Revista A Seara e as práticas de leitura no pentecostalismo assembleiano (1956 - 1978)

Abstract

This article aims to present the results of the research entitled "The column Letter from the Readers of the magazine A Seara and the reading practices in Assembly Pentecostalism (1956-1978)". After examining 1134 excerpts from letters published in 165 issues of the periodic, already mentioned, an analytical picture of editorial policies can be drawn up on the space reserved for the publication of letters from readers of one of the largest Brazilian Pentecostal magazines. Printed by the Publishing House of the Assemblies of God (CPAD) A Seara had as one of its primary purposes to be a vehicle for the propagation of the doctrinal precepts of the assembly church. In order to conform to the principles defended by the high dome of the Assembly of God and the transmission of information in the magazine, the most varied forms of conditioning of reading in the periodic were used. These attempts at uniformity, true “orthodoxies of the text”, are tools used by editors and writers to promote a “correct reading” of the content. In this perspective, the reader is just a mere receptacle, a deposit of interests and representations of the editor/ writer, in which only the freedom to “graze the ration of simulations” prescribed by reading would remain. However, as demonstrated by important scholars of the history of reading, such as Roger Chartier and Robert Darnton, this type of representation about the reader is mistaken, because, despite the editorial strategies used to unify reading in line with the interests of editors, readers found in the interstices of the texts the spaces necessary to signify, interpret and even reinterpret the messages conveyed in the periodic. Added to this analysis is the important investigation on the different groups that led the publishing of the magazine A Seara between 1956 and 1978, because, far from being a vehicle conducted in a unified way, the individuals who were in charge of the journal's management had different conceptions about the conduct of the magazine and this was revealed in a remarkable way in the editorial policies about the column “reader space”.