Topic: Religion and the state: how far apart a constitution puts them
How does Brazil mark Religion and the state: how far apart a constitution puts them?
Everyday topic
Brazil's constitution handles religion by listing what government may not do. Article 19 opens: it is forbidden to the Union, the states, the Federal District and the municipalities — and item I continues: to establish religious cults or churches, to subsidise them, to hinder their functioning, or to maintain with them or their representatives relations of dependence or alliance, save, in the manner of the law, collaboration in the public interest. The item bans four different things side by side: establishing, subsidising, hindering, allying. Note that hindering their functioning is on the list too — this article does not only stop government from favouring religion, it also stops government from suppressing it, governing both directions at once. And the proviso at the end about collaboration in the public interest deliberately leaves a door open: religion and state are not to have no dealings at all, only dealings in the name of the public interest. Compared with Japan's Article 89, which flatly bars public money from religious bodies, Brazil leaves more room for judgement; compared with Indonesia writing divinity into the foundation of the state, it starts from the opposite end.
What is this topic?
The very first line of Article 29 of Indonesia's constitution is that the state is based upon belief in the One and Only God. Brazil's Article 19 runs the other way, forbidding the Union, the states and the municipalities to establish religions, subsidise them, or maintain relations of dependence or alliance with them. Japan's Article 20 goes further into detail — no religious organisation may take privileges from the state, and public authorities are kept out of religious teaching and observance altogether — with Article 89 barring public money from religious bodies. The American First Amendment says Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion. China's Article 36 guarantees freedom of belief but protects "normal religious activities" and states that religious affairs are not subject to foreign domination. India's preamble calls the republic secular, while Article 25 includes the right to *propagate* religion. Taiwan's Article 13 is seven characters long: the people have freedom of religious belief.
Sources and dates
Dates follow local time zones, calendars, and official notices. Check the source when a date is estimated or locally variable.