long been associated with developing countries and migrant groups. ‘It gives a voice to the voiceless and supports people in setting themselves ambitious targets, emphasising salvation by worldly success in this world as opposed to the afterlife,’ explains Lehmann. His work asks what the economic and political implications are of the spread and what it tells us about globalisation.

Connected with the underlying theme of religion, Dr Lehmann is also working on multiculturalism in Latin America, focusing on how issues of ethnicity and cultural difference are accepted and promoted. Funded by the British Academy, he is documenting and understanding developments in Latin America, and looking from a Latin American standpoint at Europe’s struggle with the contested issue of multiculturalism.

‘Latin America deserves academic attention because it is a region where, despite serious issues of racial, ethnic and socioeconomic exclusion, it does not have the history and bitterness of racial confrontation in the modern period that we find in Europe and the United States,’ he explains. ‘That’s not to say that discrimination doesn’t exist. But knowledge of policies to counter racial exclusion, such as the almost unique investment in intercultural universities, should be of interest elsewhere in the world. We can learn from the Latin American experience.’

At the Centre of Latin American Studies, interdisciplinary research is offering a new perspective on the creativity, challenges and lessons that can be learned from Latin America.

We can learn from the Latin American experience.

Dr David Lehmann

Francisco Valdez, Rosario, Argentina

El Eternauta, Argentina

Legacy of El Libertador

For the past 40 years, the academic community has benefited from the arrival of distinguished Latin American scholars through the Simón Bolívar Chair in Latin American Studies.

̽��ֱ��Fellowship was established by the Venezuelan Government in memory of Simón Bolívar (El Libertador) – the foremost leader of Latin American independence in the 1820s – and has brought a host of illustrious figures to Cambridge. Among those who have taken up the Chair for a one-year teaching and research sabbatical are Mario Vargas Llosa, winner of the 2010 Nobel prize in Literature, and sociologist Fernando Henrique Cardoso, who later became President of Brazil.

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