Um novo jeito de ser igreja: a experiência religiosa das comunidades celulares

Abstract

The proposal of this work is in the comprehension of the religious phenomenon of cell churches in its contemporaneity and many dimensions, seeking its origins in various phenomena in the history of Protestantism. The dialog between many fields of Human Sciences in a multimethodological perspective that is present for the perception of these dimensions that the religious phenomenon assume. In a historical sense, the intention is in the perception of the diverse elements that colaborate to the formation of the worldview of cell churches, an element that distances them from the perspectives of several other Protestant groups today. The problem is, therefore, the phenomenon, with few studies in the academia, has its interpretations based on contextual Protestant experiences, mainly from the Protestant churches of the 1980s and 1990s, in Brazil, which interpret cells as a result of strategic mechanics for church growth. The proposal of this work goes in the opposite direction, proposing to understand, from the faithful’s worldview, the cells are built as a form of criticism of Protestantism mostly practiced in the country. The prepositions of Ninian Smart about dealing with the religious phenomenon are the main base of the formulation of a comprehensive analysis about cells in a dialog with other authors that address religion in different perspectives, such as Mircea Eliade, Roberto DaMatta, Harvey Cox and Pierre Bourdieu.