On Incompatibility and Estrangement: Christphobia Utterance and the Scales of Meaning in Online Cartoons

ABSTRACT

In this article, I propose a dialogical analysis of five online cartoons which reverberate the discourse of the former president of Brazil (2019-2022) at the UN in September 2020, when he called the international community to combat Christphobia. Named after the same term, the cartoons present a framework of interdiscursive antagonism between Christian and the former President of Brazil’s fanatic followers’ positions. Assuming that cartoons are a privileged discursive genre for understanding the dialogical resonances between interlocutors and discourses, this work approaches Christphobia as a responsive utterance in terms of scales of meaning. From the analysis, one can see a discursive game of incompatibility and estrangement, that makes room to a Christophobic “Other” in opposition to a persecuted “minority us,” as once presented during the UN discourse. There is an emphasis on a perception of religious intolerance as a result of the political agenda of the former president of Brazil’s religious-ideological alignment.

KEYWORDS:
Christphobia; Utterance; Dialogical Analysis; Religion; Otherness

RESUMO

Neste artigo proponho uma análise dialógica de cinco charges online tematizadas pelo termo cristofobia, que reverberam o discurso na ONU do ex-presidente do Brasil (2019-2022) em setembro de 2020. Nele o mandatário conclamava a comunidade internacional a combater a cristofobia. Nas charges, o sentido de perseguição a cristãos é tensionado, apresentando um quadro de antagonismo interdiscursivo entre posicionamentos cristãos e dos fanáticos seguidores do ex-presidente. Partindo da premissa de que a charge é um gênero discursivo privilegiado para compreender as ressonâncias dialógicas entre interlocutores e discursos, a cristofobia é trabalhada como enunciado que responde a escalas de sentido que se revelam na relação entre as enunciações observadas. Percebe-se nas charges um jogo discursivo de incompatibilidade e estranhamento que produz um Outro cristofóbico em oposição a um “nós minoritário” e perseguido, apresentado no discurso da ONU. Nesse arranjo enunciativo, ressalta-se uma percepção sobre intolerância religiosa como resultado da agenda política do alinhamento ideológico-religioso do ex-presidente do Brasil.

PALAVRAS-CHAVE:
Cristofobia; Enunciado; Análise Dialógica; Religião; Alteridade

Introduction

In this article, I propose a dialogic analysis of five “Christphobia” themed cartoons that were published by Brazilian cartoonist and artist André Lafayete on his public Instagram profile (@ultralafa) in September 2020. These publications resonated with the discourse of the former president of Brazil (2019-2022) during the opening session of the 75th United Nations General Assembly, which took place on September 22, 2020. The former president of Brazil called on the international community to combat “Christphobia” after exalting freedom as the greatest human good (UN News, 2020). The reaction to the speech, which also addressed topics such as the management of the Covid-19 pandemic and the control of wildfires in the Amazon, was widely observed on the Internet (Sanches, 2020), exemplifying, as Recuero (2014) emphasizes, how networked conversation captures events that influence culture, construct phenomena, and disseminate information.

The dialogic analysis takes “Christphobia” as utterance, bearing the responsive attitudes the cartoons assume in response to the former president of Brazil’s speech. In this regard, any understanding of an utterance is “inherently responsive, although the degree of this activity varies extremely. Any understanding is imbued with response and necessarily elicits it in one form or another: the listener becomes the speaker” (Vološinov, 1986, p. 68).¹ Following the utterance and its responsive movements requires keeping in mind how dialogism establishes relationships among interlocutors and among discourses, forming links in the chain of verbal communication. Thus, one can see how “Christphobia” utterance in the cartoons can only be grasped taking into consideration the speech at the UN, while this speech simultaneously activates discursive and social memories that precede them, which informs a relationship of “dialogic resonance” (Vološinov, 1986, p. 68)² that speaks volumes about the effects of meaning in a given enunciation.

It is imperative to consider the historical and social dimensions that grounds “Christphobia” as an utterance, pointing to the ideological context that accentuates the possibilities of its comprehension. Thus, it is important to emphasize that it is not a matter of denying the existence of religious intolerance against Christians, a phenomenon observed and debated by international human rights organizations in various parts of the world. However, it is a matter to question, in a country like Brazil, the socio-dialogical conditions that allow “Christphobia” to arise and make sense, given the context of permeability between politics and religion in the country. This specific context, as will be shown, articulates something fundamental for making sense of the term: its scales of measurement, which enable the Christian identity to sometimes present itself whether as a minority or a majority force. Handling such different measures reveals how Christianity, to survive over two millennia, conveyed diverse relationships with the “established powers,” ranging from a persecuted minority to the religion of the Empire (Green, 2023). Thus, the religious tradition instituted by the narrative of the crucifixion is the same as the glorious narratives of conversion, Reform, or affinity with contemporary forms of nationalism and conservatism.

This paper does not aim to navigate through this intricate web of memories, narratives, sayings, and prohibitions, but to establish a dialogue with “Christphobia” that discloses the “exceptional of its discursive existence, its way of actively participating in the realms of production, circulation, and reception, finding its identity in the dialogic relationships established with other discourses and other subjects”³ (Brait, 2006, pp. 13-14). To accomplish such a goal, this paper embarks on a journey that begins in the first section with an understanding of “Christphobia” as utterance. Its “entrance into the realm of discourse”⁴ (Faraco, 2017) provides a delineation, pointing to the context of the former president of Brazil’s speech at the UN General Assembly reclaiming a minority identity. The second section focuses on the cartoons and their analyses, arguing how the concept of religious intolerance focuses a majority scale regarding the Christian identity and the association with the former president of Brazil’s religious-ideological alignment wave, both in its ethical and economic dimensions. The third section aims to analyze the frames of incompatibility and estrangement through which the meaning of “Christphobia” leads to a Christian identity that is Christphobic itself. Finally, the study concludes with a reflection on the dialectical work that the utterance invokes.

