Reconhecimento e secularização: a relação entre Estado, Igreja, política e religião e a construção da laicidade brasileira

Abstract

This dissertation analyzes the meaning of the ostensive presence of religious groups and discourses in contemporary politics in general, and in Brazilian State in particular. The goal is to clarify whether this presence poses a threat to the secular state, or a mistake of modern theories of secularization, in the sense that religious principles has never been apart from modern social orders, or if the process of modern secularization no longer responds to contemporary demands for justice, and in this case, it is necessary to review the secularization from other interpretative keys. Using the diachronic method of historical analysis of the process of Western secularization, it was discussed the modern secular paradigm and the conceptions of justice underlying it, taking as example two of the main political currents of modernity, republicanism and liberalism, by analyzing two emblematic cases: the French laicité and the American religious freedom. The next step was to debate contemporary conflicts in which the religious question is central or determinant, and for which modern secularism does not have adequate keys to solve demands for justice. For this reason, is was proposed to access theoretical proposals that think of recognition as a fundamental dimension of justice, to help understanding how modern secularization resulted in undeniable gains for the extension of rights and for the emancipation of the subjects, but it is not sufficient to guarantee all rights to all subjects in new contexts. From that point on, it was developed an analysis of the process of Brazilian secularization, focusing on the relations between religion and politics and the performance of religious actors in the State and in civil society, having as temporal frames the Brazilian constitutions of 1824, 1891, 1934, 1937, 1946, 1964 and 1988. Settling the historical-political context, the debates in the constituents, and the constitutional texts, it was analyzed the role of religious forces and antireligious forces in the process of secularization, and how secularism appears in each of the foundational documents, either by promoting expanded forms of recognition, or by favoring specific religious groups. In the end, it is concluded that the political force of Christian churches in Brazil places the religious moral discourse in a privileged place before non-hegemonic and anti-Christian discourses, such as discourses sustained by feminist and LGBT movements. For them, a truly secular state requires that secular politics fulfill the promise of get rid of religious commitments and its relation to the transcendental, to be an coordination tool of actions of subjects of reciprocal rights in political, temporal and historical society.