Do púlpito eclesial ao parlamentar: comunicação, religião e política na Câmara Municipal de Manaus

Abstract

This is a case study of the qualitative and exploratory approach developed at Manaus City Council (CMM). The main objective is to understand the relations that permeate between the fields of communication, religion, and politics of the Evangelical Parliamentary Front in the CMM. And, for this, we sought to characterize the Evangelical Parliamentary Front, present the relationship of the communicational, religious and political field and identify the communicational processes of this Front. The research was conducted through semistructured interviews and analyzed journalistic articles published in local online newspapers, in the period 2015-2016. It was verified that the established communication process aims at the political mediatization of the evangelical parliamentarians of the supposed Evangelical Parliamentary Front who, when they rise in the parliamentary pulpit, put their religious experience back in the form of laws. They are parliamentarians who defend a religious conservatism sustained by moral rigidity. Journalistic articles present the role of evangelical parliamentarians in defending family values, Christian morals, disfiguring the platform of homosexual movements, human rights groups, and feminists. These evangelical politicians use the communication structure of the Legislative House as a means of harnessing public space for political and religious purposes. The strategies of dispute in the CMM by the evangelical councilors are inserted in the political discourse and the actions that promote, in search of notoriety and recognition, through religious approaches proposed in Bill, Draft Resolution, Legislative Decree, Motions, Indication, etc. Thus, religious manifestation does not contradict the Brazilian secular state but is linked to political space through symbolic (religious) capital, aiming at the interest of every political party: the maintenance of power in the public space.