Abstract:
Brazilian theologian Rubem Alves (1933-2014) was one of the most creative thinkers
Latin American theology has ever produced. In De excrementisdiaboli (“On the Devil’s
excrements”), a short text published in 1998 in Brazilian newspaper Folha de S. Paulo,
Alves plays with the idea of trash as the excrements the Devil puts in the world to mock
of God’s creation. Alves states that he never heard any sermon preached by any
religious leader about how to care for God’s creation dealing correctly with garbage.
Following this Alvesian intuition, this article intends to present that a biblical theology of
creation has many implications for both a public theology and for a prophetic speech by
the church as well. However, this aspect of dealing with garbage as a way of stewardship
of creation is by and large almost ignored in the public speech of Brazilian
Evangelicalism. In the majority of Brazilian Evangelicalism, when one speaks about a
theology of creation, it is only as an apologetic fight against the theory of evolution. This
is an influence of the Fundamentalist movement in the theoretical framework of Brazilian
Evangelicalism. The aim of this article is to present how Alve’s text can become the
starting point for producing a fresh public theology of creation in Brazilian Evangelicalism
leading to effective custodianship of our fragile planet.
Description:
This article is an enlarged version of the paper presented by the author in the 5th Consultation of the
Global Network for Public Theology (GNPT) with the theme Space & Place – Theological Perspectives on
Living in the World, in the Dietrich Bonhoeffer Research Centre for Public Theology of the University of
Bamberg, Germany, September 23-26, 2019
