Lideranças pentecostais femininas: um estudo sobre a fundação de igrejas pentecostais por mulheres em Nova Iguaçu - RJ

Abstract

In recent years, at Nova Iguaçu city, one of the several cities of the so-called Baixada Fluminense at the great metropolitan area of Rio de Janeiro city, a new and interesting religious phenomenon has been observed: the foundation of Evangelical Pentecostal churches by women. Desiring to act more freely from their churches hierarchy, that most of the time does not delegate positions of leadership to female members, these women have broken with the Pentecostals and Neopentecostals congregations to which they used to belong in order to established their own churches. Gathering a relatively small flock around them in her own houses or small temples, those women are most of the time the main leader, and sometimes the only pastor of their new church. Based on a field research carried out by observation and interviews at eleven of these churches throughout the years of 2008 and 2009, the present Master s thesis uses the notion of empowerment and of charisma to understand the emergence of female founded Pentecostal churches and the trajectory of and role performed by their main leaders