Movimento Jovens Livres: Religião, Saúde e Reinserção Social

Abstract

This paper in Religious Sciences has as object the Free Youth Movement (MJL) and its postulates in the evangelical religion. The mission of the MJL began in 1968, when the founder, Missionary Ana Maria Avelar de Carvalho Brasil, began the work of rescue of subjects in situation of drug addiction, supported primarily by her family and brothers in the faith; then, counting on the partnership of her husband, Pastor Paulo Brazil. The research of qualitative methodological character counted on the participation of nine subjects, being five collaborators and four ex-inmates. The general objective of the research is to show some of the activities of the MJL and record its history of social reinsertion of individuals, usually already excluded from society. The specific objectives are to investigate the relationship between religion and MJL for the health of dependents, to highlight the importance of the MJL as a pioneer in Brazil in the work of therapeutic treatments involving public health social issues and to analyze the discourses of the cooperators and the public target of the MJL. Two problems were raised: what is the relationship between religion and the Free Youth Movement to promote health for dependents? Which religious and therapeutic practices developed in the Institution make possible the recovery of those enrolled in drug addiction? As hypotheses, therapeutic treatment promotes the reestabilization of the health of drug addicts and that the evangelical Christian religion functions as a mechanism of mental and spiritual strengthening of the individual. The results were achieved with the scientific record of the history of the MJL. It is an institution recognized as a public utility, being the pioneer in Brazil, according to documents and the Open Portal (Brazil, 2017). The therapeutic approaches of the Movement are revealed by the documents and by speeches of participants, which testify to the achievements of the MJL in its more than 50 years of empowerment to help people who are captive for drugs, who have been liberated and inserted in social life, happy and fulfilled.