In Africa, Iemanja had earlier been portrayed as rotund, black, and adorned with fish. This Brazilian rendition of the goddess, however, is slender, Caucasian, her gaze cold and empty, dressed in a flowing blue dress, pearls falling from her outstretched palms. In centuries past, Iemanja was pleased to receive not only trinkets, but squealing children as well. They stop and converse with spiritists and bystanders, asking questions and offering alternatives. Many are led away from the sand to a quieter place where they can sort things out with a counselor, have their questions answered, pray, and even receive deliverance.
Dozens find new life and freedom in Jesus Christ.
The spiritists at the beach are the spiritual heirs of the 3.5 million African slaves imported to Brazil by their Portuguese captors over four centuries ago. Most practice the blend of African, European, and Amerindian spiritism known as Umbanda, which many acknowledge to be the nation's unofficial religion. An estimated 70 million Brazilians are active spiritists, occasional participants, or sympathizers, making Brazil the world's largest spiritist nation. Perhaps the greatest challenge we faced in establishing the Christian Research Institute in Brazil was the overwhelming, ubiquitous fact of spiritism in its many forms, as well as the Evangelical churches' general indifference to it. One of the chief problems is the Evangelicals themselves, who are either too ignorant or afraid of the spiritists and their sinister practices to share the gospel, and who generally consider it best to simply avoid them, as one would a garbage dump or a graveyard.