“Valuable, admirably researched and well-written. . . . [Helgen] challenges others to push further.”—Steven Engler, Reading Religion“Helgen’s research is valuable precisely because it captures and reflects the reflexive and dynamic discourses of a crucial decade in Brazil’s nation-building process.”—Stefan van der Hoek, International Journal of Latin American Religion“This engagingly written book explores the neglected history of Protestantism’s early expansion in the Brazilian Northeast, but it also offers the reader much more. Helgen deftly builds a fresh, alternative narrative of Brazilian state formation and identity in the first half of the 20th century.”—Virginia Garrard, The University of Texas at Austin“This is religious history at its best: a tight interweaving of social, economic, political, cultural, and intellectual history, based on previously neglected archival evidence and delightfully free of reductionism. Erika Helgen’s masterful work is bound to redefine the way in which twentieth-century Brazilian religious history is approached and understood.”—Carlos Eire, author of Reformations“Carefully crafted, exhaustively researched, and argued in clear, engaging prose, this book offers readers an original, accessible contribution to the history of emergent pluralism in early-twentieth-century Latin America. A laudable accomplishment.”—Edward Wright-Rios, Vanderbilt University“Powerful but nuanced, this book moves easily from debates over how to restore and re-position Catholicism nationally to vividly-rendered parish-level clashes between Catholics and Protestants. It is sweeping in its implications but intimate in its hard-won details about religious violence and persecution.”— Margaret Chowning, University of California, Berkeley
