Escola pública e pentecostalismos: distância territorial, dinâmica religiosa e sociabilidade no espaço escolar

Abstract

This thesis was based on the assumption that the growth of urbanization and Pentecostalism, initiated and intensified during the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century in Brazil, are phenomena that interfere with sociability in the public and peripheral school space. Faced with a public school system that is influenced by Catholic tradition, Pentecostalism goes through this hegemony and claims to equate religious enjoyment in this space. Two public schools, one state and one municipal, located in a peripheral district of the city of Juiz de Fora - MG, were the locus of ethnography, which was one of the methodological pillars of this research. The other pillar was the semi-structured interviews with former residents of the neighborhood, the pastors of the evangelical churches present, as well as with some relatives of Pentecostal students from both institutions. These strategies aimed at contemplating the following objectives: (1) to identify the situations in which Pentecostal religiosities emerged in the public school environment, (2) to understand the senses that were involved in the emergence of these religiosities, and (3) to understand the relations established between the school and the Pentecostal subjects present there. The theoretical foundations that supported the comprehensive exercise of this thesis were essentially anthropological and allowed to visualize two ways in which Pentecostalism enters the public school. The first has an endogenous character and is paved by the discourses and behaviors of the Pentecostal subjects present in the daily school life, the students, the teachers, the secretaries, the coordinators, the directors, the cleaners, the cooks and the beads. The second route has an exogenous character and is carried out by Pentecostal actors who immerse themselves in the school day-by-day routine through the execution of projects and laws, being they subjects of the neighborhood community itself, of other neighborhoods and politicians. Both paths were characterized by an eminently conservative character, away from the more progressive side of the Pentecostal religious field, which is so vast.