1 Christphobia in Brazil? Delimitating the Context, Situating the Utterance

In this section, I consider “Christphobia” as a word-utterance, a construct in which the expressiveness of the word is delimited beyond the syntactic, lexical, and morphological resources of the language. This conception is presented by Pereira and Brait (2020) in their studies based on Bakhtin’s Circle. For them, “the expressiveness of the word is the element that marks its evaluative index, enabling the word to assume a specific value in the interactive situation in which it participates”⁵ (Pereira; Brait, 2020, p. 135). In this sense, the word-utterance is not “a form identical to itself or an expression of thought,” but rather a “social construct [that reaffirms] (…) the possibility of considering its status from a dialogic perspective” (Pereira; Brait, 2020, p. 135).⁶ Thus, the utterance is the discursive unit par excellence in a socio-dialogic analysis, comprising three stages. The first stage involves an understanding of both the broad social situation (social, historical, cultural, political conditions, etc.) and the immediate situation (interlocutors and their ideological-value horizons). The second stage delimits the word-utterance within a given discursive genre, requiring an examination of its possible verbal, visual, verbal-visual, or gestural-visual dimensions. The third stage anticipates the recognition of the “potential meanings” that the word-utterance engenders.

The methodological journey of socio-dialogical analysis of Christphobia requires attention to the densities of the Other in the formation of the word-utterance. As Bakhtin underlines, “when a member of a speaking collective comes upon a word, it is not as a neutral word of language, not as a word free from the aspirations and evaluations of others, uninhabited by others’ voices. No, he receives the word from another’s voice and filled with that other voice” (Bakhtin,1984, p. 202).⁷ When assuming a relationship with the Other (dialogism itself), the word emerges as an utterance, and this category is of particular interest precisely because it invites to navigate the many dialogic threads that weave the potential meanings emerging in a given enunciation. In the specific case of “Christphobia,” it is crucial to think dialogically from the many voices that joined the former president of Brazil in his speech at the UN in September 2020.

In a country like Brazil, would it be possible to speak of “Christphobia?” The President’s speech brought to light significant figures regarding the presence of Christianity in Brazil, where approximately 85.7% of the population professes a Christian faith, as indicated by the 2010 Census. Furthermore, it is important to bear in mind that Christian hegemony is not only quantitative; it is also a significant aspect of the country’s civic culture, observed in the regulation of the civil calendar with its Christian holidays (Montero, 2009) or in the occupation of public spaces with monuments, heritage sites (and crucifixes) that mark the ubiquity of Christianity in general (Giumbelli, 2008) in squares, public buildings, and courthouses. As a social phenomenon, “Christphobia” is, at the very least, an unsustainable argument in Brazil. However, as an utterance, the term resonates with the rising political-religious force of Evangelicals by connecting them to a broader social group that makes full use of the language of democratic rights to advocate for minority protection against religious persecution.

It is imperative to consider what Castelli (2007) defined as the “complex of Christian persecution,” a form of organized political activism under the banner of combating “religious persecution” and protecting “religious freedom.” The complex emerged in the United States from the 1960s and has gained momentum in the demands of ultraconservative Christian groups in that country, especially with the rise of the alternative and conservative right (alt-right) that took shape during the Trump era. “Christphobia” is part of this persecutory logic that organizes the discourse of Christian denominations not only in the United States but in various other regions, including Brazil. As theologian Ronilson Pacheco explains in an interview with Agência Pública [Public Agency] (Correa, 2020), “Christphobia” is a term of significant political potency that can be virtually applied to any issue. He explains:

A debate regarding homophobic discourses - what constitutes belief and what constitutes hate speech - can be framed as “Christphobia.” Any discussion that questions the practices of Christian therapeutic communities, which do not adhere to the minimum standards of mental health policy, can be categorized within a perspective of “Christphobia” (Correa, 2020, n.p.).⁸

Castelli’s reflections provide valuable insights into the discursive functioning of this complex of persecution and its main characteristics and effects. The first one regards its self-regulation, which occurs within a cycle of repetitions that simplifies “claims of religious persecution through each successive level of iteration, regardless of any counterinterpretation or presentation of empirically grounded counter-evidence” (Castelli, 2007, p. 173). Secondly, the complex appeals to a pragmatic ability to impact social policies, as well as to dispute civil rights with other minorities. I argue that discussions concerning the “complex of Christian persecution” open significant avenues for reflection on similar situations in Brazil, particularly in relation to the debate on “Christphobia,” a term that had entered public discourse even before the former president of Brazil took the podium at the UN in 2020 (Correa, 2020). This helps identify the dialogic threads that weave the meanings of persecution that “Christphobia” arouses, even in a predominantly Christian country like Brazil. At the same time, it is possible to see how such an arrangement establishes a specific subject position in the public sphere, capable of reclaiming legitimacy using a recognized democratic grammar.

The “immediate situation” regarding “Christphobia” utterance concerns the context of the opening ceremony of the United Nations General Assembly Meeting and its interlocutors. At that moment, there was an expectation that the former president of Brazil would address critical issues on the international stage, from managing the crisis caused by the Covid-19 pandemic to environmental policy matters. Repercussions of the speech highlighted how “Christphobia” served as a special nod from the former president to his steadfast evangelical electoral base (Sanches, 2020). The latent ambiguity of the term in the former president of Brazil’s own speech was captured by Toniol (2020), who argued that the former president’s speech contained both an appeal to combat “Christphobia” and the recognition of Brazil as “a Christian and conservative country that has the family as its foundation.”⁹ According to the author, this was not a mistake or contradiction but rather a “interplay of scales” and the manipulation of identities, demonstrating how the grammar of “Christphobia” relies on a political logic of minoritization and the recognition of Brazil as a Christian country.

