Protestants in the land of all saints: Agreements, disputes and polemics

Abstract

This article analyses the insertion of the Protestants in Bahia in the 19th century and the established relations with the Catholics. The Catholic Church remained as the official religion of the Empire until the Proclamation of the Republic. The Bahia British Church, the Presbyterian Church and the First Baptist Church, organized themselves in Salvador, the seat of the Archbishop Primate of Brazil. They were Christian confessions, but in constant tension, revealed through the speeches, the practices and of the dispute of believers, in a religious setting with deep intercession with the politics and the structures of the society. The intolerance gave the keynote and on opposite sides, the idolater papists competed, as the Catholics were designated by the Protestants, versus heretics, followers of Adventists sects, as the Reformed were called by the majority Church.