Definitions of secularism in the public debate on religious education

This paper is an analysis of the controversies about the processes of implementation of religious teaching in public schools in Sao Paulo and Minas Gerais. The debate about the presence of religion in the school "reappears" with the approval, in 1996, the new Law of National Education (n.9394), more precisely from the reformulation of its article 33 in 1997, by the Law n.9.457. From this decision, a plurality of models has been implemented in different Brazilian States, guided by social and cultural features that are also differentiated. Starting from the analysis of the changes that occurred in religious field in Brazil in the last decades and betting on the idea of a "resizing" of religion in modernity; this work emphasizes the different notions of secularism.