Chapter 6
In: Protestant Periodicals in Transition
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Abstract
The periodical Vida e Saúde, Portuguese for ‘Life and Health,’ has been at the forefront of providing Brazilians with information of current trends and scientific findings on healthful living. Published monthly since 1939 and distributed by colportage by the Seventh-Day Adventist Church (SDAC) in Brazil, the periodical serves to both nurture Adventists’ innermost beliefs about healthy living according to God’s commands and serves as a calling-card to reach the unconverted Brazilian public. In our modern societies, plagued by stress and diseases like obesity and heart disease, the Seventh-Day Adventists skillfully turned one aspect of their faith into a public service meant to draw in new adherents. The text approaches the development of Christian print media, the Health Reform movement, and the Adventist print media in the United States and in Brazil. Then, it discusses the context of the creation of Vida e Saúde during the dictatorship of Getúlio Vargas (1937–1945), which determined the features of the magazine for its first decades. In the main part of the article, more current issues of the magazine are studied with a focus on health and lifestyle topics as strategy to entice an outside readership. This article investigates for what purpose a religious publisher would produce a health magazine with a secularized message.