Mulheres adventistas em Curitiba: tensões e conflitos no mundo religioso (1960 a 2020)

Abstract

This doctoral thesis investigates the construction of the female image within Adventism, a Protestant Christian movement centered on the belief in the imminent Second Coming of Jesus Christ, with an emphasis on observing the Sabbath (the seventh day) as a day of rest and worship, and strong missionary, educational, and health activities, with the Seventh-day Adventist Church (IASD). Given the proposed theme, this research takes as its starting point an understanding of the image that has been created of women in the IASD and how the expansion of their areas of activity, influenced by exogenous movements, has impacted and led to a rethinking of this theme within the Church. Thus, the objective is to understand the process of constructing the female imaginary within Adventism and the impact of the labor market and women's occupation of new spaces within this religion, concerning the reality of the metropolitan region of Curitiba, Paraná, from the 1960s to 2020. Added to this is the idea of identifying, in the context of the emergence of Adventism, female participation and analyzing, from a historical point of view, the external and internal influences for the expansion of the role of women in this religious movement, as well as understanding the empirical realities of these subjects in the local and temporal context. The thesis that guides this research is based on the premise that Adventist women played an essential role in the formation and development of Adventism, with a historically strong female movement within this religion, advocating for new spaces and identity agendas, breaking the bubble of a structure shaped by conservatism and patriarchy in their work, family, church, and other aspects. In terms of methodology, we resorted to: i) bibliographic research, through authors who discuss the topic (articles, books, dissertations, and theses); ii) documentary research, considering writings from the IASD, Ellen White, considered an Adventist prophetess, and mainly from the Adventist Magazine; iii) field research, through semi-structured interviews with Adventist men and women from Curitiba, Paraná, Brazil. Theoretically, the study is based on the thinking of Max Weber, who analyzed the religious implications of men's economic behavior, drawing on concepts such as ideal type, patriarchy, disenchantment with the world, pure types of legitimate domination, elective affinities, and others. The results show that women's participation in Adventism has been and continues to be very significant. In the realm of religiosity, women have navigated with great skill and pragmatism and achieved several victories, despite the male predominance at the helm of Adventism and Protestantism in general. From its early days, Adventism has been imbued with pragmatism and systematic rationalization of the way of life, which has contributed to mitigating the assumptions of the classic division of roles, anchored in the patriarchal model inherited from Judeo-Christian culture, in the face of feminism and the new ambitions of Adventist women. This was the scenario that contributed to the construction of the female imaginary in relation to the labor market and the delimitation of women's spaces in Adventism.