This article examines the intersections of religion, migration, and identity formation within Brazilian transnational contexts, arguing that Brazilian religions abroad are best understood through the combined lenses of diaspora as practice, Lusospheric space, and butinage. Rather than relying on conventional nation-centered diaspora framings, the article conceptualizes diaspora as a performative and relational category, shaped by actors who mobilize diasporic narratives and networks in situated ways. Drawing on post- and decolonial theories, it critiques existing uses of the diaspora concept—particularly in scholarship that positions “Brazil” as a fixed analytical origin—and highlights how Lusophone linguistic, historical, and postcolonial ties structure transnational religious fields. To capture the fluidity of religious engagement across borders, the concept of butinage is introduced as a value-neutral metaphor for religious cross-pollination and selective movement between ritual repertoires, institutions, and media. Illustrative examples from existing studies of Pentecostal, Afro-Brazilian, and Spiritist traditions in Germany and other regions demonstrate how Brazilian religious actors compose hybrid forms of belonging and negotiate multi-sited identities within wider Lusospheric networks. The article concludes that this conceptual triad offers a more precise framework for analyzing the dynamic reconfiguration of religion, language, and mobility in Brazilian diasporic settings, with implications for broader debates on transnational religion, narrative transformation, and epistemic justice.

ROCHA, Cristina. Cool Christianity: Hillsong and the Fashioning of Cosmopolitan Identities. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2024. 240 pp. Hbk. ISBN: 9780197673201. £97.00.

Brazil's religious landscape is shaped by a dynamic interplay of historical legacies, social transformations, and spatial reorganizations. This paper explores the evolving geography of religion in Brazil through the theoretical lenses of Milton Santos and David E. Sopher, examining how religious institutions and movements shape and are shaped by urbanization, migration, and socio-economic structures. The study highlights the fluidity of religious spaces, where individuals move between Catholicism, Pentecostalism, Afro-Brazilian traditions, and spiritualist practices, fostering a hybridized religious culture. Drawing from Santos' theories on spatial production and socio-political inequalities, this article discusses how religious institutions both reproduce and challenge social disparities, particularly in land conflicts, indigenous rights, and marginalized communities. Sopher's contributions to religious geography help contextualize Brazil's religious shifts, notably the rise of Pentecostalism and its spatial expansion into urban peripheries, where it fulfills both spiritual and social functions. The research further critiques traditional secularization theories, arguing that religious transformation in Brazil does not signal a retreat from religiosity but rather an adaptive reconfiguration of faith in response to contemporary challenges. By integrating critical geography and religious studies, this paper contributes to a deeper understanding of the interconnections between faith, space, and social justice in Latin America and underscores the importance of studying religious landscapes not merely as historical legacies but as evolving, contested spaces where belief systems intersect with political, economic, and cultural forces.

In the ever-evolving religious landscape of Brazil, researchers who study contemporary phenomena of religions face a complex and often contradictory reality. The practical application of theoretical categories and concepts in this domain is an endeavor that continues to challenge researchers. Brazil’s religious landscape is characterized by an impressive diversity of beliefs, practices, and convictions that often merge and overlap across different boundaries. This complex reality poses a serious challenge to religious studies, which strives to classify, analyze, and compare phenomena in historical and contemporary dimensions. The problems begin with the basic categories, which are often blurred in their applicability and meaning. Therefore, the focus of this article is to argue that the rapid change and impermanence of categories used in religious studies are due to the deep-rooted contradictions in Brazilian religious reality, which (e)merge, transform, and respond to social, cultural, and political changes in a constant state of flux. These changes cause defined categories that may have made sense at certain times. This article argues, however, that a phenomenological perspective is needed to conceptualize the centrality of spiritual entities to comparative religion. The omnipresence of spirits pervades the entire religious field of Pentecostalism, traditional Christianity, indigenous religions and Shamanism, as well as African-derived religions, which will be exemplified in terms of their references and striking parallels when it comes to the concept of spirits while manifested in human bodies and practices.

