Promoção da educação secular por a Igreja de Jesus Cristo dos Santos dos Últimos Dias: discursos, criatividade e terceirização

Abstract

Today's society tends to secularize or question religious institutions, demanding more pragmatic actions to solve their problems. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints - IJCSUD has the Perpetual Education Fund - FPE program as its main response to the professionalization of its young and adult members. Instead of building schools and colleges, IJCSUD lends subsidized resources for its members to study at existing institutions where they live, adopting a strategy similar to outsourcing. However, the church has several secular educational programs that range from literacy to doctoral studies at leading universities. They are complementary and synergistic to FPE. This study seeks to understand these programs and their bases, especially the doctrinal ones. As references, Brazilian cultural formation was studied and how it influences a climate of tolerance, despite the victory of the ultra-right and fundamentalist religious movements in Brazil. Religion mediates and is mediated by culture and can be an instrument for the maintaining current conditions or for social transformation. The research was qualitative and documentary on bases that would allow a better understanding of the LDS doctrine and its educational programs. There is a strong emphasis in Mormon beliefs about religious education or not, even though there would be no profound distinction between religious and secular education, with several actions in this direction. In this doctrine, ignorance would be an element of condemnation and knowledge, an act of personal elevation, even in a transcendental way, and would bring advantages even to the glorified body of the human being exalted to the Divine abode. However, Brazilian cultural elements hinder the application of this doctrine in a more intense way, with a mediation in the Brazilian LDS practice that seeks a balance even with a kind of silence on the educational theme. The instructions on LDS programs call attention because of the minutiae. The FPE and other educational actions are necessary at a time when different educational levels still do not satisfy and do not meet the social demands of today.