Homosexuality in Brazil from Colonial Times until the 1990s: A Historical Survey
Until the nineteenth century, homosexual acts in the Portuguese Empire (and in Brazil, as a colony of Portugal – and later part of a united kingdom with Portugal and Algarve) were collectively labeled as ‘sodomy’, a term obviously derived from the biblical account found in Genesis 18–19, which describes how a mob from the city-state of Sodom attempted to rape Lot’s male guests. Given the fact that colonial Brazil was a deeply structured society in terms of gender and race, sodomy referred almost exclusively to sexual acts between two men, and mostly between two white men. It focused exclusively on the sexual act per se and had no notion of a homosexual orientation, or identity.Footnote 3 Like in most of the West (including both Protestant and Catholic countries), it was outlawed and considered a crime. However, in some Roman Catholic countries (including Portugal), matters of public morals were dealt with by the Inquisition throughout most of modern history.
Mott surveyed Inquisition courts in Bahia and Pernambuco between 1591 and 1620,Footnote 4 and found that, among 283 people found guilty (of ‘crimes’ such as being a Jew, or a Lutheran, blasphemy, superstition, and bigamy), there were 44 cases of sodomy, nearly 16 percent of all sentences. He also describes how sodomites were defined under different terms based on ethnicity: somitigos for Europeans, tibira for indigenous and jimbanda for Africans.
Homosexual acts remained crimes punished by the Inquisition until the nineteenth century when, after Brazil’s independence from Portugal in 1822, Inquisition courts were abolished. Brazilian civil code did not punish sodomy, though an absolute majority considered it morally wrong. Throughout the nineteenth century, the development of modern medicine and investigations on sexual behavior led to the pathologizing of same-sex activities. Positivism was very popular among the elite in Brazil and the discourse of homosexuals as people in need of some sort of psychiatric treatment gradually supplanted (at least among the elites) earlier concepts of sexual perversion or even demonic possession. However, not rarely, homosexual acts, depending on the circumstances, could still be framed as ‘public violation(s) of modesty’, a misdemeanor that was seldom applied to the rich and powerful, but often used against poor and disenfranchised LGBT people.Footnote 5 This argument was used to eliminate all visible signs of non-normative sexual expressions, with police raids directly targeting transgender persons, effeminate men and butch women (especially among the very poor). But sexual activity, as long as it remained confined to private acts, was not actively prosecuted.
Historical records show that there was, however, a gradual acceptance of homosexuality, cross-dressing and transgenderism, at least in some cities and in some circles. For example, novels such as O bom crioulo Footnote 6 (1889) by Adolfo Caminha and Um homem gasto Footnote 7 (1885) by Lourenço Ferreira da Silva Leal (who used the pen name ‘L.L.’) openly described same-sex relationships.Footnote 8 There is valuable research that cites same-gender relationships in the early twentieth century among practitioners of the Afro-Brazilian Candomblé religion, and mentions a 1959 article that describes patterns of homosexual practices in the city of São Paulo.Footnote 9 Despite not being very well documented, there was a flourishing gay and lesbian community in Brazil in the 1940s, 50s and 60s, disguised under the trappings of a conservative, mostly Roman Catholic society.Footnote 10 In many aspects, this parallels what was happening in other Western countries. The lack of laws that criminalized homosexual acts per se played an important role in changing societal perceptions, as opposed to other countries where anti-sodomy laws remained in place throughout most of the twentieth century.Footnote 11
The first LGBT organization, ‘Turma OK’, was founded in Rio de Janeiro, in 1962. However, it was not until the late 1970s and 80s, as the military dictatorship lost power and democratization seemed the natural way forward, that LGBT movements in Brazil started to actively fight for full citizenship and civil rights.Footnote 12 The Lampião da Esquina Footnote 13 newspaper, published in 1978, served as an active voice for the newly created ‘Movimento Homossexual Brasileiro’.Footnote 14 This, of course, echoes similar movements in other Western countries, but also follows the path led by other activist groups, such as the pro-divorce movement. While civil marriage had been the norm in Brazil since the dawn of the Republic in 1889, divorce only became legal in 1977. These, and other parallel developments, show a sharp decrease of power and influence once held by the Roman Catholic Church among Brazilian jurists and lawmakers, and in Brazil as a whole.
Throughout the 1980s, several other groups brought important discussions to the public sphere, such as the HIV epidemic and the civil rights of partners who found themselves afforded no legal protections when tending to their spouses in hospitals or when widowed. In 1995, the Brazilian Association of Gays, Lesbians and Transgender persons was founded. And, in 1997, the first Pride Parade was held in São Paulo. The São Paulo Pride is currently one of the most well attended in the world, rivaling New York City Pride in attendance.
Same-sex Unions and Civil Marriage in Brazil: From Uncertainty to Official Recognition
The post-dictatorship, democratic Constitution of 1988 initially recognized three different family arrangements: opposite-sex marriages (with or without children), stable unions or common-law marriages (with or without children) and single parents with children. The 1988 Constitution, and the 2002 Civil Code (which better defined how stable unions were to be recognized) were used as the basis for most court cases dealing with the recognition of same-sex couples in Brazil. Throughout the 1980s and 90s, same-sex couples often had to sign elaborate agreements, or become business partners, in order to have some sort of legal protection for their relationships, since neither the law nor jurisprudence protected them.Footnote 15
At first, churches’ reactions to same-sex couples and their families were practically non-existent. Same-sex relationships were not on the radar of most Christian churches in Brazil and it was often assumed that most LGBT people would not be willing to join church communities anyway. A few cases of clergy and laity who happened to be LGBT were treated pastorally, whenever there was room for such approaches. In most cases, the official approach was either to propose some sort of ‘conversion’ or abstinence from all sexual activity outside heterosexual marriage. But, for the most part, churches did not directly interfere with the ongoing discussion regarding civil rights throughout the 1980s and 90s.
