The face and the Bliss. The Pentecostal Christian Person in Funeral Rites

Abstract

Abstract: During the wake, evangelicals from some Assemblies of God Churches in Magé, Rio de Janeiro, developed a mechanism for evaluate the condition of the dead through observation of the face. When a dead person has a “happy face”, his bliss status is confirmed. In a different way, when he has a “sad and terrified face”, debates follow based on the expression of the face in order to understand how the moral trajectory in life can explain that distinctive feature stamped on the corpse. In this article, I explore the relationship between body and soul in the Pentecostal rite of death, thinking them as components for the construction of the subjectivity of the Pentecostal Christian person, while pointing out characteristics of the Pentecostal rite of death.

Keywords:
death, Pentecostal person; body; ritual