Paper long abstract:

This research is an anthropological analysis of the parts played by some religious agencies in the production of a public sphere of rights. The scope of the analysis is the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God (Igreja Universal do Reino de Deus - IURD) and its relation with the production of new foundations concerning the reproductive rights, including the prominent theme of abortion.

The research aims to contemplate two lines of analysis: the position of IURD in the production of public controversies, creating quarrels and political associations that consolidate themselves through legislative actions, utilizing as a specific case the way the church founder wields arguments in the defense of the legalization of abortion; and the discourse production of a lifeworld that ensures the making of new controversies, this time based on the rituals of IURD around the prescriptions regarding marriage and birth rate. It is intended to demonstrate through an ethnographic study of the ritual practices of the church that the production of a controversy occurs within the scope of practice. That is, the controversies would be discourse representations objectified through the formation of a body that makes the discourses to circulate. Therefore, a controversy in the religion field, based in the formulation of favorable law projects concerning the legalization of abortion, wouldn't be reduced to speech of a religious agency, but is constituted also by embodied forms, represented in the ritual practice of woman who attend the church.