This dissertation argues that human dignity is best understood as an act. The conventional view promotes institutions that reinforce social hierarchies in Brazil. Premised on a dualist reading of the imago dei, the dominant notion relies exclusively on the soul’s rationality, to the detriment of the body. On the one hand, such perspective affirms that dignity is a universal, intangible, and inviolable value; on the other, it permits that economic and racial factors actually ascribe different values to each person according to their soul’s assumed capacities and their bodies. This work postulates that people who have been forced to live without dignity can offer a more realistic understanding. Notably, poor and Black Brazilian communities act in order to develop the conditions for a dignified life. Their joint efforts to build material and immaterial well-being show that dignity can be considered an act and imply a body-centered, dignity-oriented personhood. Since dignity is enacted in concrete human interactions, it emphasizes the body and has immediate implications in the community’s material life. Depending on the mode of relation, it can be co-enacted in (at least) two ways. Two persons who meet in full reciprocity can acknowledge each other’s dignity with a bodily gesture. Also, two persons can intervene in one another’s specific social situation by establishing a dignity-restorative dialogue. “Dignity-as-an-act” and its two corollaries—dignity-oriented personhood and the dialogical restoration—form the foundation of a new theology.