In the early 2000s, however, things started to change. In 2004, a landmark decision allowed a same-sex couple living in Curitiba, Paraná, to register their partnership as a stable union, or common law marriage. It was soon followed by several different court cases, which provided same-sex couples in different parts of the country legal protection to their relationships and the possibility of applying for joint adoption and child custody. Decisions were often controversial, and challenged in higher courts. Favorable decisions also often depended on a particular judge’s interpretation and whether local state laws made room for wider recognition of same-sex couples.Footnote 16
It is also worth noticing that, especially throughout the last two decades, Brazilian television has often depicted LGBT people with a favorable tone. The theme, which had been a taboo for the most part of the twentieth century, became seemingly ordinary and commonplace in the twenty-first century. Soap operas and TV series started portraying LGBT people and families in a positive way. News stories and documentaries treated same-sex couples, the LGBT movement and their conquests with neutrality. This helped provoke a wider change in thought among Brazilians in general.
On May 5, 2011, a ruling of the Supreme Court of Brazil made room for a novel interpretation of the Brazilian Constitution that allowed stable unions to be extended for same-sex couples nationwide. These unions were granted most of the rights of marriages, including adoption, welfare benefits, pension, inheritance tax, income tax, social security, health benefits, immigration, joint property ownership, hospital and prison visitation, IVF and surrogacy.Footnote 17
A further step that led to the approval of same-sex civil marriage happened in 2013. By then, 12 out of 26 states, plus the Federal District, already recognized same-sex civil marriage and permitted public notary offices to perform it. On May 14, 2013, the National Council of Justice legalized same-sex marriage in the entire country in a 14 : 1 vote by issuing a ruling that ordered all civil registers to perform same-sex marriages and convert any existing stable unions into marriages, if the couple so wished. This decision was signed by Justice Joaquim Barbosa, who acted as both president of the Council of Justice and the Supreme Federal Court.Footnote 18
This decision, and the discussion that led to it, was met with opposition by several churches. For example, the National Conference of Catholic Bishops acted as amicus curiae against the recognition of same-sex stable unions.Footnote 19 The Presbyterian Church of Brazil, the Assemblies of God and several lawmakers associated with the religious right also issued official statements against the decision.Footnote 20 The National Association of Evangelical Jurists tried to halt implementation of the National Council of Justice decision by appealing to a ‘conscience clause’ that would exclude officers who had religious objections to marrying two men or two women.
A few churches and religious institutions, however, welcomed these expansive views of marriage. IEAB was one of them. For example, when the Supreme Court ruling on stable unions was approved, the Primate, on behalf of the House of Bishops, issued a statement praising it.Footnote 21
It is important to notice that the LGBT rights movement in Brazil (but also in some other Ibero-American countries such as Uruguay, Mexico, Argentina, Colombia and even Portugal and Spain) took much longer than their counterparts in North America and northern Europe to start. Until the late 1970s, the scenario was unfavorable in the Latin world. Dictatorships repressed any pro-rights movements and the influence of the Roman Catholic Church was still strong enough to block some subjects from being discussed in the public square. The advent of new, democratic movements, accompanied by rapid secularization quickly changed this scenario, thus allowing LGBT movements to flourish, sometimes at a faster pace than in northern countries.
As of now, there is a clear divide in Brazilian society between secular and progressive groups (supported by a few religious institutions), and a growing religious right. A great deal of Brazilians consider themselves religious, but challenge their churches’ official doctrinal stances on sexual ethics. On the other hand, Evangelical fundamentalism has grown among the poorest sections of society.
IEAB was one of the few mainline Brazilian churches that promoted a wide debate on same-sex relationships based on discussions fostered by wider Anglican bodies and sister churches and by a conflation of theological developments both in Brazil and abroad. The next sections attempt to trace and explain how a wider theological and pastoral commitment to same-sex couples evolved among Anglicans in Brazil as a response to a wider Anglican discussion, to changes in Brazilian society and to autochthonous theological developments.
The Birth of a Brazilian Theology of the Body
In Brazil, as in most of Latin America, much of the theological thought throughout the 1960s and 70s focused on classical Liberation theology, which states that the main paradigm for reinterpreting Scripture is God’s solidarity with the poor. By ‘poor’, theologians at first took the most literal meaning: people who were dispossessed and suffered from oppressive governments that favored oligarchies and corporations.
CarvalhaesFootnote 22 reminds us that the original Liberation Theology left behind topics such as body, sex, desire, sexual orientations and so on. Concrete bodies, which are related to pleasure and sexual experiences, were neglected. Such ideas were treated as improper, unnecessary and accessory to theological discourse. And, of course, patriarchy, racism and homophobic tendencies were carried over from many leftist sources used as paradigms by Liberation theologians for political theory and economic criticism. Liberation theology comprehensions of the feminine were initially centered on the role of Mary in the economy of salvation,Footnote 23 and the development of Afrolatina and indigenous theologies only took place after the 1980s.Footnote 24
It is fair, therefore, to say that any theological discussions pertaining to the place LGBT people would have in the life of the church were not native to Brazilian (and perhaps, Latin American) theology until the 1990s. So, when Lambeth 1978 commended Anglican bishops around the world the ‘deep and dispassionate study of the question of homosexuality’Footnote 25 and noticed that ‘such studies are now proceeding in some member Churches of the Anglican Communion’,Footnote 26 this definitely did not include the Brazilian province. Certainly, Brazilian Anglicans were aware of the existence of LGBT people, but this was not the main topic of their theological discourse. Undoubtedly, theological reflection in this field started as an external demand proposed by the Anglican Communion itself.
