Revisitar a cidade: identidades religiosas em meio urbano

Within the framework of a dual statement, that of the dissemination of an urban model in the villages and the pursuit of a style of living belonging to the urban context (desertification of the villages), this article describes common trajectories of believers in an urban environment. In eight interrelated entries, it takes as a starting point current emerging values as formulated by Grand’Maison, confronts the main features of present-day cities (making a practical distinction between megacities and average-sized cities), recognises the identites of youth in effervescence to some extent everywhere in current society, reformulates the decline of Catholic hegemony as a form of sociability par excellence, puts forwards a possible heuristic mode of identifying trajectories of identification today on a religious plane and ends by programming pastoral targets that are both suitable and realisable. The text, which is deliberately functional, opts for a pragmatic and heuristic methodology, permitting possible future surveys in urban contexts of greater dimension. It is completely exploratory, refining a great variety of types of religious identification that mark paths among the Portuguese in the urban context.