Aliança cristã neoconservadora no palco público de Juiz de Fora: a insuficiência política do habitus religioso

Abstract

The investigation is about a neoconservative alliance implemented on the political stage of Juiz de Fora under the 2021-2024 Legislature of the city's City Council, focusing on the first two years of the councilors’ activities. This alliance is distributed between religious people in politics and Christian neoconservatives, the latter recent important categories, so that together, they mobilized agendas linked to the defense of the family and addressed issues related to gender identity. We seek to outline how this presence of Pentecostal religious politicians allied with other actors circulates, also analyzing its effects. With religious modernity as a backdrop, the research is based on the triad of public religion, symbolic violence and democracy. Firstly, we seek to address the insertion and consolidation of Pentecostals in politics, to understand their action on the public stage beyond the religious sphere. Secondly, we highlight the adoption of a stance linked to a common neoconservative religious habitus by political agents in the Chamber, who try to import the worldview dear to their religious positions with regard to gender identification. This practice occurs naturally, due to an unrecognizable power, a “soft” violence, which cannot fail to be followed once internalized by the actors in the religious field, and its reproduction occurs in a naturalized way. The research results allow us to identify that, despite the neoconservative alliance, the naturalization of the conservative religious habitus has limits and faces resistance on the public stage. The democratic character remains, as it allows the insertion of these actors in the political space, even with ideas that go against some individuals when they position themselves contrary to LGBTQIA+ propositions. To conduct the investigation, we utilized bibliographic research and official documents from the Chamber’s website, as well as a qualitative analysis of the social media of the councilors highlighted in the research, in order to reflect on their actions in the public space.