Networks, Society, and Polis: Epistemological Approaches on Mediatization

Religions in the media polis: mediatization, Protestants and politics in Brazil 147 ligion project itself beyond the private limit, through personal and collective experience, informal and institutionalized reli- gious practices, but it becomes a collective action, in the public space, as culture and as a discourse on values. Hence, it became a public religion. In Brazil, in the second decade of the 2000s, evangeli- cals are de-privatized, having left the condition of an invisible minority to a publicized visibility through a close relationship with the media, and political participation with the execution of social projects in partnership with public authorities, with a voice in the debate of broad themes, and the mediation of social conflicts, with the professionalization of political action and the establishment of strategies. This new posture and image are lo- cated in the context of gospel culture (CUNHA, 2007), with the recreation of the evangelical religious identity, and the widening of the boundaries outlined in the past between sacred and pro- fane based on a relationship around the music-consumption- entertainment triad, and political participation in interaction in the public space is a fundamental element in this process. The concept of public space in this study relates to that of the polis, as recovered from Greek philosophy and reframed by Hanna Arendt. It is an understanding that transcends the geographical and territorial notion related to the public space of the city, the State and the Nation, and also to the vision that links it to the modern State, citizenship, democracy, mobilization, en- gagement, and participation in politics, discourse, and public opinion (HABERMAS, 1984). Arendt refers to the polis as a place of apparition and interaction, “no matter where [people] are”: strictly speaking, the polis is not the city-state in its physical location; it is the organization of the community that results from acting and speak- ing together, and its true space is located among people who live together with such purpose, no matter where they are. ‘Wherever you go, you will be a polis’: these famous words not only became the password of Greek colonization but expressed the conviction that action and discourse create a space between the parties capable of adequately situate in any time and place. It is the space of ap-