In the 1980s, a new trend in Brazilian theology emerged. It was called ‘theology of the body’Footnote 27 and was fostered by a few Liberation theologians (mostly from a non-Roman Catholic background), such as Rubem Alves and Jaci Maraschin.
Alves was one of the pioneers of Liberation Theology in Latin America. After his initial degree in Brazil, he pursued higher studies at Union Seminary and at Princeton, where he wrote a thesis on what he called a ‘Theology of Human Hope’, in 1969. This was one of the first key texts that dealt specifically with providing a keyframe to analyze and study a theology of the oppressed. Throughout the 1980s, Alves deepened his understanding of Liberation Theology by engaging it with Freudian thought, Paulo Freire’s educational principles, poetry and the arts. He also was very critical of the bourgeois assumption of Liberation Theology as a theology made for the poor, but not by the poor.
He wrote a considerable amount of works that contributed to the discussion on a ‘theology of the body’ and sexuality. In 1982, the book ‘Variações sobre a vida e a morte’Footnote 28 dares to imagine a free, liberated society where bodies are the locus of pleasure.Footnote 29 Alves criticizes the disconnect between churches that affirm, Sunday after Sunday, a belief in the Resurrection of the body, but do not engage with the needs of people’s bodies. The bodies of the poor, he affirms, have immediate needs, feel pain, are killed (sometimes by suicide) and engage in pleasurable acts with their genitals.Footnote 30 The bodies of the oppressed are, most likely, all they have in life. Their bodies are manipulated by the elites, which deny them every single pleasure available, including nutritional foods, pleasurable music, fine clothing and, yes, sexual pleasure. To Alves, the oppressed have their bodies controlled by ownership constructs – and this includes limiting what they should – or should not – do in terms of sex.Footnote 31 Human bodies (the ones Christ dared to die for) are not subject to basic primal instincts, which is why people love and are loved, choose to wear clothes to embellish them, give themselves names, feed them with delicious foods and engage in sexual pleasure without the immediate need of procreation.Footnote 32
Therefore, those whose bodies were sacrificed are not only the martyrs of repressive governments and those who faced religious persecution, but all whose bodies are denied a full human experience.Footnote 33 It is only when all the oppressed join and march together that messianic prophecies can occur.Footnote 34 In a true incarnational fashion, Alves links Jesus’ sacrifice to the redemption of all human bodies to be what they were meant (and loved) to be.
In ‘O suspiro dos oprimidos’,Footnote 35 he continues touching on the same concepts of bodies having been created for pleasure, not for mere survival.Footnote 36 Carvalhaes emphasizes how Alves expands the concept of religion to understand it as the place where the body finds meaning, hope, healing, desire. However, he also criticizes his work for gradually adhering to a platonic divide between external and internal bodies.Footnote 37 In fact, Rubem Alves’ work did become highly poetic over the course of time, and sometimes it is very difficult to read ‘between the lines’ and understand in precise terms what he meant to say, but it is important to notice that some of the concepts introduced in his work provided LGBT Christians in Brazil a set of theological arguments that could link their struggles to the struggles of the poor, and ultimately, to Christ’s redemptive sacrifice. Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender bodies were also worthy of pleasure, since, by virtue of baptism, they were redeemed and will be resurrected. Therefore, religion should free them to love and be loved, without providing oppressive boundaries akin to those imposed by economic elites on the poor.
Jaci Maraschin, an Anglican Priest, theologian and liturgist, who also studied in New York City (at Union and General Seminaries) and later, in Strasbourg, defined the ‘theology of the body’ in a more precise way than Alves. His effort to re-eroticize Christian thought was met with criticism but also influenced a new wave of theologians and thinkers in the 1980s. It is worth noting that he was a consultant to several commissions of the Anglican Communion, and to two Lambeth Conferences as well. In ‘Fé cristã e corpo’Footnote 38 he claimed Christianity as the Faith of the body par excellence. And, as an incarnational religion, it made no sense to disconnect bodies from worship. Since we worship God with our entire bodies, this surely includes our own sexualities.Footnote 39 Sexuality, to Maraschin, is God’s gift for God’s people, and glorifies God. It is not God who controls human sexual pleasure. Humans do.
The connection between bodies and liturgy is evident if we notice that we partake of the Body and Blood of Christ in the Eucharist, and have created an elaborate set of liturgical actions which are thoroughly bodily: processions, gestures, genuflections and so forth. He asks ‘why can’t our litanies thank God for the gift of the orgasm?’Footnote 40 and emphasizes that ‘the limits to sexuality are the limits of the body’.Footnote 41
Maraschin’s thoughts on Christianity and sexuality continued until his death a few years ago, but it is important to mention that the few works cited for the purpose of this article were written in the 1980s. Like Alves, he proposed an expansive definition of Liberation Theology, that allowed LGBT Christian movements to identify themselves as part of a larger group of ‘oppressed people’. The emphasis of the body as a focus for liberation was strong enough to help contemporary and future theologians read such works through the lenses of people in same-gender relationships as well. It is very rare to find any reference to words such as ‘homosexual’, ‘gay’, ‘lesbian’ or ‘transgender’ in what was produced in terms of Latin American theology in the 1980s, but the cornerstone for a Latin American theology of LGBT liberation had already been laid. For example, Rose Muraro and Robinson Cavalcanti published (both in 1985) books that dealt with the topic. Muraro proposed a Liberationist erotica, while Cavalcanti, who would later become the Anglican Bishop of Recife, extensively wrote in his book ‘Libertação e sexualidade’ about the possibility of polygamy under certain scenarios and warned against passing judgement on same-sex activity because new scientific research was suggesting it was an innate attraction.Footnote 42 I shall return to Cavalcanti later, since he took a different path after becoming a bishop, but his work was a hallmark among progressive Evangelicals in the 1980s.
