O povo de Deus na política : Partido dos Trabalhadores e igreja católica em Montes Claros - MG na década de 1980

Abstract

This dissertation aims to analyze the approximation in the 1980s between the Workers Party (Partido dos Trabalhadores) (PT) and the Catholic Church in the city of Montes Claros in northern Minas Gerais. The starting point in thinking about the relationship between the religious and the political is the fact that in the middle of the 1980s various lay members of the Church who were active in what were considered progressive Catholic movements the Christian Base Communities, the Pastoral Commission of Land and the Pastoral Commission of Workers ended up becoming the leaders of the Workers Party in the city, composing a part of the Municipal Directory of the party between 1986 and 1989. The dissertation seeks to understand how the boundaries between religion and politics were diffused, intruding upon the practices of subjects that, from a determined conception of faith and religious ethic, maintained a deep relationship with a determined ideology and political ethic. Through an analysis of the discourses and practices of this progressive wing of the Church essentially guided by Liberation Theology and of the Workers Party, it is possible to conjecture about how much religious faith can influence political decisions as in the option for a party and a political ideology as much as the degree to which politics itself can be perceived not only as something related to the state, but to the actions of subjects in all spaces, including the religious.