The Aesthetics of Healing published in 2024 offers an insightful exploration of how Brazilian Spiritism bridges scientific and spiritual approaches to mental healthcare.This comprehensive work delves into the aesthetics of healing, emphasizing the sensory and performative aspects of Spiritist practices and their profound implications for mental health in Brazilian Spiritism.The author, a lecturer and researcher at the Institute of Ethnology at the University of Münster in Germany, has research interests that span transcultural psychiatry, psychological anthropology, medical and religious anthropology, and the anthropology of the body.Kurz's extensive fieldwork in Brazil and Germany on Spiritism demonstrates his keen interest in the interactions between religious and psychiatric healing practices.Integrating interdisciplinary perspectives from medical anthropology, religious studies, and sensory ethnography, Kurz provides a nuanced understanding of how these practices create holistic healing experiences that address both the psychological and spiritual needs of individuals.Kurz introduces in his book the concept of the Aesthetics of Healing as a methodological tool to explore the sensory and embodied dimensions of therapeutic practices in Brazilian Spiritism (pp.24, 161).He uses this concept to examine how healing spaces and practices are created and experienced through sensory engagement, focusing on their influence on mental, spiritual, and affective well-being.The book is divided into six chapters, each addressing different facets of Brazilian Spiritist practices and their implications for mental healthcare.In its Introduction, the book begins with an overview of Brazilian Spiritism, highlighting its holistic approach to healthcare that integrates biomedical, psychiatric, and spiritual perspectives.Kurz introduces the reader to his intense field of research and discusses key issues such as mediumship and the intersection of

Potential competing interests: No potential competing interests to

Dieser Artikel beleuchtet die komplexen Entwicklungen der Sozialen Arbeit in Ägypten und deren Bedeutung für die Professionsentwicklung in einem internationalen Kontext, indem am Beispiel Ägyptens die lokale Anpassung und Transformation von Betreuungsmodellen sowie die gesetzlichen Rahmenbedingungen in einem nicht-westlichen Kontext untersucht werden. Durch die Rekonstruktion der Implementierung westlicher Betreuungsmodelle der Kinder- und Jugendpflege in die Praxis der ägyptischen Sozialen Arbeit veranschaulicht dieser Artikel die Anpassungsfähigkeit und die Aneignung von internationalen Konzepten in den lokalen Anforderungssituationen vor Ort. Eine systematische Evaluation von Betreuungsmodellen in Ägypten und deren Einfluss auf die Politik- und Praxisanpassung bietet dabei exemplarische Einsichten für die Bedeutung von Forschung und evidenzbasierter Praxis in der Sozialen Arbeit. Zudem werden die gesetzlichen Änderungen zur Gleichbehandlung elternloser Kinder als Beispiel für globale Bestrebungen zum Schutz der Kinderrechte präsentiert. Das Kernargument dieses Artikels lautet, dass die Erfahrungen aus Ägypten auch für die deutschsprachige Forschung anregen und zur Weiterentwicklung kultursensibler Ansätze in einer zunehmend diversen Gesellschaft beitragen können.

This paper presents a comprehensive analysis of the portrayal of the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God in German-speaking online press. Utilizing qualitative content analysis, this inquiry examines German-speaking media articles published from 1990 to 2021. Using the systematic methodology developed by Kuckartz and Rädiker, media contents are deconstructed into individual codes and categorized into thematic complexes. This approach provides an understanding of how the UCKG is portrayed in German-speaking online press and therefore may affect Brazilian migrants who are affiliated with the UCKG. The findings of this survey reveal a multifaceted picture of the UCKG and its representation in the German-speaking online press. Dominant themes include the church’s rapid global expansion, the centralization of the leader, and various criminal allegations, predominantly financial crimes and corruption. The study uncovers a consistent pattern of critical and often one-sided media portrayal, contrasting with academic perspectives highlighting the church’s adaptation and diversity in its European context. Additionally, the research illuminates how these media narratives potentially influence public perception and policy decisions regarding the UCKG in Germany. The implications of this study are significant for professionals in the field of migration and religion to gain insights into the complexities of working with religious communities, particularly those facing media scrutiny and public misperceptions.

