Televisão e educação teológica na Amazônia

Abstract

The Amazon, a region of rich biodiversity and cultural diversity, faces social and educational challenges, including limited access to formal theological education. Television, a mass media with a wide reach in the region, emerges as a promising tool to fill this gap and promote theological education. This is essential for the development of religious leaders, the formation of faith communities and the strengthening of the spiritual life of individuals. However, access to formal theological education in the Amazon is limited, especially in remote and hard-to-reach areas. Television, with its wide reach and capacity to transmit diverse information and content, presents itself as an appropriate tool for theological education in the Amazon. Through television, it is possible to expand access to theological education, allowing people in remote and hard-to-reach areas to have access to quality theological content, without having to travel to large urban centers. In this sense, the objective of this research is to analyze television as a means for theological education in the so-called Legal Amazon, which includes 80% of the Northern Region of Brazil. Through television, it is possible to expand access to theological education, democratize theological knowledge, and promote diversity of theological perspectives, despite the fact that television is suffering some wear and tear in the face of new information technologies driven by the World Wide Web, the Internet. The methodology used in the research is bibliographic and interdisciplinary interpretation of the social and human sciences that analyze human geography and communication in the Amazon, as well as the history and sociology of mass media in the 20th century. The results of the research are derived from the analytical understanding of scientific sources in an interdisciplinary manner, taking as a necessary discussion the problems regarding theological education, mainly within Pentecostalism in its birth region, namely, the Northern Region of Brazil, characterized by limited mobility and communicative coverage that is not always contemporary with technological resources. The conclusion of the research presents television as an information and communication technology that is resilient in the face of advances promoted by constant technological innovations, capable of promoting theological education in regions with difficult access and human mobility.