When Lambeth 1988 elaborated and discussed on matters of human sexuality, proposing even further studies and noticing that bishops were not ‘of one mind about homosexuality’,Footnote 43 this probably already included some Latin American (and certainly, at least one Brazilian) bishop. By then, there was already a bulk of native theology, mostly written in Portuguese and/or Spanish that dealt with issues pertaining to the body and sexual pleasure. This theology was, and continues to be, influenced by what was written in English elsewhere, but also retained a local component, based on Liberation Theology and its parallel evolutions.
A Plurality of Queer Theologies and Inclusive Churches
After the 1990s, theological discourse around same-sex relationships and LGBT people in the life of the Church took two very well-defined routes in Latin America. On one hand, Liberation theologians deepened the discussions presented in the 1980s and provided important intersections between gender, sexuality and Liberation Theology. It is possible, for example, to define a very clear Feminist Liberation Theology in the works of Ivone Gebara, or a Queer Liberation Theology in the works of André Musskopf, James Alison and Marcella Althaus-Reid. On the other hand, several natively inclusive churches appear in main Latin American cities, including Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo. Some, such as the Metropolitan Community Church, were brought from North America. Others appeared as a natural response to local religiosities and are usually Pentecostal in worship. Those natively inclusive churches, as opposed to mainline churches, proposed a much more straightforward approach to Queer Theology. They focused their discussion on demystifying Bible passages that appear to condemn homosexuality and, thus, appealed to a different section of the population, who needed simpler answers such as ‘am I going to hell for being gay?’ The growth of inclusive congregations in both mainline and new churches became noticeable and followed the path of wider inclusion in Brazilian society.
The contribution from natively inclusive churches was largely imported from similar works written in North America. Sometimes they focused only on proofreading biblical texts in their original languages and challenging commonplace translations that led to the belief the Bible spoke clearly against same-sex sexual activity. Sometimes this approach was accompanied by a historical-critical method of reading the Bible, but some inclusive churches are still very conservative in all aspects except for their acceptance of LGBT people and same-sex marriage.Footnote 44 A notable exception is the Metropolitan Community Church, which seems to engage with Queer Theology as a whole.Footnote 45
The aforementioned approach should not be dismissed as simplistic or fundamentalist, for it found room among many Christians of different confessions. It often presents itself as a first step towards demystifying the Bible and understanding its complexity. Some books, such as What the Bible Says about Homosexuality by Daniel Helminiak (which was translated to several languages), remain as a key resource for inclusive biblical interpretation and are used by congregations in mainline churches (most notably Anglicans, Lutherans and some Methodists) of a more evangelical background, but who have become inclusive over the course of the last few decades.
On the other hand, theologians continued to engage in deeper theological discussion that drew from feminist and queer foreign sources, but also from core Liberation Theology. Differently from their predecessors in the 1980s, these new queer liberation theologians were usually out LGBT people, who spoke from their own experiences without euphemisms. Marcella Althaus-Reid was an Argentinian who later worked and taught in Scotland. Her core thoughts can be read in two books: Indecent Theology: Theological Perversions in Sex, Gender and Politics (2000) and The Queer God (2003). In those books, she creatively engaged Feminist, Liberation and Queer Theologies.
James Alison, an English theologian who was a Dominican Priest until 1995 and lived in many Latin American countries, earned his doctorate from the Jesuit College in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, where he lived for several years. His experience as coming out as a gay Roman Catholic theologian can be found in several of his writings, most notably Faith beyond Resentment: Fragments Catholic and Gay (2001) and On Being Liked (2003). Like Althaus-Reid’s, his writings propose a creative merger of foreign Queer Theology influences and what was produced in terms of theological discourse in Latin America.
André Musskopf is a Lutheran theologian who lives and works in Southern Brazil. He is currently a professor at the Higher School of Theology of the Evangelical Church of Lutheran Confession of Brazil. His books, such as Uma brecha no armário - propostas para uma teologia gay Footnote 46 (2002) and Via(da)gens teológicas. Itinerários de uma teologia queer no Brasil Footnote 47 (2012) present the idea of a native Queer Theology, made in the image of Brazilian (LGBT) people.
