The political exchange among parliamentarians and the Catholic Television Networks in São Paulo state

Abstract

This research is basead on the mutual political support among parliamentarians and Catholic Television Networks in São Paulo state: Aparecida, Canção Nova, Rede Vida e Século XXI. Before the major and continued improvement of evangelical denominations, the Catholic Church gave basically two answers: the support to the Catholic Charismatic Renewal (CCR) movement and investments in its own TV stations. Directly related to those anwers is the election of parliamentarians with an ostensive catholic identity linked to CCR. The knowledge about the actings of these subjects in favor of those catholic TV stations and, on the other hand, the political-electoral support they receive from those tv networks, is still nonexistent in the Social Science of Religion. It proposes the search to fill this gap through the investigation of the alliance among politicians and catholic clerics, the formation of propitious political arrangements, the federal government's concessions of stations and the electoral processes. This set of factors makes with such communication media promote a meaningful role in the brazilian religious market, contributing to the catholic evasion isn't still larger than it is.