This interplay of scales is a crucial point for the dialogic analysis of “Christphobia” because it indicates how the utterance moves in a way that both confuses conceptions of freedom and persecution among majorities, and also mimics the criticism that minorities have historically woven against power structures. The sense of threat and the need for protection that pervade the word-utterance of “Christphobia” harken back to the “nearly archetypal Christian story of martyrdom and persecution, playing off the ambiguities inherent in a mythical story of vindication through suffering” (Castelli, 2007, p. 160). According to the author, the complex of Christian persecution evokes discursive memories of a “Persecuted Church” that no longer corresponds to the global reach of Christianity nowadays.¹⁰ Not by chance, the former president of Brazil employs “Christphobia” in a segment of his speech emphasizing freedom as the “greatest good of humanity” and equates the call for religious freedom with the fight against “Christphobia.” By deliberately omitting the historical data of persecution of African-derived religions in Brazil,¹¹ the word-utterance of “Christphobia” demonstrates how every object is “discursively immersed” to the extent that “any discourse that speaks of any object is not directed toward the reality itself but toward the discourses surrounding it” (Fiorin, 2018, p. 22).¹²

Impregnated with social voices that employ an ambiguous conception of religious freedom, with an “out-of-place memory,” and with shifts between majority and minority scales, the former president of Brazil’s “Christphobia” exemplifies how “utterances, while responding to what has already been said, continually provoke the most diverse responses” (Faraco, 2017, pp. 58-59).¹³ Thus, while his speech at the UN activates an intricate dialogic web on one hand, it also sets this very web in motion, capable of engendering other responsive meanings in a double movement of “reply to what has already been said and under the condition of the reply not yet spoken but already requested and anticipated, as Bakhtin understands the universe of culture as a vast and infinite dialogue” (Faraco, 2017, p. 42).¹⁴ Therefore, in the next section, I will discuss how, based on the specificities of online cartoons, the word-utterance of “Christphobia” enters this web in its discursively unusual form, as a response and irony.

2 Online Cartoons: Dialogic Threads and Meaning-Making

Situated in a specific historical and social moment and touching upon the thousands of dialogic threads that exist, the utterance actively participates in social dialogue (Bakhtin/Volóchinov, 2009).¹⁵ This reinforces the importance of considering the intersections that shape a given discourse and the affiliations it summons. In this sense, I argue that the dialogic perspective helps to explain how “Christphobia” as an utterance can make sense despite its impossibility as a (historical, census-based, and cultural) phenomenon in Brazil. On one hand, as I demonstrated in the previous section, “Christphobia” in the former president of Brazil’s speech refers to an alignment strategy with his religious support base by subscribing to the complex of Christian persecution. On the other hand, the utterance discloses diverse responses that can both endorse and oppose its assertion of persecution, making room for the tension between utterances that dialogic structure relationships (Faraco, 2017).

Assuming cartoon as a privileged locus for observing the tensions arising from the former president of Brazil’s utterance of “Christphobia,” I argue, in line with Carmelino and Possenti (2019), that it is a discursive genre, both in terms of its structure and mode of circulation, and its distinctive way of establishing relationships with a given historical and social context. Communication through cartoons, as Bakhtin (2011) explains regarding discursive genres, demonstrates that speech can exist only in the form of “concrete utterances of individual speaking people, speech subjects. Speech is always cast in the form of an utterance belonging to a particular speaking subject, and outside this form it cannot exist” (Bakhtin, 2010, p. 71).¹⁶ Thus, the use of cartoons to reverberate “Christphobia” already reveals an intentionality of the author/speaker who recognizes in this genre the potential to convey meanings that not only oppose those from the UN podium but also mock them, placing them under scrutiny and exposing their contradictions. This is because the cartoon, as Teixeira (2005) elucidates, is a humor drawing whose lines oscillate between simplification and exaggeration, capturing, conveying, and resonating with multiple pieces of information in a subtle interplay of prohibitions and allowances.

As a critical genre of opinion, cartoons engage with the immediate social landscape of events in the public sphere, challenging reality from a critical and dissenting perspective. Within the Brazilian context, this specific genre is named charge, after the French origin of the term “charge” (from charger), that denote a charge, an accent, a burden on the content to be worked with. This exemplifies Bakhtin’s proposition regarding the functioning of discourse genres in human communication. According to him, discourses take on the form of a genre, and when listening to someone else’s discourse, we can already anticipate its genre “from the very first word; we predict a certain length and a certain compositional structure; we foresee the end; that is, from the very beginning we have a sense of the speech whole, which is only later differentiated during the speech process” (Bakhtin, 1984, p. 181).¹⁷ Therefore, when one listens to/reads a cartoon, one can anticipate encountering an accent on a specific meaning or argument, frequently one that is unexpected, critical, or controversial. Cartoons are also versatile; they can be seen as a historical source with the potential to “identify the inherent historicity of political practices, especially in translating the multitude of interests that such practices entail” (Romero, 2020, p. 3)¹⁸ or as an educational tool that encapsulates a specific historical context. By adding to the critical records of a particular period, cartoons also contribute to the construction of a “social memory without which there could be no history, as history is only constituted through discourse” (Oliveira, 2001, p. 265).¹⁹

It is worth noting that the cartoons analyzed in this paper inform a genre strongly marked by the process of remediation. Despite still bearing the marks of its original forms developed over the course of print media culture, it accumulates characteristics inherent to the circulation of digital content. Remediation refers to a process in which “new” media appropriates the techniques, forms, and cultural significance of “old” media. Coined by Bolter and Grusin (2000), the term remediation asserts that media renew themselves through a retrieval of previous elements, forming new products that either imitate, incorporate, or challenge previous practices. One of the most significant effects of remediation is the “transparency of the medium,” wherein “the user does not focus on the medium itself but, on the contrary, establishes an immediate relationship with the content of that medium” (Bolter; Grusin, 2000, pp. 23-24). From the perspective of digital culture, remediation enables content and information consumption in a way that the medium (usually a platform) is obliterated or even naturalized in the interaction process. The remediation of cartoons does not alter their basic formal characteristics, such as multimodality or the scope of echoing contemporary events or individuals. Still, it significantly impacts the frequency and distribution format, no longer submitted to publication in a newspaper or magazine but rather to a specific cartoonist’s attention to public discourse and his/her willingness to share such images.

The cartoons analyzed in this paper were created by the cartoonist André Lafayete and published on his personal-professional Instagram profile (@putz_grilah). The corpus of analyses encompasses five (05) posts/cartoons, all titled “Christphobia,” posted between September 23 and 24, 2020, less than a week after the former president of Brazil’s speech at the UN. Each of the five cartoons shares a similar visual structure: they depict an ordinary character opposing Jesus Christ in a culmination of intolerance.