These authors, among many others, sought to update Liberation Theology enabling it to deal with sexuality as a foundational element. Therefore, in the experience of Latin American people, not necessarily a compulsory heterosexuality is the norm. It is needed to listen to individual bodies and desires, and find loving exchanges that replicate and reproduce life in the midst of oppression and exclusion.Footnote 48
Also, a whole stream of biblical studies emerged in Latin America over the course of the last decades. These Bible scholars, usually called ‘biblistas’, developed a method that takes into account Historical Criticism coupled with community Bible reading and interpretation, and theological paradigms inherited from Liberation Theology. Biblism understands, as a key concept for interpreting Scripture, the liberation of the people of Israel from captivity in Egypt. Through the lenses of God’s preferential option for the oppressed, they propose collectively reading and interpreting the Bible in the life of Christian communities, without taking into account Biblical criticism and scholarship. Biblists, more recently, have tackled how the understanding of marriage evolved in the BibleFootnote 49 (leaving room for a wider understanding of marriage which could include same-sex couples) and also how the Bible can be read in a way that does not condemn consensual, loving, same-sex activity.Footnote 50
It would be almost impossible to synthetize the work of all theologians who wrote on topics related to LGBT inclusion in Latin America after the 1990s, but the works previously cited serve as examples that show how Queer Theology was not foreign to Brazilian thought by the late 1990s. In 1997, the National Leadership Conference of IEAB noticed an increasing acceptance of LGBT people among Anglican congregations and that LGBT people were not restricted to the laity, since some priests had come out to their bishops and, to a certain degree, to their church communities.
Also in 1997, the first official document published by IEAB on the issue of homosexuality was released. It was a pastoral letter by the House of Bishops and signed by all bishops with active jurisdiction.Footnote 51 It was mostly theological, and affirmed concepts such as: ‘sexuality is a gift from God’, ‘the Church must embrace with love all people regardless of … sexual orientation’, ‘sexual violence is evil’, ‘there is not a consensus on the issue of homosexuality’, ‘the Bible seems to condemn same sex activity but only in the context of promiscuity, orgy or debauchery’ and ‘IEAB should promote further studies on human sexuality, taking into account Biblical criticism, social sciences and the experience of Anglican tradition’. For the late 1990s, and in a Brazilian context, this was a major step. For the first time, IEAB acknowledged officially the subject, by using correct terms (such as sexual orientation) and commanded itself to further study the subject.
It shouldn’t be a surprise, then, that a majority of Brazilian bishops either abstained or voted against the controversial Lambeth 1998 I.10 resolution, which rejected homosexual practice as ‘incompatible with Scripture’.Footnote 52 The sole outspoken voice against LGBT inclusiveness among Brazilian bishops in 1998 was, as it became widely known years later, Bishop Robinson Cavalcanti, the recently consecrated Bishop of Recife.Footnote 53 He was the only bishop, back then, who identified himself as an Evangelical Anglican and was the leader of a rapidly growing diocese deeply impacted by the charismatic movement. Most likely, Cavalcanti decided to appeal to both his partners of the Evangelical Anglican Fellowship abroad and to the majority of the people in his own diocese. However, this meant distancing himself from the bulk of his liberationist works in the 1980s. Since Cavalcanti was the main actor of schism in Recife a few years later, his role will be further discussed in the next section.
Gene Robinson, New Westminster, Schism and the Impact among Brazilian Anglicans
In 2003, two public events forced the Anglican Communion as a whole to engage more openly on the topic of LGBT inclusiveness and same-sex marriage. On May 23, Bishop Michael Ingham, Diocesan Bishop of New Westminster (Anglican Church of Canada) authorized a handful of parishes to use a public rite for the blessing of same-sex unions.Footnote 54 On June 7, the Revd Canon V. Gene Robinson, a gay man living in a monogamous relationship with another man, was elected Coadjutor Bishop of the Diocese of New Hampshire (Episcopal Church).Footnote 55 Also in 2013, the Revd Canon Jeffrey John, a gay man in a committed relationship (albeit celibate) almost became Suffragan Bishop of Reading, in the Diocese of Oxford.Footnote 56 These events were widely reported by the press, and, at a time digital communication was on the rise, quickly replicated by pro-LGBT advocacy groups within the Anglican Communion and by conservative groups often associated with Evangelicalism, the Charismatic movement and the ‘Global South’.
Throughout the world, Anglican churches were forced to take a stand and speak plainly about how they saw those events and the theological developments that led to them. This was often difficult for Latin American churches. While there was a clear, local theological narrative that favored including LGBT peoples in a variety of ways, churches were often not yet prepared to deal with it uniformly and officially. This was the case in Brazil. Inclusiveness did happen in places and a great deal of lay and ordained leaders favored embracing LGBT people in the life of the Church, but dialogue was restricted to some Church spheres only and inclusive initiatives happened according to local pastoral directives. The first National Consultation on Human Sexuality had just happened, in 2002, and its official document endorsed more discussion and more mutual understanding,Footnote 57 without explicitly taking a pro-LGBT stance.
The average Anglican person in Brazil had not had enough time nor opportunities to wholly digest why traditional teachings were to be changed. Throughout Brazil (and other Latin American countries), ecumenical partners were facing similar difficulties, natively inclusive churches were a novelty, and the secular LGBT rights movement was only starting to gain momentum. IEAB took an official position by replicating what the Anglican Communion proposed as initial steps towards reconciliation, including translating official news stories about the Eames Commission and the official statement issued by the Archbishop of Canterbury.Footnote 58 In the meanwhile, the primate, Bishop Orlando Santos de Oliveira, issued a pastoral letter asking for conciliatory measures within his province, and lamenting echoes of ‘holy wars’.Footnote 59 The letter was later endorsed by the House of Bishops, including Bishop Cavalcanti.
