Os sem religião e a crise do pertencimento institucional no Brasil: o caso fluminense

Abstract

The purpose of this thesis is to understand what does it mean when someone is declared as without religion in Brazil. Far from the superficial standardization presented by the national census, the category of without religion confirms itself as an heterogeneous residual group, composed by distinct types of people which reflect some of the main tendencies of the present times. This is a multiform group that can be subdivided into two. While the first one consists of atheists and agnostics apparently secularized; the second is made up from individuals that mix up many models of religiousness. It points out the distance of the religious institutions from the private sphere, where the individualities express themselves in different ways, exercising their autonomies. In such atmosphere, getting closer or moving away from the transcendent becomes a matter of private choice, a decision of each individual in its intimacy. Thus, the modernity that comes together with the secularization in the contemporary occidental societies seems to have open the door to the installation of a crisis of affiliation stimulated by the revaluation of the tradition laces.