Imigrantes italianos valdenses e os inícios do metodismo no Rio Grande do Sul (1887 -1900)

Abstract

The Italian colony of Rio Grande do Sul is still seen, in common sense and by more traditional historiography, as a territory of great cultural and especially religious homogeneity. However, the Italian colonial region of Serra Gaúcha received a small number of evangelical immigrants of Waldensian confession, who, in 1887, came into contact with the representative in Rio Grande do Sul of the Methodist Mission in Rio da Prata. From that year onwards, religious assistance for these Italians was under the responsibility of the United Methodist Episcopal Church (IME). The Waldensian immigrants coming to Rio Grande do Sul had two origins: those established in the Dona Isabel and Alfredo Chaves colonies came from locations in the provinces of Treviso and Udine that were already being served for some years by the Waldensian Church. Those established in Forqueta Baixa, in the interior of Caxias colony, came from the valleys of Western Piedmont, an area of multi-century Waldensian occupation. The communities were organized into two circuits (areas with several preaching points, one being central), one based in Bento Gonçalves/Dona Isabel and the other based in Forqueta Baixa, each of them attended by a resident pastor, native Italians displaced from the Río de la Plata region by the Methodist administration. An Italian-speaking evangelical church was organized - a rare situation in the Brazilian context - and the first three Methodist temples in Rio Grande do Sul were built in this same area. The regional Protestant community grew at an accelerated pace until the advent of the Federalist Revolution (1893-1895), which convulsed Rio Grande do Sul. In the following period, from 1896 onwards, Catholic religious orders from Europe began to operate in the Italian colony, whose activity came into direct conflict with the Methodist expansion plans. In 1900, Methodist activity in that State began to be directed by another denomination, the Methodist Episcopal Church, South (IMES), and a new phase of Gaucho Methodism began.