The year 2004 was a rough year for IEAB. In March, a special commissionFootnote 60 was nominated with the sole goal of analyzing the actions taken in New Hampshire and New Westminster and their impact to the Brazilian Church. In the meanwhile, the Bishop of Recife started producing a series of pastoral letters (which were sent to churches and people around the country) calling for tougher measures against the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada. Eventually, such letters started blaming IEAB leadership for condoning heterodox theological positions. Also in March, Cavalcanti took part in irregular confirmations in Ohio, which forced the primate of Brazil to apologize publicly for these actions of border crossing. Tensions continued throughout the year. In June, the special commission made public a pastoral letter written by the primate to Bishop Cavalcanti, which asked him to stop issuing pastoral letters that fostered conflict among Brazilian Anglicans.Footnote 61 The commission made clear that their intent was not to promote a specific theological understanding of homosexuality, but to examine how actions which happened in the US and Canada affected IEAB. Throughout the year, however, there were opportunities for further theological dialogue, including a National Conference on Anglican Theology and a Second National Consultation on Human Sexuality. This consultation also published a pastoral letter, which emphasized that no person should need to make public their sexual orientation or relationship status in order to serve as a lay or ordained member of the Church. The letter also calls the church to be more inclusive, and is signed in the name of Christ, who liberates both heterosexual and homosexual people.Footnote 62 Its content makes clear that, in the midst of the 2004 crisis, people were being outed, or required to ascribe to ‘sexual purity’ statements. These measures were new to the Brazilian province, and had started to appear in the diocese of Recife.
By the end of the year, schism was inevitable. Clergy and laity who were loyal to IEAB had already received alternative pastoral oversight; an executive order, agreed by the Primate, the Executive Council and the House of Bishops, suspended the diocesan synod to be held in December 2004 in Recife. Eventually, in 2005, Bishop Cavalcanti would be formally deposed, and 32 clergy of his diocese would side with him. For more than a decade, IEAB and the continuing diocese of Recife fought in courts in order to have their properties and assets back.
What is relevant to this article, however, is to examine a series of documents which were shared by the special commission called in 2003, by the primate and by the House of Bishops with the Eames Commission and the Archbishop of Canterbury. Already in mid-2013, the special commission had requested Archbishop Eames and the Archbishop of Canterbury to convene a special Inter-Anglican conference, and offered Brazil to host it.Footnote 63 This conference would be an opportunity for frank conversations, dialogue and establishing a common way forward. There was no official response to this proposal. It is worth noting that the Eames Commission had no Latin American representatives.
The primate, Bishop Orlando Santos de Oliveira, welcomed the Windsor Report and offered a translated version of it for Brazilians to examine and submit considerations. These were forwarded to the Archbishop of Canterbury and to the Anglican Communion Office. In the meanwhile, IEAB was excluded from the Third Global South Anglican Encounter by its chairman Archbishop Peter Akinola, the primate of Nigeria. Also, in 2015, the primate of the Church of the Southern Cone, the Most Revd Gregory Venables, welcomed Cavalcanti and the 32 clergy who left with him, in clear violation of episcopal boundaries, as a parallel ‘Diocese of Recife’. All these actions led the House of Bishop to issue open letters to the Archbishop of Canterbury,Footnote 64 which had no conclusive response.Footnote 65
At this point, it was very clear that the discussion around same-sex relationships in the Anglican Communion was confined to the English-speaking section of the Anglican Communion, and mostly to North America, England and Africa. Latin American leaders and theologians were effectively left out of most commissions and groups put forward by the Anglican Communion, with the sole exception of the Revd Dr Jaci Maraschin’s contribution to an article on the witness of traditionFootnote 66 regarding same-sex relationships. Most official documents were released at first only in English. Translations were often provided by volunteers from local churches. At Lambeth 2008, whispered interpretation was at times ineffective and most Latin American bishops were grouped into one single Indaba group, due to lack of interpreters.Footnote 67
In that regard, the Anglican Communion failed to include Latin American voices that had produced a different theological narrative from the English-speaking North, but which also led them to gradually include LGBT Christians (their valuable contribution, however, could be found elsewhereFootnote 68). A rich, enculturated tradition of biblical interpretation was largely left out of any formal communion-wide theological discussion and moderate churches which could have built bridges between liberal and conservative streams of Anglicanism were ignored. The lack of any formal support from the Instruments of Unity in terms of supporting IEAB throughout the crisis and schism in Recife led to a sense of abandonment and isolation among many from the Brazilian province, especially because, at the time, the Brazilian Church had not taken any formal actions similar to those in North America.
The trauma in Recife and the lack of support from the Anglican Communion led to some natural consequences in terms of how IEAB dealt with the issue of same-sex relationships and LGBT inclusion over the course of the next few years. Further nationwide meetings such as the consultations on human sexuality did not happen. The House of Bishops did not issue any pastoral letter on LGBT issues for a few years. All events related to LGBT inclusion in the life of the Church happened locally, as parishes started to develop their own ministries. Same-sex blessings and ordinations of non-celibate LGBT clergy were happening in some parts of the country, but there was an air of secrecy about them. On one hand, it was impossible to stop the path which the Church had taken years before, so several parishes continued exploring how to better embrace the LGBT community. On the other hand, such actions were not widely publicized, and the national church continued to sustain the argument that its canons had not been changed, and that it followed the recommendations of the Windsor Report and successive Primates’ and ACC meetings.
The Road to 2018: Studies and Discernment
In 2013, however, the topic ‘same-sex marriage’ came back to IEAB’s official documents. By then, civil marriage between people of the same gender was legal in Brazil and a pastoral letter by IEAB’s primate welcomed such legal changes.Footnote 69 Also, local inclusive ministries were visible enough to the point that it was possible to discern a sizeable LGBT group among Anglican laity and clergy.