Another common aspect concerning all the cartoons is the construction of an interdiscursive incompatibility between the two characters. On one hand, in the form of intertextuality, the character of Jesus Christ is represented based on the Gospels of John (three cartoons) and Matthew (two cartoons), both from the New Testament (NT). The second aspect reiterates utterances from a political-religious culture strongly associated with groups that supported/support the former president of Brazil’s ideological alignment. Therefore, there are two interconnected and mutually influencing aspects of the analysis: the presentation of two ethical-discursive positions in the cartoon that are portrayed as irreconcilable (that of Jesus and that of his interlocutor); and the argument of religious intolerance (which refers to “Christphobia,” the utterance that instigates and motivates the cartoons) as the common outcome in all the five scenes. In the following section, I will provide a brief description of these scenes, distinguishing between two perspectives as analytical vectors: one ethical and the other economic, based on the source of the Gospels of John and Matthew, respectively.

2.1 The Ethics of Christphobia: Incompatibilities between the Gospel of John and the Former President of Brazil’s Ideological Alignment

In the cartoon below, published on September 24, 2020, Jesus Christ says “Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her.” Taken from the Gospel of John (John 8:7), this passage refers to the well-known “The Adulterous Woman” story, in which Jesus interrupts the stoning of a married woman who had been taken in adultery. In the cartoons, Jesus’s interlocutor is a middle-aged man who responds, “A good criminal is a dead criminal” indicating a political utterance that resonates with the punitive affiliations characteristic of the former president of Brazil’s discourse.

Figure 1
Source: https://www.instagram.com/p/CFhlyGMJu9f/?hl=en²⁰

In the following cartoon, Christ tells a young muscular man “I love you,” and the reaction to his words is a punch to his face. The intertextual reference can also be found in the Gospel of John, which narrates the moment when Jesus gives a new commandment to the apostles: to love one another as he has loved them (John 13:34). The man’s violent reaction to the demonstration of love not only signifies a rejection of the commandment but also leads the reader to interpret the situation as a case of aversion to affection between men.

Figure 2
Source: https://www.instagram.com/p/CFgKepNJrKz/?hl=en²¹

The third cartoon also starts from an intertext from the Gospel of John. Jesus says “You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (John 8:32), while is responded to a paraphrase taken from the speech of the former president of Brazil at the UN, in which the then-president claimed that the Amazon fires were the result of the actions of indigenous communities and NGOs living there.²²

Figure 3
Source: https://www.instagram.com/p/CFgCCsqpbtm/?hl=en²³

Here, I want to emphasize how the corpus demonstrates marks of constitutive heterogeneity, by focusing on the Other or Others who make up the utterance of Christphobia in the cartoons. As Authier-Revuz (2004) explains: “The other is not an object (external, of which one speaks), but a condition (constitutive, for one to speak of) of the discourse of a speaking subject who is not the primary source of that discourse” (p. 69).²⁴ It is also necessary to highlight intertextuality as one of the forms of dialogic relationship that can be discerned from discourses in general and from this corpus specifically. The way the cartoons are structured demonstrates how intertextuality highlights the heterogeneous aspect of the “Christphobia” utterance. The fact that the cartoons present a dialogue between two subjects also helps to locate the voices that resonate and permeate the discourse, which explains the literal or paraphrastic nature of the utterances. There is an opposition that appears impossible to resolve with the Other to whom Jesus speaks. The voices speaking for this opposition affirm, like the former president of Brazil, that “Christphobia” does exist in Brazil; however, and this is where the value of the cartoon as an object of tension in dialogic relations comes into play, the meanings emerging from this interlocution lead “Christphobia” into a different realm of understanding, distinct from that which the former president applied in the UN General Assembly. In other words, what the cartoons assert is that Christophobic is the Other, and this Other come from the former president of Brazil’s ideological alignment.

The meanings of “Christphobia” depicted in the cartoons creates a perception of religious intolerance as a result of the political agenda of the former president of Brazil’s ideological alignment. The three cartoons analyzed so far summon utterances embedded in the positions of the former president throughout his political career and present them as Christphobic. The use of punitive violence (Boldt, 2019), homophobia (Portilho, 2022), and the recourse to Fake News (Oliveira, 2021) weave, from the former president of Brazil fanatic followers’ utterances, the very density of “Christphobia,” as they appear averse to the lessons extracted from the New Testament (NT). Thus, one can state that the meaning of “Christphobia” proposed by the cartoons is less concerned with the specific content of the UN speech (or attempting to demonstrate that “Christphobia” in Brazil does not exist) and aiming to reaffirm an incompatibility between Christianity and the former president of Brazil’s ideological alignment, this Other that presents itself in various forms. The implied sense of Christianity in the choice of NT texts delineates a discursive position, or as Bakhtin (1984) would say, a “unique creative will” of the author, establishing a position to which one can react dialogically.²⁵

As explained by Falcão, Patriota, and Rodrigues (2018), the nearly political division that associates New Testament texts with the proclamation of Grace in contrast to those of the Old Testament, predominating the observance of the Law, made room for new interpretations of the Scriptures, particularly since the 1960s. Thus, from the perspective of Grace, the Kingdom of God presents itself as a tangible and contemporary proposal that finds expression in theological frameworks such as Liberation Theology, Queer Theology, Feminist Theology, and so forth. Notably, it is in the New Testament that a significant portion of progressive movements, whether religious or secular, seek their references and articulate them in the public discourse. Comprising 27 books, the New Testament canon is the product of the early church’s testimony to the life of Jesus. There are four canonical Gospels included in the New Testament: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, with the first three collectively forming what is referred to as the “Synoptic Gospels” due to the extensive portions they share in their narratives (Gonzaga, 2020). According to the author, the Gospel of John (the source of the intertexts in the three cartoons analyzed thus far) distinguishes itself from the Synoptic Gospels both in terms of its narrative style and its focus on demonstrating the divinity of Jesus, and therefore aims to make people believe in Him as their savior. Hence, there is a kind of messianic and redemptive ethics enduring the texts of John.

