As formações imaginárias e o processo parafrástico no discurso neopentecostal sobre o dízimo: barganhando a fé

Abstract

The present work was created with the purpose of comprehending the neo-Pentecostal religious discourse constitution focused on the tithe, based on the principles of Discourse Analysis. The problem that motivates this research is the increasing wealth of neo-Pentecostal churches to the detriment of the impoverishment of the faithful, added to several complaints reported on media accusing these institutions of promoting charlatanism and fraud through the discourse of tithing associated with the prosperity theology. In addition, other alarming data that motivate this research are the annual rates released by Federal Revenue revealing that the assets of these churches are estimated at millions or billions reais, and these amounts come from government donations and tithes. In this sense, the purpose of this research is to reflect on the functioning of the neo-Pentecostal religious discourse in relation to tithing. We carry out a historical contextualization about the tithe and then we try to highlight some peculiarities about the religious discourse and other concepts of Discourse Analysis that serve as a support for the construction for the analysis. These concepts are: forgetting, paraphrasing, imaginary formations. The main authors we use to elaborate this research are Orlandi (2013), Santos (n.d), Torresan (2007), Vieira &Reis (2018), among other. The analyzes were carried out via interpretative methodology proposed by Discourse Analysis. This research realizes that neo-Pentecostal discourse on tithing is persuasive because it works with emotions and with unconscious religious members’ issues in such a way that the tithing payment becomes an undeniable duty for them.