A VERDADE OS LIBERTARÁ!? Autoprodução de um sistema religioso confessional. O caso da Lutheran Church Missouri Synod (LCMS) e da Igreja Evangélica Luterana do Brasil (IELB)

Abstract

A historical-philosophical reading of the missouri-ielbian religious systemdemonstratesthat,in its foundational structures, there is an understanding of religious truth, as an objectivetruth.The lens of Niklas Luhmann's sociology, in turn, reveals that it was the crises, irritations, andautopoiesis that occurred - the migration from Germany to Missouri; the Public Protest; theproposed ‘renewed acceptance of the old orthodox confessions’; the lectures of C. Walther(1811-1887) on The Proper Distinction Between Law and Gospel; the controversythat wouldculminate in the Seminex, among others - that led the system to self-production bydevelopingand/or improving this rigid and objectifying confessional stance. This dynamicof self-production observed in the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod (LCMS), either in the senseofagreater openness or a greater enclosure in its ‘plausibility structures’, could also be observedin the Brazilian ‘daughter’, the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Brazil (IELB). Themissourimission on Brazilian soil was based on the fundamental premise that ‘error needstobecorrected and truth proclaimed’. Thus, while in the Hasse Era it was said that orthodoxy‘isnecessary and of divine will’, the self-portrait of IELB in the 1970s revealed a confessionalitythat claimed for itself the possession of the ‘univocal theology given by God’. The perceptionof the coexistence, at the beginning of the 21st century, of conservatives, moderatesandevangelicals demonstrates, however, that the ielbian system has always been subject toself-production. The frictions with the environment led it, on the one hand, to certainopenings,but, on the other, to the emergence of movements towards a greater ‘operational closure’,which ended up keeping the system ‘stifled’, or ‘captive’ to doctrinal ‘rectitude andprecision’.This perception of the human field of religion leads to a second moment of the thesis, morenormative, where sociological and historical lenses give way to philosophical-theologicallenses. With the help of authors such as Martin Luther, Søren Kierkegaard, and Paul Tillich, itpoints to return to faith its character of unconditionality - faith as “the truth of the heart”- andto institutionalized religion the element of self-criticism. It is also argued that the‘doublesituation of the believer’ according to Luther - ‘in Christ through faith, in neighbor throughlove’ - reveals an understanding of faith and religious truth that dialogues with Kierkegaard'sand Tillich's conceptions, which could serve as guidelines for a [more] liberating confessionalstance.