Consequently, Malzoni (2018) explains that there are various pieces of information about Jesus of Nazareth that only appear in the Gospel of John, and even in cases where there are parallels with the Synoptic Gospels, there are differences in details and diversity in the treatment of themes. As the Fourth Gospel, John portrays hostility toward Christians, whether from the Jewish religious authorities or the Roman Empire. Therefore, it is agreed that “the Gospel of John is the result of a long process, written in a multifaceted cultural and ecclesial environment... a reinterpretation of the life of Jesus... facing a double persecution” (p. 33).²⁶ John Intertext’s themes of forgiveness, love, and truth “collide” with the intertexts of the former president of Brazil’s religious-ideological alignment in the themes of punitiveness, homophobia, and Fake News. However, it is the antagonism of this encounter that gives a distinctive sense of reality to “Christphobia” in the cartoons. In this articulation, “Christphobia” exists when one perceives the ethical intolerance that the former president of Brazil fanatic followers’ values establish in relation to the values advocated by Christ based on the Gospel of John.

2.2 The Gospel of Matthew and the Economic Dimensions of Christphobia

The last two cartoons integrating the corpus of analysis also follow the same logic of interdiscursive opposition between the New Testament on one side and the former president of Brazil fanatic followers’ utterances on the other. However, it is the Gospel of Matthew that establishes the dialogue in the following scenes. In the first cartoon, published on September 23, 2020, Jesus says “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God” (Mathew19:23-24). In response, his interlocutor, a white man wearing a tie, resembling a businessman, retorts, “Go to Cuba.”

Figure 4
Source: https://www.instagram.com/p/CFeydj2J7pg/?hl=en²⁷

In the next cartoon, published on September 23, 2020, Jesus says “Go, sell everything you have and give it to the poor” (Matthew 19:21) to which the male figure of a evangelical pastor (an inference that will be further elaborated later) responds, “I rebuke you in your own name.”

Figure 5
Source: https://www.instagram.com/p/CFfBhWRp6U6/?hl=en²⁸

Both cartoons highlight the discussed economic language present in the Gospel of Matthew. As explained by Lima (2014, p. 24), discussing an economic language in this Gospel involves considering the economics related to the urban life of the ancient Mediterranean world, where possession, power, and status marked fundamental distinctions between members of the Romanized urban elites (both Gentile and Jewish). Thus, the author explains that terms like alms, treasure, rewards, poverty, wealth, humility, debt, or tax are recurring in Matthew. An important reference in shaping this perspective, Vaage (1997) argues for a “Jesus as an economist” in Matthew, whose speeches/teachings/parables are organized according to two significant aspects: (1) on one hand, the proposal of a disciplined way of life (in which one could be satisfied with the provision of God, the Father), that presupposes a social practice of solidarity; (2) on the other hand, there is a project of an alternative economy called, in the Gospel of Matthew, the “kingdom of heaven” which, in coherence with the disciplined life, extends to issues of production, business, contracts, and indebtedness.

The two cartoons in question work with verses that are part of the “Jesus and the rich young man” passage (Mt 19:16-30), when in Judea, a young man asks about what is necessary for eternal life. In return, Jesus speaks about obeying the commandments and instructs him to sell his possessions and give to the poor. The young man walks away in refusal, marking, as explained by Lima (2014), “the only passage in the entire New Testament in which someone responds negatively to Jesus’ call” (p. 126).²⁹ In the end, Jesus addresses his followers who were with him and uses the metaphor of the camel, highlighting how in Matthew, there is a “radical saying of condemnation to the rich”³⁰ (Lima, 2014, p. 126).

Extracted from the same biblical passage, both intertexts reinforce the antagonism to central elements of the former president of Brazil’s political-economic project, demonstrating a structural incompatibility between them. “Move to Cuba” encapsulates the anti-communism that underpinned the entire 2018 presidential campaign and subsequent years of government. It is a statement with a strong appeal to the groups that make up the so-called alternative right (alt-right) in Brazil, which reorganized itself to reclaim, as described by Santos and Tanscheit (2019), the “authoritarian and neoliberal dimensions that were dormant in public discourse”³¹ (p. 161). As explained by Almeida (2019), there is synergy among social actors of the “conservative wave,” which has among its main characteristics the advocacy for a minimal state in economic matters, reinforcing the affinities that this new right-wing has with the neoliberal agenda.

It is particularly relevant that the last cartoon in this analysis features an evangelical pastor as the interlocutor of the “economist Jesus.” This identity is inferred both from the character’s portrayal (holding a Christian Bible) and the response he offers to Christ’s teaching. When he says “I rebuke you in your own name,” it demonstrates a paraphrase of a widely used and observed construction in “evangelic speak” (Atala, 2019): “You are rebuked in the name of the Lord/Jesus.” As the author explains, “evangelic speak” is a glossary of linguistic formulations associated with evangelical subjects that “operates in the religious discursive space as a way of speaking that unifies them” (p. 50).³² Through it, one can observe how various religious discursive scenes are in circulation, both informally and within worship rituals, as well as in the oral and written language of evangelical experiences. In this perspective, the expression “I rebuke you in the name of Jesus” signifies “an utterance in the realm of the spiritual world that is supposed to nullify the forces of darkness/evil. It is also used to repel people or situations contrary to the will of God” (Atala, 2019, p. 56).³³

The core idea, according to Mathew’s Gospel, that the rich ones will not enter the kingdom of heaven contradicts one of the pillars of the Prosperity Theology (PT), which assumes the premise that true faith “enjoys the right, as a special license granted by the divinity, to impose and demand from God Himself the fulfillment of the promised blessings within the covenant” (Almeida Júnior, 2008, p. 156).³⁴ These blessings manifest in an “abundant life,” encompassing material wealth and health, for example. Thus, opulent living, flaunted in material goods and comfort, is not a contradiction, nor should it be seen as something to be ashamed of; in fact, it is considered a true blessing and intimacy with God. A modern doctrinal formulation, Prosperity Theology originated from American Puritanism in the 19th century, and in Brazil, it serves as the doctrinal foundation for neo Pentecostal denominations in their expansionist process, which gained momentum from the 1970s onwards. The Igreja Universal do Reino de Deus [Universal Church of the Kingdom of God] (IURD), led by Bishop Edir Macedo, is PT’s main emblem. One can assume that the growth of neo Pentecostal churches is based on processes of moralizing money and enabling consumption authorized by Prosperity Theology. According to Almeida (2019), the influence of Prosperity Theology extends beyond the evangelical sphere because it promotes an entrepreneurial attitude aimed not only at financial survival but also at material accumulation and social mobility, reinforcing prosperity as a value endowed with economic ethics (p. 207).

