Marcelo Barros1
Special for In Red
“Enchanting Politics with art, culture and democracy” is the theme that, these days, in Brazil, brings together thousands of people from different Christian churches and other expressions of faith. It is the 12th National Meeting of the Faith and Politics Movement, held in Belo Horizonte – MG, from Friday, April 5 to Sunday, April 7. This theme remembers the vocation of all people who feel attracted to politics from the motivation of their faith or spirituality. This theme implies the impulse to transform ourselves internally and to fight together for the transformation of society and the world. It is not just a program or question of methodology. It is the path of spirituality.
Currently, in the world there are those who confuse spirituality and spiritualism. In reality, spiritualism separates the material and the spiritual. Divide the sacred and the profane. It is limited to intimate individualism and does not go beyond ritual devotions. Quite the contrary, spirituality is the inner energy of love and communion that exists in every human being and is experienced socially. Religions and spiritual traditions recognize that this energy is a divine gift and divinizes every human being. What deifies the human being and society is social love.
Christianity believes that this loving dimension present in the life of each person and communities is the very presence of the Holy Spirit in us. That is why the apostle Paul speaks of a “life guided by the Spirit.” This is the Spirit of Life, which in each spiritual tradition has a name, but is always distinguished as the energy of life. Therefore, everything that favors life (personal and collective) is spiritual. That which does not lead to life and does not express love for life is not spiritual. For this reason, all spirituality is linked to concrete life, that is, to what indigenous peoples call good living, or living well. The Gospel explains this path as “life in abundance” or “the intensity of a happy life” (Jn 10:10).
The more we humanize ourselves, the more we open ourselves to the breath of the divine wind that fills with charm our personal lives, our emotional relationships, and our personal and community work to transform society and the world.
The anthropologist Eduardo Viveiro de Castro affirms: “Indians can teach us to live better in a worse world.” He says that this is achieved through a “progressive and creative (hence, not just nostalgic) return to ancient cosmologies.”«2. Shaman Davi Kopenawa claims that the dances of the xapiris (forest spirits) on moonlit nights restore the balance of nature (ecosystem) and help the Yanomami regain their joy of living. 3.
We can discover the same energy of life in Afro-descendant spiritualities. In them, dance is an instrument to restore the harmony of life. The cultivation of Axé as vital energy is essential in all currents of Candomblé. A priest of the black religion explains: «Candomblé or Santería reinforces the harmony between humans and the Orixás. The Axés are exchanged and the dynamics of Life and Joy are guaranteed»4.
In January 2006, at the World Social Forum in Caracas, President Hugo Chávez declared: «Politics can only be done with love. If it is not done with love, politics degrades and becomes mere politicking. Politics with a capital P, as Oscar Romero called it, has as its central axis the exercise of the common good and the objective of humanizing the economy and the fundamental structures of human coexistence on Earth.
Just as every tree is healthy if its root is healthy, what Pope Francis calls “the best Politics” (Cf. Fratelli Tutti, chapter VII) has liberating spirituality as its foundation.
Today, many religious fundamentalisms based on fanaticism and expressing hatred and prejudice are spreading throughout the world. We need to get vaccinated and help communities get vaccinated against that epidemic of religious cruelty that has always persecuted the prophets of Divine Love in the most diverse religions and that killed Jesus Christ.
We need to unite faith and politics so that religions can exercise the prophetic role that corresponds to faith, as a divine project for the transformation of the world. In this way, they will always be able to develop a liberating spirituality as a force of resistance to build a society of peace, justice and communion with Mother Earth and nature.
For those who are activists on this path of faith, the first challenge is to unite what we can call micropolitics with macropolitics. This means fighting so that our personal lives, our human relationships at home and in our neighborhoods, can, in fact, reflect what we believe and say we want in the big politics of the city, the state, the country or the world. We often continue to find in our groups people who defend a new Politics in terms of a future world, but in everyday life they are authoritarian and prejudiced.
Mahatma Gandhi proposed the fundamental rule of all liberating spirituality: “Begin with yourself, the change you want for the world.”
1– Marcelo Barros is a Benedictine monk, theologian and advisor to Base Ecclesial Communities, Social Pastorals and popular movements such as the MST.
2– VIVEIRO DE CASTRO, Eduardo, Prefácio ao livro: KOPENAWA, Davi e ALBERT, Bruce, A Queda do Céu, Words of a Xamã Yanomami, São Paulo, Ed. Companhia das Letras, 2015, p. 35.
3– idem, p. 328-329.
4– CAMARGO, Odagil Nogueira, Religious experience in Candomblé, São Paulo, Ed. Méritos, 2013, p. 15.
