A Religion Built to Bridge Brazil's Religious Landscape

Historians of Brazilian religion generally describe Umbanda's formation in the 1920s and 1930s as a deliberate synthesis intended in part to bridge and legitimize Afro-Brazilian spiritual practice within a Brazilian society then more receptive to a religion incorporating recognizably Spiritist and Catholic elements than to Candomble's more directly African-derived form, a historical context that shaped Umbanda's distinctive blended character from its formal founding onward rather than through gradual, unplanned syncretism alone. This origin has made Umbanda a frequent subject of scholarly discussion regarding the complex relationships between race, religion and social respectability in twentieth-century Brazil, since its formation occurred during a period when African-derived religions faced significant legal and social discrimination that Umbanda's specific synthesis was partly designed to help its practitioners navigate.

Umbanda remains a widely practiced religion in Brazil today, with considerable regional and house-to-house variation in specific practice, and its terreiros and mediums maintain their own authority over how their specific ritual songs and prayers are used and taught, consistent with the descriptive approach this entry and related entries for other Afro-Brazilian and Afro-Caribbean traditions in this atlas maintain.