3 Interdiscoursive Path of Cristophobia: From Minority to Majority and Its Incompatibilities and Estrangements

Taken individually, the five cartoons appear as pieces of an ideological-discursive mechanism that structures Christphobia as an utterance, by invoking other utterances with which it confronts in a dialogic relationship of religious, ethical, and economic excerpts, as demonstrated. From this perspective, the former president of Brazil fanatic followers’ values are portrayed as Christphobic not because there is an essence within them, but because dialogism, as explained by Fiorin (2018), shapes the relations of meaning that are established between two utterances; in this relationship, “there are echoes and memories of other utterances, on which it relies, which it refutes, confirms, completes, presupposes, and so on” (p. 21, emphasis added).³⁵ By deliberately refuting the sense of Christphobia pronounced at the UN, utterances in the cartoons demonstrates how words travel “from one mouth to another, from one context to another context, from one social collective to another, from one generation to another generation” (Bakhtin, 1984, p. 187).³⁶

To better grasp the interdiscursive trajectory of the term, one must take into account the significant transformations that have occurred in the Brazilian religious landscape, particularly within its Christian aspects. These changes rely on the exponential growth of almost 80% among evangelical denominations over the past four decades, a process through which one can explore the heterogeneity of political and theological practices with which evangelicals engage in the public sphere. This quantitative change implies a qualitative shift: the decline of Catholic hegemony in the country creates space for a diversified configuration of denominations. As a results, one can say Brazil remains a Christian country, albeit in different terms. In this context, Burity and Giumbelli (2020) explanation on the dynamics of minority/majority agency undertaken by various evangelical groups is particularly pertinent. These groups have successfully positioned themselves both as a “counterpoint to the Catholic” and as associates in the formation of a “Christian nation” (p. 11). As the authors elucidate, the assertion of a minority identity sheds its subaltern and negative connotations, being invoked “assertively, positively reframing attributes and demands that were previously negatively judged in a discriminatory, condemning, or violent manner” (p. 10).³⁷ In this logic, presenting oneself as a minority is no longer viewed as inferior but rather as a necessary credential for claiming rights and, thus, remaining in the public discourse.

In his speech at the UN, the former president of Brazil invoked the fight against Christphobia, framing the utterance in a minority sense of the term. The pronouncement of one of the government’s key figures, the former minister of Women, Family, and Human Rights demonstrates the chain of meanings that this minority position facilitates. An article published by Gospel Mais [Gospel Plus] website featured an interview with the then-minister, conducted by journalist Caio Copolla to the Jovem Pan channel. In the article, Alves emphasized the importance of acknowledging the existence of Christphobia in Brazil and concluded: “As good Christians, we know that we would be persecuted, humiliated, and shamed. This is part of our faith” (Chagas, 2019).³⁸ The former minister of Women, Family and Human Rights’ argument articulates a “misplaced” memory of years of Christian persecution, harkening back to the times of the Early Church. In this specific interdiscursive chain, there is a “we Christians” that is portrayed as a minority (persecuted and humiliated), which the former president of Brazil’s religious-ideological alignment defines and identifies with, pitted against the Other that these Christians must resist and even combat.

In turn, by (re)positioning Christphobia in the dialogic chain of meanings, the cartoons exercise this same “misplaced” memory of persecution but through different means. They bring to the forefront not the “persecuted Christians” outlined by the former president of Brazil and his former minister of Women, Family and Human Rights Ministry, but the figure of Christ himself. It is Jesus of Nazareth who experiences situations of intolerance, and what is even more pronounced, coming from those who can be considered Christians today in Brazil. Thus, the majority sense of the “Christian nation” that Burity and Giumbelli (2020) mention is inscribed in the cartoons through ethical and economic aspects that prove irreconcilable with the words of Christ as derived from passages in the New Testament. Therefore, in this arrangement, the connotation of “Christphobia” shifts from the image of the “persecuted Christian” (a minority image, as I argued) to the figure of Jesus Christ, a character whose life is the subject of reflection and knowledge production in both Christian culture and popular culture.

The hybrid nature of the character (both human and divine) gives rise to a wide range of fictional interpretations. In this sense, Jesus can be seen as a revolutionary or as a pacifist. Carmolinga (2008) explains that historical, theological, dogmatic, creative, and literary aspects intertwine substantively, producing images of the “son of God” that can manifest both fictitiously in literature, in cinema, and be associated with figures in a country’s history. According to the author, “the Jesus of literature is certainly more exciting than the one in theology” (p. 152),³⁹ because it is a character in which dreams, obsessions, and desires are projected into human form. He also explains that the recurring Jesus in popular imagination reveals a humble presence, like his first earthly sojourn as Jesus of Nazareth from the Christian canon. Thus, the literary tradition (as well as popular culture) focuses on a more human Jesus who, despite being the Son of God, desires to live as a man. This opens the possibility to contemplate, beyond the scriptures, the polysemous nature of the figure of Christ, one that lends voice and meaning not to incarnate individuals but to social and political positions that can be used in public discourse.

Therefore, I argue that the Jesus targeted by “Christphobia” is another position within the constellation of meanings that the character invokes in its multiple interpellations. This position is specifically ironic in the enunciation of the cartoons since it demonstrates the dynamism with which the implicit literalness of “Christphobia” moves in the cartoon between “they” and “us,” so different in values (the former president of Brazil fanatic followers or those of the New Testament gospels) and in scales (minority and majority). In the cartoons, Christians are a “majority Other,” fully identified with the former president of Brazil’s religious-ideological alignment by ethical and economic values. They pursue a Jesus who, as we have seen, embodies an imaginary of humility and simplicity in popular culture. It is also important to emphasize how the ethical and economic framework attributed to this “majority Other” significantly echoes the foundational “conservative in morals and liberal in the economy” of the former president of Brazil’s religious-ideological alignment wave, capable of articulating both neoliberal and neoconservative agendas. The variety of figures opposing Christ indicates this possibility: the middle-aged man, the violent man, the businessman, the pastor, and the woman who believes in Fake News all present the “the former president of Brazil fanatic followers’ kaleidoscope” that the author of the cartoons seeks to inventory. Each of these subjects and utterances opposes a passage from the New Testament, consolidating the incompatibility and estrangement of Christ with these conservative-liberal positions. The irony contained in the cartoons unleashes meanings about Christphobia that become different, unexpected, and distinct from what was observed at the UN Assembly, in a process established between what is explicitly stated and what is implicitly signified in the relationship between Christ and his followers/prosecutors.

