Convenção Batista Nacional : condicionantes, surgimento; implantação e desenvolvimento da Igreja Batista Nacional no estado de Rondônia (1973- 2015)

Abstract

This thesis analyses the creation of the National Baptist Church as a historical result from the decades preceding the 1960s. This religious institution was formally created in 1967 under the name Convenção Batista Nacional (National Baptist Convention) and adopted “CBN” as its acronym. During the process of becoming a formalized institution, it was denominated as Evangelical Missionary Action (AME), an institution that intended, theoretically, to be interdenominational and lasted only from the beginning of 1966 until September 1967. This study is based on the assumption that political, economical, social and religious influences, mainly from pentecostals within the historical protestant churches, resulted in a movement called Renovação Espiritual (Spiritual Renewal) and a consequent exclusion of self-proclaimed “renewed” groups, among them, the national baptists. It also analyses how the National Baptist Church was implanted in the Rondônia State and its development between the years of 1973 and 2015. It was verified, through interviews and documents, that between the foundation of the first church in the city of Ji-Paraná, in 1973, and the end of 2015, an amount of fifty-six churches pastored by about seventy-six pastors was created. The churchgoers estimate, according to the church, is of approximately fifteen thousand - however, the church is not able to control the member’s movement to specify its quantity, therefore this number can fluctuate to more or less. In a theoretical perspective, a interdisciplinarity between History, Sociology of Religion and Anthropology was seen as needed, using the approaches of Pierre Bourdieu, Vittorio Lanternari, Geertz, Berger, among others, to the concept of field, culture (religion), its structured and structuring structure, that is, the process of internalization and externalization of culture in the continuous development of the subject. In this sense, the National Baptist Church appears as the result of the hybridization between Baptists and Pentecostals.