Metodismo e educação no Brasil: as tensões com o catolicismo na primeira república

Abstract

This study aims to analyze, in the Brazilian First Republic context, the development of the educational project of the Methodist Episcopal Church South of the United States in the southeast region, focusing, above all, the tensions towards the Catholicism. The implantation moment of the Methodist Teaching Institutions in the Brazilian educational sector coincides with two important periods in the history of the Roman Apostolic Catholic Church in Brazil: the one of Romanization and the one of Neochristianity. In both periods the Catholic ecclesiastic authorities, trying to keeps the Catholicism hegemony in the Brazilian society, sought to pit against the spread of ideological and political groups considered heterodox, among them, the Protestantism. Being the Methodism a Protestant religious confession that was established in Brazil mainly by the influence of its education project on Brazilian liberal and progressive elites, the Methodist schools were not spared by the Roman Church opposition, either through Catholic school foundation, or through the official documents and articles conveyed in the ultramountain press. Since the Methodists wanted to spread in Brazil, through its educational project, the Protestant religious values and the North American cultural values, aiming to guarantee the society ideological-cultural hegemony, they reacted against the Catholic offensive, both responding to attacks that were suffered, and denouncing the not-fulfilment of the republican legislation, not only by the Catholic authorities but also by the governmental authorities.