This article deals with religious education in public schools, trying to identify the position of political-ideological groups around this issue during the process of production of the second Lei de Diretrizes e Bases da Educação Nacional - LDB (Law of Directives and Bases for National Education), which was promulgated on December 1996. The analysis took as its source the Diários do Senado e da Câmara dos Deputados (Annals of the Senate and the House of Representatives) in the period between 1991 and 1996, public and private archives documents, and general bibliography as well. It was observed that during the eight years of the discutions inside the Congresso Nacional (National Congress), various pressure groups left their marks on the LDB: on the one hand the Catholic Church, the single organization openly committed to its offer; on the other hand, a wide ranging, albeit unsystematic, alliance which, lacking the political strength to defend a secular project for public education, was limited to try and resist the surge of confessionalism. At last, none of the sides was able to implement their demands in full, so that the law promulgated and sanctioned resulted in a hybrid product.
LDB; brazilian education; educational policy; religious education; Laïcity