Público e privado: a religião entre a «saída» e a «entrada»

The arrival of democracy as a hegemonic form of government has led to an updating of the issues surrounding the relationship between religion and politics. There are particular aspects of this relationship in a democratic context that need to be articulated with traditional narratives with regard to modernity as ‘secularisation’, and also with the most recent criticisms to which these historical narratives have been subjected. The original promise of democracy consisted in overcoming once and for all the tensions that the relationship between religion and politics aroused. But since an early stage it was realised that this promise would not be met so easily, as the current discussion in various Western democracies on the presence of the religious in public spaces well demonstrates. The difficulties begin straight away in the disappointing self-evidence of the borderline between the ‘public space’ and the ‘private domain’. But they do not end there.