O papel da Sociedade Bíblica na construção da liberdade religiosa em Portugal durante a Monarquia Constitucional e a I República

The institutionalization of the Bible Society in Portugal and its integration and active participation in the religious and cultural dynamics of the country along the 19th and 20thcenturies were based in an activity – that of biblical diffusion – which, by its nature and through its effects, defined the organization as an agent of change within the Portuguese society. Its role was not confined to the dynamization of the religious differentiation process since it also promoted an ample debate where anthropological, theological and political elements were inter-crossed. The project of biblical circulation lead by the British and Foreign Bible Society (BFBS) in Portugal was also developed as an expression of a conflict that exhibited the way in which the institution progressed in the country as an expression of a contemporary modernity also showing that the Bible was a space of confrontation where the concepts of Authority and Freedom, in their semantic variety, held a vital prominence. Raising the fundamental problem of the Authority of the Bible, the BFBS was inevitably confronted with the problem of authority in its stricter and more practical sense, i.e., in the relation with the different authorities which, in the Portuguese society, intervened in the structuring of the religious field and, in a wider sense, in the debate about religious freedom and social regulation.