This week a thanksgiving service was held at the Planalto Palace, in the presence of the President of the Republic, political authorities, religious leaders and other civil society groups, such as ANAJURE?National Association of Evangelical Jurists, invited to participate in the liturgy.
Opportunities like this shed light on debates, not only in the legal sphere, but also in the media and political circles, on the boundaries of the relationship between the church and the state, particularly with regard to the use of public settings; in this case, the headquarters of the federal executive – denominational religious ceremonies.
- There are those who understand that the celebration of a religious ritual at the headquarters of one of the powers of the Republic and.
- By extension.
- In any other division of government.
- Represents an affront to the duty of state neutrality.
- Being unconstitutional.
- Immoral and even any such activity constitutes an electoral market.
- We intend.
- In the following short lines.
- To contribute to this debate.
- Demonstrating that many of our structural constitutional principles are rooted in the interlocutions between religion.
- Politics and law throughout unreasonable history.
- Nor healthy to maintain.
- Social cohesion.
- Attempts to expel religious manifestations from public space.
It is important to say, first of all, that the secularism adopted in our country is characterized by a “benevolent neutrality, tending to obey the religious phenomenon and not to purge it completely from public space”[1]. Does this neutrality, according to Ingo Sarlet, have the complex challenge of not resulting in a disproportionate compression of the fundamental right to religious freedom, nor its hypertrophy, to create a climate of intolerance towards other forms of expression by annihilating minority religious manifestations compared to those adopted by the majority social body?repudiation of religion as a community expression? [4] and results in the suppression of any manifestation of faith in the public sphere.
In an attempt to confine belief to private space, secularism – a theory that is at the background of those who consider the realization of religious activities in public spaces unconstitutional – does not know that it is precisely through the interaction between the religious worldview, in particular the Christian vision, that much progress has been made in the legal and political field. Indeed, many of the assumptions and foundations recognized by consensus in modern legal systems owe their existence to the interlocutions between religion, politics and law.
In this sense, Machado explains that the notion of equal natural dignity of the human being, so expensive in our time, was inferred by John Locke from the exegesis of the first chapters of Genesis, which highlight the creation of humanity in image and likeness. God [5]. Moreover, the concept of individual rights was deeply promoted by the Protestant Reformation, a movement that, knowing that justification is given by personal faith, regardless of institutional mediation, emphasized the value of the individual and thus opened the way to questioning the absolute. conferred on the two great institutions of the time: the State and the Church [6].
If, on the one hand, the roots of the dignity of the human person are extracted from Christianity, a principle from which different rights derive, it is also from the Christian faith from which certain budgets of limitation of powers arise. conscience, one of the pillars of the Protestant Reformation, a limiting principle of state activity arises, in the sense that there is an exclusive area in human behavior that is reserved for and can only be occupied by him. , against aspirations and tendencies for state omnipresence [7]. From this conception arises the need to limit the powers constituted, the impossibility of an ideological programming of the State and the fight against unique thought.
Moreover, with the Protestant Reformation, the idea of natural rights, which are not granted by political power, is gaining strength, but emanate from a higher authority, which cannot be usurped by the state. On this subject, Jellinek explains that “The idea of enshrining in law these natural rights, inalienable and inviolable of the individual, is not of political origin, but religious. What has been received so far as the work of the Revolution is really the result of the Reformation and its struggles?[8].
Secularism itself, as often invoked as something that should annoy religious, has Christian roots. In this line, we quote the well-known words of Christ: “Give Caesar what is Caesar’s and God’s what is God’s,” and the impact of the Protestant Reformation, which, by promoting the battle for the possibility of choosing confessions of faith over majority, free from interference and interference with political power, has opened the door to the emancipation of individual consciousness. , allowing the emergence of several religious minorities who defend each other’s right to their own faith.
Establishing an impassable barrier between faith and politics is a step backwards, given the historical conquests achieved through reflections born within religions, and a contradiction, because the current discourse in Brazil is increasingly inclusive, tolerant and diverse. Thus, the celebration of a religious cult in the seat of the executive does not, in itself, represent an affront to secularism or the neutrality of the state, but leads us to think how religions, majority and minority, Christian or not, have beneficial potential. legal and political relations [9].
[1] SANTOS JUNIOR, Aloisio Cristovam returns. Secularism of the State in Brazilian constitutional law. Available in:. Viewed: December 18, 2019.
[2] SARLET, Ingo. La religious freedom and the duty of state neutrality in the 1988 Federal Constitution. Available in :. Seen: December 18, 2019.
[3] The defense of religious freedom does not mean unlimited protection to any religious event, deserving of consideration on a case-by-case basis, as evidenced by the following public note published by ANAJURE: https://www. anajure. org . br / anajure-da-apparent-technical-declaring-that there was no-violation-of-the-religious-in-the-case-files-national-reverberados-en-la-press /
[4] MIRANDA, Jorge. State, religious freedom and secularism. In: The Lay State and Religious Freedom, Sao Paulo: LTr, 2011, p. 111.
[5] MACHADO, Junas E. M. Constitutional state and religious neutrality: between theism and (neo) atheism. Porto Alegre: Livraria do Advogado, 2013, p. 36
[6] MATOS, Givaldo Mauro. Contributions from reformed Protestant political theology to human rights statements. Borders: Journal of Histaria, Dourados, vol. 19, n. 34, p. 94-109, Jul. / Dec. 2017. Available in:. Seen: December 18, 2019.
[7] CARVALHO, Felipe Augusto. Freedom and conscientious objection: historical-dogmatic foundations and constitutional functionality. In: Latin American Journal of Law and Religion, v. 5, n. 2, 2019, p. 34 ss.
[8] JELLINEK, Georg. Declaration of The Rights of Man and Citizen. Translation of: Adolfo Posada. Mexico: National Autonomous University of Mexico, 2000, p. 125.
[9] ANAJURE? https://www. anajure. org. br/anajure-emite-nota-publica-sobre-decisao-do-tjsp-que-determinou-a-retirada-de-inscricoes-biblicas-de-monumento-em-praia- large/