• DOI:10.1080/14755610601157104
• Corpus ID: 144671783

The Moral Hazards Of Christian Obligations In Brazil's Rural Zona Da Mata

@article{Chandler2007TheMH,
  title={The Moral Hazards Of Christian Obligations In Brazil's Rural Zona Da Mata},
  author={P. Chandler},
  journal={Culture and Religion},
  year={2007},
  volume={8},
  pages={33 - 50}
}

• P. Chandler
• Published 1 March 2007
• Economics
• Culture and Religion

From 1999 through 2003, applied research in Brazil's Zona da Mata was undertaken to identify the reasons why some households choose, either actively or by default, not to participate in rural assistance efforts. Class-based guiding hypotheses held that participation would correlate positively with economic, demographic and health measures of household need, but found only limited support. These hypotheses found their greatest support within the community's small but rapidly growing Pentecostal congregation, but were generally contradicted within the community's much larger Catholic congregation, and totally contradicted by full participation, regardless of need or religious affiliation, within one of the research community's 14 hamlets. The hamlet's contradiction resulted from a pooling of an extended family's labour and resources to achieve full participation. The larger community's contradiction of the guiding hypotheses resulted from the wealthiest Catholic households' self-described ‘Christian obligations’ to provide garden produce upon request to the poorest Catholic households. The earth does not yield its fruits without a particular human response to God's gift, that is to say, without work. (John Paul II, Centesimus Annus, cited in Neuhaus 1999)