Final Considerations

Taking the cartoon as the material of analysis means starting from the dialogic principle of meanings since “every discourse is oriented towards a response, and it cannot escape the profound influence of the discourse of the anticipated response” (Bakhtin, 1981, p. 280).⁴⁰ This principle helps delimit and understand what (and how) Christphobia, as portrayed by the artist André Lafayete, responds to. Moreover, in the cartoon, we could grasp (1) the majority and minority scales of Christian identity and (2) the discursive interplay of incompatibility and estrangement that produces an Other. Both vectors are essential for the enunciation of Christphobia to make sense in the cartoon. Thus, Christphobia in the cartoons responds to an “out-of-place memory” of Christianity, invoking its primitive stage when it was a persecuted religion by the Empire. This memory is expressed in the former president of Brazil’s discourse as a “minority us” which, as observed, lacks historical or demographic significance in Brazil but activates strategic positions of political visibility and legitimacy. As seen in the former president of Brazil’s own speech at the UN, this “minority us,” besides being Christian, is also conservative and values family, which underpin the public sphere activities of a certain hegemonic Christian agenda (simultaneously liberal and conservative) in Brazil.

On the other hand, the enunciation of Christphobia in the cartoons presents itself as a responsive event. It no longer concerns a discourse on a persecuted “minority us,” but highlights the very incompatibility behind the idea of Christphobia. The set of five cartoons reinforces the same scene of this incompatibility: Christian values on one side, and the former president of Brazil fanatic followers’ values on the other. The irony of the cartoons comes up precisely in the collision of alterities that the dialogical relationship prescribes and needs to make sense of. In other words, the Christphobia cartoon argues about an incompatibility to the same extent that it constructs estrangement. Incompatibility is expressed using intertexts that juxtapose passages from the New Testament with widely recognized utterances attributed to the former president of Brazil’s religious-ideological alignment wave. Thus, love, forgiveness, truth, charity, and humility collide with homophobia, punition, fake news, prosperity, and anticommunism.

The repetitive use of the figure of Jesus Christ in opposition to variations of figures and utterances from the former president of Brazil fanatic followers’ discourse emphasizes the incompatibility between the two. On the other hand, it also allows for the expression of alterities that emerge, whether in the form of the middle-aged man, the businessman, the pastor, the violent man, or the woman who believes in fake news. Within this strategy lies the construction of estrangement between the diverse ideological base of the former president of Brazil’s religious-ideological alignment wave and Christian values, derived from the Gospels of John and Matthew. From this framework of estrangement, one can perceive the creation of a major Christphobic Other that is, according to their different utterances, possibly Christian. As Teixeira (2005) explains, “the cartoon produces a rupture from which a new truth emerges without any rational connection” (p. 80).⁴¹ This does not mean, the author explains, that the truth inscribed in the cartoon is divorced from reality but rather embedded in conditions of existence that do not depend on the real. Christphobia in the cartoon is situated within this dynamic of an ironic truth in its unexpectedness: Christphobia is a trait of the former president of Brazil’s religious-ideological alignment wave, which capitalized on a strong Christian base in Brazil to shape the “conservative wave” (Almeida, 2019).

Finally, it is worth noting how Christphobia is of much greater interest in terms of how it presents itself discursively as unexpected rather than its ability to formulate a concept or grasp reality. Moreover, the dialogic relationships that the utterance activates in the cartoon require a willingness to go back and forth between other utterances, meanings, and scales, paying attention to the nuances of the material. Thus, the “minority us” that is fraught with contradictions and impossibilities in the former president of Brazil’s discourse and the “majority them” that is both Christian and Christphobic are part of the same discursive web, a dialectic of estrangement and incompatibility. This “us” and “them” are neither inherently right nor wrong; they are positioned and interact, anticipating or impeding each other. The second cannot exist without the first, and the subsequent ones will not exist without considering those that have already passed. This is possible because the dynamic that displaces words and meanings also operates in an unlimited dialogical context, extending into the past and the future, equally without limits (Bakhtin, 2010).⁴² Following this direction, there are as many positions on Christphobia yet to come as there are interaction situations that summon them, ensuring that the word-utterance is (re)formulated or (re)appropriated based on the meanings and scales expected of it in a given enunciation (from the UN to Instagram). Over this expanding dialogic movement, determining the first word spoken on Christphobia is as much as impossible as predicting the last one to come.

