Abstract:

An evangelical group of students at a public university in the interior of Minas Gerais, belonging to the University Biblical Alliance Network (ABU), was investigated through participant observation and interviews, with the purpose of knowing their formative practices, their contribution to the insertion of young people in university life, the meanings its attributes to religious affiliation in the university and their political relations. Data from the field compared to the literature on youth, religion and university in Brazil, show that religion is an important form of socialization and sociability for students of higher education, as participation in the evangelical group has important young students with the public sphere and their political participation. The ABU researched has been successful in valuing a more personal and participative dimension of evangelical religiosity, collaborating with the permanence of students in the university and establishing bridges between the religious culture and the academic culture, propitiating the maintenance of the religious identity constituted before the entrance in higher education. Field research illustrates some of the tensions experienced by the evangelical group from the point of view of political participation, derived from the contrast between, on the one hand, horizontality and certain progressive tendencies experienced in the daily life of the group, and, on the other hand, centralization and conservative tendencies of evangelical leaders.

Keywords:
evangelical group; university; formative practices.