Zusammenfassung Dieser Artikel untersucht die religionspädagogischen Potenziale pentekostaler Migrationskirchen im Kontext des evangelischen Religionsunterrichts. Vor dem Hintergrund der schwindenden Bedeutung traditioneller Kirchenformen widmet sich der Beitrag dem anhaltenden Wachstum pentekostaler Migrationsgemeinden in Deutschland. Diese Gemeinden zeichnen sich bisweilen durch ihre lebendige Glaubenspraxis und ihre Fähigkeit aus, Menschen über kulturelle und sprachliche Grenzen hinweg anzuziehen, was nicht selten zu lokalen Spannungen führen kann. Der Artikel beleuchtet die Notwendigkeit, interkulturelle Kompetenzen zu stärken und den Religionsunterricht weiterzuentwickeln, um den Herausforderungen einer pluralistischen Gesellschaft gerecht zu werden. Dabei werden die sozialen, institutionellen und theologischen Dimensionen pentekostaler Migrationskirchen in Deutschland und ihre Auswirkungen auf den Religionsunterricht analysiert. Besondere Aufmerksamkeit gilt der Glossolalie und der Wohlstandstheologie als charakteristische Merkmale pentekostaler Praxis und Glaubensüberzeugung. Der Beitrag argumentiert, dass die Einbeziehung von Migrationsgemeinden in den Religonsunterricht nicht nur zu einem besseren Verständnis religiöser Vielfalt beiträgt, sondern auch zur Bildung interreligiöser Kompetenzen anregen kann. Ziel ist es, einen dialogorientierten und multiperspektivischen Ansatz zu fördern, der Schülerinnen und Schüler dazu befähigt, die komplexe religiöse Landschaft moderner Gesellschaften kritisch zu reflektieren und ein tieferes Verständnis für die Vielfalt des Christentums zu entwickeln.

The impact of environmental catastrophes and crises on religion and religious discourses in history and modernity has been described frequently and from different perspectives. However, the interpretations and narratives of scriptless civilizations have remained largely unnoticed. Due to the concrete lack of reliable sources of information, those interpretations and narratives can nowadays only be recorded and processed in the scientific discourse in a fragmentary way. Therefore, this article unfolds along the early work of ethnologist and linguist Curt Unckel (1883–1946), who was called Nimuendajú during his lifetime, the thesis that an indigenous group of the Apapocúava-Guaraní tribe in southeastern Brazil correlated the global information dissemination of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake with cosmological narratives of an impending apocalypse, leading to the decline and cultural degeneration of the group. The article thus demonstrates how cosmologies and world perceptions of an indigenous tribe at the dawn of globalization can be reconstructed and how information about catastrophic events from the news was processed with immediate local changes by a scriptless culture on the Brazilian frontier in the early twentieth century. In doing so, this article examines the role of media and communication in globalized modernity and how media literacy influences religious perception.

Nimuendaju Unckel is well known as a Brazilian ethnologist and linguist who acquired his scientific skills in a self-taught manner over the course of his life. In doing so, Nimuendaju found his way into academia with work that offers important impulses for comparative religion and the sociology of religion. However, Nimuendaju has hardly been received in religious studies to date. Therefore, this paper will focus on and present Nimuendaju's achievements in religious studies. For this purpose, the early period of Nimuendaju's upbringing will be examined (1914-1926), in which the interest in religious studies becomes particularly visible. In parallel, an exchange of letters that Nimuendaju had with the German ethnologist Theodor Koch-Grunberg (1872-1924) is consulted and provides background knowledge on Nimuendaju's genuine research interest.

Curt Nimuendajú Unckel é conhecido como um etnólogo e linguista brasileiro de origem alemã que teve uma formação autodidata ao longo de sua vida. Ainda que sua obra ofereça impulsos importantes para os estudos de religião comparada e para a sociologia da religião, Nimuendajú ainda não é muito bem conhecido nestas searas. Este artigo trata de apresentar algumas importantes contribuições de Nimuendajú para os estudos das religiões. Para esse propósito, será examinado o período inicial de produção de Nimuendajú (1914-1926), no qual o interesse nos estudos religiosos se torna particularmente visível. Em paralelo, uma troca de cartas entre Nimuendajú e o etnólogo alemão Theodor Koch-Grünberg (1872-1924) é consultada e oferece informações sobre o genuíno interesse de pesquisa de Nimuendajú.

This article seeks to analyze the reactions and responses of the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God (UCKG) in Berlin to the global COVID-19 crisis. Although the UCKG has been the subject of multiple international types of research regarding the spread of the COVID-19 virus, this article shows that the UCKG’s global network of local churches must be differentiated in their responses and reactions to the global pandemic. This article traces and analyzes how the local UCKG in Berlin responded to the pandemic in its respective conditions and differed from the global network in the emergence of a pandemic in its rhetoric and discourse, using the concept of the Third Space . For this purpose, the services and sermons of local pastors were recorded to analyze how the discourse toward the COVID-19 crisis changed during the period of occurrence and awareness of a global pandemic. The results show how the church has adapted to the local restriction and regulations and reflect the international literature on how the UCKG’s mother church in Brazil acted in comparison. The church and its pastors in Germany responded to the global pandemic in three primary ways: they assigned to authorities’ guidelines, provided sermons with undertones of spiritual warfare, and rejected the interpretation of interdependencies between demons and health issues.