Religion and laicity in the Federal Supreme Court of Brazil: secularism in the Brazilian debate on public religious education

Abstract

The paper analyzes the senses of the secularity and religion categories in the public controversies operated by social actors. Will take as the main object of analysis the debate about religious teaching in public schools held at the public hearing organized by the Supreme Court in 2015. We assume that the systematic description of how the actors articulate these categories in this public arena illuminates the secular settings embodied by the actors. In this case study, we will map the various uses of these categories by representatives of 32 different organizations in civil society and the state, to understand how the characteristics inherent to their social position affect the way they articulate their justifications and the implicit meanings they attribute to the secular and its counterpart, the religious.