The article seeks to reflect on the thorny question of religious education in public schools. Although optional, religious education has become problematic in secular states, when faced by the particularity and diversity of religious creeds. Whenever such a proposal appears on the scene of educational projects, it comes charged with an intense discussion concerning its presence and viability in a secular multicultural country. In the case of Brazil, the set of constitutional principles, motives and objectives alone guarantees ample conditions to enable the churches, cults and philosophical-transcendental systems, with all liberty, and respect for diverse options, to recruit followers legitimately to maintain their beliefs, demonstrate convictions and teach their principles, motives and objectives and stimulate practices in their own places and spaces. Besides this, today more than ever before, the churches have at their disposal means of mass communication, in particular television networks or religious programmes on broadcasting channels, for transmitting their principles.
religious education; secularity; religion