• 1
  VOLOŠINOV, Valentin. Marxism and the Philosophy of Language. Translated by Ladislav Matejka and I. R. Titunik. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986.
• 2
  See footnote 1.
• 3
  In Portuguese: “inusitado de sua forma de ser discursivamente, à sua maneira de participar ativamente de esferas de produção, circulação e recepção, encontrando sua identidade nas relações dialógicas estabelecidas com outros discursos, com outros sujeitos.”
• 4
  In Portuguese: “entrada no domínio do discurso.”
• 5
  In Portuguese: “a expressividade da palavra é o elemento que marca seu índice valorativo, que possibilita à palavra receber um determinado valor na situação de interação da qual participa.”
• 6
  Free translation from: “uma forma idêntica a si mesma ou expressão do pensamento” e sim “construto social, [que reafirma a] (...) possibilidade de considerar seu estatuto a partir da perspectiva dialógica.”
• 7
  BAKHTIN, Mikhail M. Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics. Edited and translated by Caryl Emerson. Introduction by Wayne C. Booth. Minneapolis/London: University of Minnesota Press, 1984.
• 8
  In Portuguese: “Um debate com relação a discursos homofóbicos - o que é crença, o que é discurso de ódio - pode ser enquadrado como cristofobia. Qualquer discussão que coloque em xeque práticas de comunidades terapêuticas cristãs, que não respeitem o mínimo da política de saúde mental, podem ser enquadrados dentro de uma perspectiva de cristofobia.”
• 9
  In Portuguese: “um país cristão e conservador, [que] tem na família a sua base.”
• 10
  In this work, I will use the term “memory out of place” to name this process of evoking memories about a “Persecuted Church,” going back to the moment of Christianity in its primitive stage, as a minority religion, persecuted by the forces of the Roman Empire. Today, Christianity is still considered the largest religion in the world with around 2.4 billion adherents worldwide (Hackett; Mcclendon, 2017).
• 11
  As I finish this text, we are following the news about the murder of Mãe Bernadete, Yalaorixá killed for political reasons and religious intolerance in Bahia.
• 12
  In Portuguese: “todo discurso que fale de qualquer objeto não está voltado para a realidade em si, mas para os discursos que o circundam.”
• 13
  In Portuguese: “os enunciados, ao mesmo tempo que respondem ao já dito [...], provocam continuamente as mais diversas respostas.”
• 14
  In Portuguese: “como réplica ao já dito e sob o condicionamento da réplica ainda não dita, mas já solicitada e prevista, já que Bakhtin entende o universo da cultura como um grande e infinito diálogo.”
• 15
  For reference, see footnote 1.
• 16
  BAKHTIN, Mikhail. The Problem of Speech Genres. In: BAKHTIN, Mikhail. Speech Genres & Other Late Essays. Translated by Vern W. Mcgee. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2010 [1952-1953]. pp. 60-102.
• 17
  For reference, see footnote 7.
• 18
  In Portuguese: “identificação da historicidade inerente às práticas políticas, especialmente ao traduzir a multiplicidade de interesses de que tais práticas se revestem.”
• 19
  In Portuguese: “memória social sem a qual não poderia haver História, que só se constitui pelo discurso.”
• 20
  In Portuguese: “CHRISTPHOBIA - Throw the first stone if you never sinned/ A good criminal is a dead criminal.”
• 21
  In Portuguese: “CHRISTPHOBIA - I love you.”
• 22
  In a given excerpt of the speech, the former president of Brazil states that Brazil has become the target of a “brutal campaign” of disinformation regarding the fires in the Amazon. In his words: “the forest is humid and does not allow fire inside it and the fires occur in the eastern surroundings of the forest, where residents burn their trash in deforested areas” (ONUNEWS, 2020).
• 23
  In Portuguese: “CHRISTPHOBIA - You know the truth and the truth will set you free/ Indigenous people are setting fire to the Amazon Forest.”
• 24
  In Portuguese: “O outro não é um objeto (exterior, do qual se fala), mas uma condição (constitutiva, para que se fale) do discurso de um sujeito falante que não é fonte-primeira desse discurso.”
• 25
  See footnote 15.
• 26
  In Portuguese: “o Evangelho de João é fruto de uma longa elaboração, escrito num ambiente cultural e eclesial multifacetado. (...) uma releitura da vida de Jesus (...), enfrentando [uma] dupla perseguição.”
• 27
  In Portuguese: “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God / Go to Cuba.”
• 28
  In Portuguese: “Go, sell everything you have and give it to the poor/ I rebuke you in your own name.”
• 29
  In Portuguese: “a única passagem em todo o Novo Testamento em que alguém responde negativamente ao chamado de Jesus.”
• 30
  In Portuguese: “dito radical de condenação aos ricos.”
• 31
  In Portuguese: “dimensões autoritária e neoliberal que estavam adormecidas no debate público.”
• 32
  In Portuguese: “opera no espaço discursivo religioso como forma de falar que os unifica.”
• 33
  In Portuguese: “um dizer da ordem do mundo espiritual que supõe anular as forças das trevas/do mal. É também empregado para afastar pessoas ou situações contrárias à vontade de Deus.”
• 34
  In Portuguese: “desfruta o direito, como uma licença especial conferida pela divindade, de impor e exigir do próprio Deus o cumprimento das bênçãos prometidas no ambiente da aliança.”
• 35
  In Portuguese: relação “estão presentes ecos e lembranças de outros enunciados, com que ele conta, que ele refuta, confirma, completa, pressupõe e assim por diante.”
• 36
  See footnote 16.
• 37
  In Portuguese: “de modo assertivo, ressignificando positivamente atributos e demandas até então julgadas negativamente de forma discriminatória, condenatória ou violenta.”
• 38
  In Portuguese: “como bons cristãos nós sabemos que seríamos perseguidos, humilhados, que nós seríamos envergonhados. Isso faz parte da nossa fé.”
• 39
  In Portuguese: “o Jesus da literatura é certamente mais empolgante que o da teologia.”
• 40
  BAKHTIN, M. The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays by M. M. Bakhtin Ed. by Michael Holquist.
  Trans. By Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981.
• 41
  In Portuguese: “a charge produz uma ruptura a partir da qual uma nova verdade vem à tona sem qualquer vínculo de racionalidade.”
• 42
  See footnote 15

• Reviews

  Due to the commitment assumed by Bakhtiniana. Revista de Estudos do Discurso [Bakhtiniana. Journal of Discourse Studies] to Open Science, this journal only publishes reviews that have been authorized by all involved.

Research Data and Other Materials Availability

The contents underlying the research text are included in the manuscript.

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Translated by Maria Carolina Bello Cavalcanti da Silva - [e-mail]

Review 1

About the reviewer SCIMAGO INSTITUTIONS RANKINGS

Review 1

The text is well written and addresses all the characteristics of a scientific article. The theme about the construction of meaning in discourses on social networks is relevant today because we need to deepen our critical views on what reaches us on our devices. Writing demonstrates appropriation of basic concepts and uses them coherently in analyses. The methodology is equally coherent, presenting justifications for the selection of the corpus. Therefore, I give my approval to the article. ACCEPTED

• peer review recommendation: accept

History

• Peer review received
  15 Sept 2023

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  08 Dec 2023
• Date of issue
  2024

History

• Received
  25 Aug 2023
• Accepted
  27 Oct 2023