This paper aims to demonstrate that the Brazilian Pentecostal phenomenon, especially neo-Pentecostalism and its "Prosperity Theology" represents the vocalization of a privatist ethos silently cultivated over decades of political and legal helplessness from the broader and vulnerable set of Brazilian society. This paper argues that neo-Pentecostalism emerged as the organizer of a political culture marked by the intersection of two current social processes, which are: 1) social change driven by the expansion of consumer society and 2) the lack of the capacitiy of the state, on the one hand, and of the civil society, on the other, to overcome the problems of social marginalization caused by excessive economic inequality and by the deficit of symbolic capital necessary to strengthen civic and democratic political culture.
neo-Pentecostalism; political culture; democracy; peripheral modernity