“IGREJA PROFÉTICA DE ROSTO POPULAR”: UMA ANÁLISE DO CORPUS LITERÁRIO DE MILTON SCHWANTES E SUAS IMPLICAÇÕES PARA AS CIÊNCIAS DAS RELIGIÕES APLICADAS

Abstract

This research analyses the literature of Milton Schwantes with the intention of locating an underlying ecclesiology founded on the organic actions of theologians, particularly biblical scholars, reflecting on the implications of Applied Religious Studies. Starting with a selection and classification of literature produced in the 1970s and 1980s, the theme of ecclesiology in Milton Schwantes is discussed in light of political, economic, social, cultural and ecclesial vibrancy that marked Latin America and favoured the reception of the work at that time. The Gramscian category of organic intellectual and the Freirean perspective of popular education structure the theoretical reference for the analyses and hypotheses raised in this research, above all in relation to the action of organic theologians in the Bible Circles of popular Bible reading in the heart of a prophetic Church with a popular face, with a transformational praxis always directed towards the pastoral. Milton Schwantes is presented as a transgressor of the epistemological boundaries of Religious Studies and Theology, a subversive organic intellectual who does not accept another way of beginning pastoral exegesis if not through pastoral action. The prophetic Church with a popular face, an ecclesial model that emerges from the literature analysed, shows a necessary alternative, amongst others, capable of mitigating the delirious effects of the fundamentalist project around the Bible in the twenty-first century. The research concludes with a proposal of an outline for implementing a prophetic Church with a popular face, liable to revision, updating and enlarging.