Immediate Futures: The Economy of Judeo-Christian Imagery in Brazilian Evangelicalism

This presentation draws from ethnographic research in Brazil to examine the recent paradoxical convergence of prosperity theology and apocalypticism in evangelical circulation of Judeo-Christian imagery. Whereas conventional approaches to Christian nationalism and Zionism tend to emphasize theological beliefs, this presentation draws from media studies and linguistic anthropology to focus on Judeo-Christian imagery as the effect of an evangelical economy of images blending past, present, and future into a universal history available (only) to those who embrace it. I pursue this argument through three case studies: first, I read a widely circulated evangelical theory of the Judeo-Christian origins of Brazil as a retroactive providential narrative running through modern-day Israel. Second, I read US pastor Larry Huch’s visit to Brazil as the formation of a pseudo-ethnic concept of spiritual kinship. Finally, I read a Brazilian seminar based in an Israeli West Bank settlement as a mediatized sanctification of war.