Request for tithes and offerings in the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God

Abstract

The neo-Pentecostal belief emerged in the mid-1970s, in Brazil, and presented Bishop Edir Macedo with the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God (IURD) as its greatest representative. The purpose of this article is to analyze the discursive constitution of the argumentation, specifically, with regard to the need for the faithful to tithe, from the transcription of two videos – a cut from a broader research corpus – at the times when Edir Macedo requests tithes and offerings within the religious service. The theoretical-methodological framework in which this work is inscribed is Discourse Analysis, mainly based on studies by Dominique Maingueneau (about notions such as global semantics and ethos) and Ruth Amossy, who proposes the theory of Argumentation in Discourse. Assuming that the religious discourse in question has an "argumentative aim" (AMOSSY, 2018), we seek to develop the hypothesis that, in the argumentation undertaken by Bishop Edir Macedo about the importance of tithing, factors such as the constitution of the enunciator image, apprehended from the perspective of the discursive ethos (MAINGUENEAU, 2020), and a specific “management” of biblical intertextuality are fundamental for the legitimacy of the discourse.

Keywords: Discourse; argumentation; neopentecostalism; tithes.