A educação brasileira na revanche confessional (1891-1935)

Abstract

This book is a continuation of Brazilian education in the first secular wave – from the Empire to the Republic, which culminated in the 1891 constitutionalization, which determined the separation between State and Church in the country, and the secularity of public education. However, the secular wave quickly weakened and gave way to a confessional wave of return in the state constitutions promulgated in the same year. The period studied ends in 1935, when the repressive process led by the right, including fascists, began, which culminated in the authoritarian regime of the Estado Novo, in which the Catholic Church occupied a prominent place. The triumphant confessionalism in the State gained great scope, ranging from financial subsidies to the Catholic Church institutions (including educational ones) and to the return of Religious Education to public schools. It was a true confessional revenge, which induced resistance of a secular nature, which even generated unprecedented organizations, such as the National Coalition for the Secular State (1931-1935). Although not all of its followers had the secularity of the State (and of public education, in particular) as their goal, anticlericalism worked as a catalyst for the union of groups as diverse as anarchists, liberals, evangelicals, spiritualists and positivists. The research included material from official and private archives, as well as testimonies and opinions published in newspapers, magazines and books.