From contexts at the same time distant and near, we decided to write together, expressing the views of two people living about 800 kilometres apart, yet both part of the team of ministers in the Bultrins First Baptist Church, in the city of Olinda, Pernambuco, in the poor North-East region of Brazil. In considering the possibilities for government/civil society interaction, the subject we chose to bring this into focus is violence – a frightening issue in Brazil (as indeed, in the world).

Marcos lives and works as a teacher and minister in Feira de Santana, Bahia, known as a very violent city, with about 800,000 people, most of whom live in poverty and misery. Benedito, also a teacher and minister, lives in Recife, a city of more than three million inhabitants, more than one thousand favelas, and considered Brazil’s most violent city, proportionally speaking. Three recent and quite different events can illustrate our issue well.

People’s Forum
In early November 2006, the church promoted the Fifth People’s Theological Forum, on the subject of “Church, Community, and Violence”. The church, which was born in a nearby favela, meets in a good-sized sanctuary, but one without doors and windows. (Initially, the reason for this was lack of money; now it is part of their theological vision and project. Not having doors or windows, the church became an architectonically visible extension of the community. It is used every night as a shelter to homeless, poor and drunk people. The service room is also occasionally used for residents’ meetings, for discussing the city budget, and other such events.)

In the People’s Theological Forum, local community leaders participated actively. Diverse expressions of popular art, music, dance, street theatre, puppet theatre… mixed with religious songs and theological, sociological or political lectures, formed a very rich and inclusive liturgy which has a strong impact on the participants. The struggle towards “a culture of peace” was far more than a rationalistic debate. It was a collective construction of an alternative image for the city: one of beauty, joy, and loving fraternity.

Powerful testimonies
At the end of November, we both participated in a meeting with the Belgian theologian José Comblin, who has lived in Brazil for many years. The meeting was in a small city called Mogeiro, Paraíba, also in the North-East, where about 40 popular leaders – Protestant and Catholic, ministers, priests and laypersons – have been gathering in small and large groups, reflecting on the Bible and on life, with Father Comblin’s guidance. Here, in a very quiet and pleasant environment, we studied the subject of love. It was the final meeting of a series studying hope, faith, and love – purposefully in this order.

The meeting was made up of the extraordinary words and the extraordinary life of Father Comblin, but also of the words and lives of each participant. We share the belief that violence is a brutal, irrational and irresistible force, and that only the active and courageous force of love can face it. Now an 83-year-old man, Father Comblin has dedicated his entire life to the training of popular lay leaders to develop an intensive spirituality in the struggle for the empowerment of the poor and miserable in our country, and in Latin America, facing unjust structures and relations and developing more fraternal and egalitarian communities. Each participant in the meeting was able to say and show something about his/her own life and experience, but two testimonies had a particularly strong impact.

Luisinho and Neném live simple lives in very small and different towns, but shared similar experiences. With no assured income, no defined jobs, as a Christian choice they engage with great conviction in complex struggles of the people, constantly risking their lives, always in the defence of the impoverished, always on behalf of the oppressed, always in the struggle for a more just and loving society. Luisinho, along with several fellows in Brazil’s Landless People’s Movement (MST), is studying nursing to better serve in the settlements.

Neném, a woman with a very humble aspect and a low, smooth voice, has accumulated strong experiences and an amazing wisdom in her 14 years of missionary life. Recently she had what she considers to be one of the more remarkable spiritual experiences of her life. An MST settlement was being evicted from a farmland. The legal owners (who quite often in Brazil are not legitimate) released 300 head of cattle onto the land which destroyed the poor growers’ entire plantation. Policemen, defending the interests of the powerful and the oppressors, came with guns to expel the settlers. Spontaneously, an isolating circle was formed by children who joined hands, and said to the police: “You will not kill my father! My father is not an outlaw! You are doing wrong!” Neném said that she is always moved when she remembers the children facing the guns. We ourselves were moved by the strength of the weak – a force that courageously faces the violence of the strong.

Sacred music for all
We did not attend the third event at the end of November (Benedito living far away, and Marcos at the time visiting missionaries in small inland towns). The choir of the Avenue Baptist Church at Feira de Santana presented in the public square an entire Bach cantata, a selection of Negro spirituals, and a selection of gospel songs. Many people gathered to watch and participate, as we ourselves would have liked to. We believe it is significant when a traditional, middle-class church puts the best of its music at the city’s disposal. This, too, is a form of participating in the building of a better world.

These three events shed light on the relationship between government and civil society. In a democratic society, governing is a task for all people – though the political society, managing the state’s apparatus, plays a more direct role in constructing the social fabric. Meanwhile, society organises itself as social, cultural, religious, and non-religious movement, establishing different kinds of power relations with political society – concurrent, co-operative, antagonistic or conflictive relations.

An alternative space
In the face of violence, which may be the most urgent question in our society, the State has acted as a repressive and preventive force, not always with the desired efficiency. The Theological People’s Forum establishes a space for dialogue between political society and civil society in their multiple expressions. In this space, all participants are aware of a structural violence, a sub-product of an androcentric–patriarchal structure (whose spiritual ethos is domination), and of a hegemonic economic system (which presumes itself to be the only possible one). In this space, power relations tend to become relations of violence against women, black people, Indigenous people, children, the poor and other minorities.

In response to this, diverse civil-society actors and actresses, including churches, can take different positions. They may establish a project to train and equip popular leaders, showing theology as effective and holistic… or organise inclusive spaces for discussion… or help communities to organise themselves to be efficient social agents… or clearly and visibly confront violence against the weak and oppressed… or organise public cultural events in which the new humanity can be sung. Or, on the other hand, they may almost completely remove themselves from any participation in the building of a new world. In the democratic space, however, omission is also a kind of participation – which legitimises the rights and the violence of the oppressor.

All of civil society, in its multiple expressions, is invited to participate in the great shared construction of which popular art forms always remind us. In the people’s space, we all can dance – in multiple, festive and varied styles, with our own way of being, in a moment in which all and any form of violence becomes an odd being, and we seek only the rhythm dictated by joy and love.

–– Rev. Marcos Monteiro is a pastor and professor at North-Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary, Brazil. Rev. Benedito Bezerra, also a pastor, is part of the same ministry team at Bultrins First Baptist Church, Olinda, Pernambuco, Brazil.