Abrigos para a infância no Brasil: por que, quando e como os espíritas entraram nessa história?

Abstract

This text intends to produce a cultural history or "archaeology" of spiritist shelters for children in Brazil, constructed as true "monuments" of the spirit faith, that had started to appear in the second decade of the 20th century, from some pioneering activities or institutions such as the Abrigo Thereza de Jesus, established in 1919 in the city of Rio de Janeiro. Guided by the motto "Outside of the charity there is no salvation", one of the pillars of the religious aspect of the Spiritism, the spiritists became part of millenarian history of the children´s protection only in the Modern Age. The spiritist doctrine, looking for to establish, since its "birth", the alliance between Science and Religion, finishes acquiring the feature of a "modern religion", reinvention of the Christian tradition in times of rationalism and scientific dogmatism. However, although the doctrinal emphasis on exercise of individual charity and silent as basic principle for spiritual evolution, the spiritist movement was not limited to this initial sense contained in papers published by Allan Kardec in Paris between 1857 and 1869, having accomplished the incorporation or appropriation of representations and actions of charity that had been developed historical and culturally inside of the older Christian tradition.