The 2013 National Synod adopted the concept of local indabas, as part of the Continuing Indaba program. Indaba meetings, held in every diocese, should provide topics that would guide national policies for the upcoming years. Local indabas would inform diocesan indabas, which would inform provincial meetings. The diocesan indaba held in Curitiba was the first one to tackle the same-sex marriage topic, with a recommendation that General Synod should consider authorizing rites for the solemnization of same-sex marriage. This campaign was called ‘matrimônio igualitário’ (egalitarian matrimony) and brought a considerable amount of controversy. The issue was not voted in 2013, but an agreement was held that IEAB would dedicate itself to openly discuss the subject in the upcoming years, so that all instances of the Church could fully discuss, digest and reflect upon it.Footnote 70
This led to a considerable amount of workshops and publications, including articles, studies, pastoral letters and study guides. For the first time, the discussion on LGBT inclusion left theological circles and was embraced by the wider church. Throughout this process, a few milestones worth mentioning were:
In 2015, IEAB launched a new Book of Common Prayer.Footnote 71 Over the course of prayer book revision, special attention was given to inclusive language and a post-2013 proposal to have a fully gender-neutral marriage rite gained momentum. The official marriage rite published in 2015 had no references to the couple’s gender composition.
After the Episcopal Church’s vote to extend Holy Matrimony to same gender couples, the primate of IEAB, the Most Revd Francisco de Assis da Silva, issued an official communiquéFootnote 72 acknowledging deep respect for TEC’s decision and noticing that IEAB, like other Anglican provinces, could be taking the same path in the upcoming future.
After the January 2016 Primates’ Meeting, the primate issued another pastoral letter, demonstrating deep sympathy with the position of TEC, which was punished with a 3-year suspension from decision-making Anglican Communion bodies. He also anticipated that IEAB could, later that year, find itself in a similar position.Footnote 73
A nationwide course for young leaders was announced in April 2016.Footnote 74 Among several topics, it dealt openly with LGBT inclusion. This was the first publication that officially endorsed a position for full inclusion of LGBT people in the life of the Church.
The Anglican Service of Diakonia and Development launched in 2016 a booklet on Gender, Sexuality and Rights Footnote 75 which was aimed at church communities on the local level, and was based on a series of studies that intended to demystify concepts such as sexual orientation, gender identity and same-sex marriage. By using these materials, local church communities could become active agents against homo/transphobia and welcome LGBT people in the life of the church.
A special General Synod was convened in São Paulo, in June 2016. This synod was meant to draft and adopt a new constitution and canons for the Church. For the canon on Holy Matrimony, an article defining it as the union of ‘two people’ was proposed, but defeated. Delegates understood further studies and discussions had to be held and committed to doing so in different instances of Church life.
After this synod, the Anglican Service of Diakonia and Development (SADD) held a series of seminars which fostered discussion on the issue of sexuality throughout the country, over the course of 2016 and 2017.Footnote 76 These followed an almost 10-year long cycle of discussions on gender-based violence, which produced a series of written materials, including simple booklets and Bible studies for local parishes and missions. By the point SADD started tackling LGBT issues more openly, there was a wide consensus among many lay and ordained leaders (including lay leadership in local churches) about gender equality. The province had been ordaining women for over 30 years and very few arguments about a ‘hierarchy’ or even a ‘complementarity’ of sexes persisted. In fact, all delegates who came forward to justify their vote against amending canons in 2016 did so out of concern that such a decision would cause discomfort among Anglican Communion and ecumenical partners, or that some of the elderly would not understand it. No one gave a theological reason for their vote. It was assumed a proper ‘timing’ to take such a step was the main issue, not anymore any kind of exclusionary theology.
Diocesan Leadership Conferences held after 2016 included, among several topics, theological articles by Brazilian authors on same-sex marriage, the Bible and homosexuality and LGBT rights.Footnote 77
In May 2018, the first National LGBT Meeting was held in Brasília. This event was co-sponsored by the Anglican Service of Diakonia and Development and, differently from the Consultations on Human Sexuality, was meant to be led by LGBT people and for LGBT people only. Participants produced a final theological statement to General Synod members, stating clearly their desire, as baptized members to be heard and fully embraced by Church leadership.Footnote 78
It is important to notice that, in 2017, a minor schism over same-sex marriage happened, once again, in Recife. This time, however, it was quickly resolved and produced virtually no damage. It could be argued that the momentum for schisms over sexuality issues was over, or that IEAB as a whole had grown more mature.
The 2018 Vote and its Immediate Consequences
When General Synod started in June 2018, it was very clear that the topic ‘human sexuality’ had been exhaustively discussed. The first two days were dedicated to a leadership conference which provided further discussions on topics already discussed on diocesan levels, including the ones pertaining to Holy Matrimony and LGBT inclusion. Representatives from the Episcopal Church, the Anglican Church of Canada and the Scottish Episcopal Church shared their experience dealing with similar votes. The discussion that led to the final vote on amending Holy Matrimony canons was civil and smooth, leaving the impression it was a mature vote, based on delegates’ deep convictions and not out of pressure by Church authorities or external influences.
The final text that eventually passed with 57 voting in favor, three against and two abstentions, contained a compromise clause that each diocese would have to amend their own canons to permit same-sex Matrimony in their geographic area. This was seen as a way of allowing the Church to move forward together, despite differences on the understanding of marriage, especially in rural communities.
