“Nosso cemitério deve ser um Campo de Deus”: comunidade, morte e práticas cemiteriais. Sínodo de Missouri/IELB (Sul do Rio Grande do Sul, 1900 - 1968)

Abstract

This dissertation investigates cemetery administration and burial practices, conceptions of death, and teachings on death in Evangelical Lutheran religious congregations organized around the community concept of Gemeinde in southern Rio Grande do Sul between 1900 and 1968. Belonging to the Missouri Synod/IELB, the cemeteries, understood by the religious group as “God's Field,” presented in the configuration of the space and its buildings what would be “unholy” or “blessed” deaths. The spatial delimitation of the research is related to the beginning of the missionary work of the referred religious group in the region that currently encompasses the municipalities of Canguçu, Morro Redondo and São Lourenço do Sul. The temporality (1900-1968) refers to the activities and changes that occurred in the Synod's congregations regarding cemetery administration and religious order of burials. This is historical research, with a cultural history approach in dialogue with theology studies. Regarding sources, the thesis uses written, oral and material documents, such as cemetery regulations, minutes of congregations, periodicals, interviews and the materiality of cemeteries, notably the tombstones. Through cemetery administration practices, the work analyzes three fundamental and interconnected elements that functioned as socio-transmitters of knowledge of religious precepts: the teaching of death in the Evangelical Lutheran belief, the meaning of “God's Field” and the construction of graves as referents of a pedagogy of dying. The analyses demonstrate that community life was associated with the teaching of death, with an emphasis on the configuration of the cemetery space and the tombs themselves in the researched period. It is concluded that the ordering of cemeteries, their walls, their tombstones with their imagery representations (liturgical symbology) and their epitaphs fulfilled the purpose of those who administered the cemetery spaces. This purpose was that the “God's Field” would be a socio-transmitter of what was taught in the church, that is, the “churchyard” serving as “edification to visitors.”