Populism, People and Politics as Challenges for a Public Theology

Governments and populist tendencies are visible in Brazil as elsewhere. Doubtlessly, such developments have to be accompanied critically, especially as they imply violations of human rights, namely of minorities, and also as to nationalist and religious connotations. The article argues, however, that the common understanding of populism tends to underestimate and despise the people, the real persons of the population, seeing it as a manipulatable mass in the hand of some opinion formers and leaders that succeed in receiving their adhesion. Such disdain is questioned and the participation of the people in their subjectivity/subjectivities in the public sphere valued. At the same time, the article states that "the people" represent a programmatic and precarious category, both in a social and in a theological perspective. This factor prevents its unilateral definition, on the one hand, and claims its recognition as a dynamic conjunction of subject with their anxieties and concrete dreams that deserve an attentive interpretation of their localization, action and legitimacy, while also implying critical observation. Towards this end, this bibliographical and conceptual essay, a lecture presented during the Kieler Woche 2019 as a guest of the Faculty of Theology at the University of Kiel, first describes popularity and populism in Brazil and analyses the concept of populism and of "people". It then seeks to deepen the discussion of populism in dialogue with Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, in a divergent conceptualization and, lastly, through a theological reflection in the perspective of a public theology, delineates possibilities for a witness in society through the presence, persistence and participation of people.