Publisher: Court of Justice of Paraíba prohibits the reading of the Bible during the opening of the sessions of the Municipal Council of Bananeiras-PB ​

Directly from his retreat, located in the rural area of pleasant Bananeiras, a city located in the Brejo Paraibano region, I receive a call from Commander Arnaldo asking for our opinion on a controversial decision by the Court of Justice of Paraíba, which prohibited the reading of the Bible at the opening of work of the city's Municipal Council. We haven't been back to the city for some time, another complaint from our friend the commander. Those were good times, when we took to the trails, took baths in waterfalls, ate the best food in Brejo, in a restaurant located in the old Banguês mills from the heyday of sugar cane in the region. Today they only produce cachaças and good rapadura. The pleasure is even greater, due to our literary connections, when we know that we are in an environment where great works of regional literature were produced, such as A Bagaceira, by José Américo de Almeida.

Now, Arnaldo, on the issue at hand, we are in favor. We agree with the decision of the Court of Justice. After all, the State is secular, according to the Brazilian Constitution, promulgated in 1988. It's that simple. Nothing against evangelicals and, much less, with the Holy Scriptures. Secularism is republican. It exists precisely to allow the free expression of a religious belief, whatever its nature. It is always important to take the necessary precautions regarding this partisanship of religions. At the end of the 1930s, there were conservative sectors of the Catholic Church supporting the Estado Novo dictatorship.

In current times, it is known, for example, that broad neo-Pentecostal sectors would follow the anti-republican and authoritarian insanities of radical Bolsonarism. We always warned here that, in Bolivia, the coup d'état was carried out with the Bible in hand. The country is experiencing a very delicate moment of institutional instability. It is important to take the necessary measures to avoid further inflaming these radicalisms, which are almost always accompanied by intolerance, as is already the case with African-based cults, treated by some evangelical groups as devil worship. That's it, Commander.