The only official response from the Anglican Communion was issued by the Secretary General of the Anglican Communion, Bishop Dr Josiah Idowu-Fearon, who noted that ‘this decision puts the Episcopal Church of Brazil at odds with the majority position that marriage is the lifelong union of a man and a woman’ and that it is ‘a move away from the faith and teaching upheld by the overwhelming majority of Anglican provinces on the doctrine of marriage’ as set out in Resolution I.10 agreed at Lambeth 1998.Footnote 79 GAFCON has called for a boycott of IEAB at Lambeth 2020 and for the recognition of the ‘Anglican Church of Brazil’, the remnant of the 2004/2005 Recife schism.Footnote 80 There were no comments from the Anglican Communion on the GAFCON request.
So far, the dioceses of Southern Brazil (Porto Alegre), Recife, São Paulo and Brasília voted to amend their canons and extend Holy Matrimony to all couples regardless of gender. Pelotas and Amazon have not agreed to amend their canons. Rio de Janeiro, Paraná (formerly Curitiba) and Southwestern Brazil (Santa Maria) have not yet held a diocesan synod and are expected to vote in 2019. On July 22, 2018, in Recife, Pernambuco, the Revd Eduardo Henrique Ribeiro presided at the wedding of Roberto Oliveira and Ivanildo dos Anjos, both confirmed Anglicans who had been together for the last 29 years. This was the first official same-sex wedding of IEAB. A series of measures, which vary from diocese to diocese, are being taken in order to register blessings prior to the synodical vote.
In practical terms, the decision has not changed the life of most church communities of IEAB, which already dealt with same-sex couples with normalcy. For the upcoming months, it is expected to see several same-sex couples who were active members solemnizing their weddings. A few dioceses will most likely postpone a canonical amendment for years, but this has much more to do with local cultural differences, instead of a desire to foster schism. Nevertheless, even for those dioceses which have authorized same-sex weddings, a conscience clause exempts priests from performing weddings they do not agree with. The synodical decision will not impose undesirable measures on anyone.
Much more relevant is the fact that IEAB became the first Brazilian mainline church to pose no further boundaries to same-sex couples, setting an example for other Brazilian denominations and Latin American Anglican provinces that might be walking similar paths in the future. It chose to be coherent with a direction it chose decades ago, and to a theology it already proclaimed in many parishes on the local level.
Conclusions
IEAB’s recent decision to extend Holy Matrimony to all couples is the result of a decades-long process of discernment, conflicts and renewals. It could be summarized as follows:
It paralleled cultural changes in Brazilian society which led to wider acceptance of LGBT people and the approval of civil marriages for people of the same gender. The gradual visibility of LGBT people forced IEAB to discuss and reexamine its position about them.
It was led by a fruitful production of locally made theology, which effectively started in the 1980s and was influenced by both Liberation Theology from Latin America and Queer Theology from the Global North.
IEAB fostered discussion, exchanges and experiences on LGBT inclusion on the local level at least since the 1990s, official documents, publications, seminars, meetings and programs have been established since, at least, 1997 and have been intensified after 2013.
IEAB has followed recommendations and programs put forward by the Anglican Communion. It committed itself to the study of human sexuality and to the pastoral care of LGBT people as recommended by Lambeth 1978, Lambeth 1988 and Lambeth 1998. It has also ascribed to the continuing indaba process and to a decentralized way of decision making.
In doing so, it moved forward to the inevitable decision of exploring deeper ways of including LGBT people in the life of the church, and to the approval of Holy Matrimony for same-gender people.
In the meantime, the Anglican Communion failed to include its non-English speaking members, and, most notably, its Latin American members as contributors to the ongoing dialogue on human sexuality, which excluded moderate voices capable of providing narratives different from the liberal/conservative dichotomy.
Finally, IEAB’s recent decision shows that it is possible for a non-English speaking, Southern church to develop its own views on same-sex relationships and move forward according to its own interpretation of Scripture, tradition and human experiences. Undoubtedly, similar discernment processes might be happening in other peripheral provinces of the Anglican Communion. These should be better studied and examined in order to come up with a real scenario of the theological diversity of the Anglican Communion.
Coda: Brazil after Bolsonaro
In late 2018, Brazilians elected as president Jair Bolsonaro, a political conservative backed by the religious right and known for a past anti-LGBT discourse. The 2018 had record abstentions. Bolsonaro, in fact, won with less than 40 percent of all votes (slightly more than 60 percent of all voters either voted for the Workers’ Party candidate Fernando Haddad, annulled their vote or simply abstained from voting). Bolsonaro also lost in most medium and large cities.Footnote 81 His supporters come mostly from white, middle- and upper-class voters in small towns and rural areas – those who, under previous administrations, have seen ethnic, gender and sexual orientation minorities gain new benefits, affirmative actions and protective laws. Undoubtedly, Brazil advanced very quickly in such a short arc of history so that in a matter of less than 40 years, the country evolved from the legalization of divorce to equal marriage. Bolsonaro’s election comes at a point most Brazilians were disappointed at corruption scandals among both the progressive left and the progressive right, and filled a vacuum left by his main opponents.
Since the president has no power over Supreme Court decisions (or any other judicial decision, in fact), it is very unlikely that long-held rights, such as marriage and adoption for same-sex couples, will easily be overturned. It is possible, however, that measures pertaining to the executive branch will reflect his line of thought: for example, the Ministry of Education might not accredit science books that promote sexual education. So far (as of March 2019), however, most of his government’s actions concerning sexual ethics have been challenged by the press, the courts and the wider civil society, having become imbroglios with no practical result.
It is expected that progressive churches (IEAB being one of them) will continue to denounce what they perceive as measures against Gospel values both in Bolsonaro and other leaders’ governments.
