In the bustling Floriano Square in downtown Rio de Janeiro, locals flock to the sound of street vendors and passing trams. In this charged context, the universal Church of the Kingdom of God can go almost unnoticed. However, about fifty other people crossed its doors to meet at lunchtime. Most are women, some of whom are still wearing their checkered uniforms and others seem to be going into a trance. “Deliver yourself from vice, invoke God,” whispers the pastor, microphone in hand, in a sonorous speech that echoes to the ceiling.
Three months before the elections in Brazil, the maximum number of faithful are agitated when the factor of political interference in the Church is raised – and vice versa. “There is no position for politics in the church. Here only Jesus counts,” insists a woman in her forties who came here to worship.
However, the Universal Church of the Kingdom of Christ, founded in 1977, is strongly linked to the Brazilian Republican Party (PRB). In 2020, two of Bolsonaro’s sons, Flavio (senator) and Carlos (Rio councilman), as well as his ex-wife Rogéria Braga, joined the party.
“Talking about political worship doesn’t bother me. If the pastor raises crusade issues, I think it’s okay,” says Thiago, a 36-year-old mechanic who was leaving the church. Like 70% of evangelicals at the time, Thiago voted for the existing president in 2018. He intends to vote the same way in October. “Here I place a discussion about the family, anything I also like about Bolsonaro,” he says.
The conservative evangelical electorate played a decisive role in winning Bolsonaro’s presidency, despite the fact that the president declares himself Catholic. Some prominent evangelical pastors have even made him a “messiah” figure.
“Jair Bolsonaro used a very strong devout rhetoric built around evangelical ideas,” said Magali Cunha, a researcher at the Institute of Religious Studies (ISER). “He created an image. He baptized through an evangelical pastor in Israel and his own wife is an evangelical. He also forged ties with the country’s top church leaders.
Since Bolsonaro’s election, public opinion has come to associate evangelicals with the far right and conservative values. For Cunha, it is vital that this network does not form a homogeneous block without marrying but encompasses multiple and contradictory realities. the evangelical vote. This is a myth. Evangelicals voted for Lula and [shaping president] Dilma Rousseff for years because they identified themselves in their proposals. Now, some of them remain unwavering with Bolsonaro, but this has diminished considerably.
Just a 10-minute walk from Floriano Square on Rua Carioca, black balustrades absolutely mask the front of the Brazilian Baptist Church among the music shops. Inside, the ornament is basic. The few dozen plastic chairs are empty on Friday morning in Rio. Pastor Marco Davi de Oliveira is an imposing figure even with a wide smile on his face. Your church must be progressive. Every Sunday he receives faithful from all social strata and sexual orientations. About 80% of church members are black.
“We want to redefine the word ‘evangelical,’ which has a pejorative in Brazil,” he says. “Here we are evangelicals but we also fight for justice, equality and inclusion. It is also being evangelical.
Four years later, the evangelical for the far-right president collapses. According to a Datafolha ballot released in June, only 36% of evangelicals intend to vote for him this year.
The context of this crusade is different, says Cunha. ” In 2018, Jair Bolsonaro was an unknown. Now Brazilians know who he is. Religious leaders who do not deviate from it will not be able to convince the electorate just as easily.
Bolsonaro’s tenure has provoked anger and sadness among the components of the evangelical community, says the researcher.
“Evangelicals in Brazil are black women with most of the poor people living in slums in big cities. These are the other people who have suffered the most from this government. People suffer from inflation, hunger, unemployment. Most have lost many of their loved ones because of the pandemic. COVID-19 has killed more than 675,000 people in Brazil, the highest death rate in the world after the United States.
Oliveira’s liberal pastor said a change in voting intention is “the result of wonderful works of the left, but the result of people’s hunger. “
Runaway inflation and the economic crisis remain demanding situations for bolsonaro’s government, affecting tens of millions of Brazilians. Some 33 million more people face hunger and more than a portion of the population, or 125 million, live in a state of lack of food confidence. Brazil made its impression on the UN’s “hunger map” in 2020, after effectively addressing the widespread lack of food confidence under Rousseff’s Workers’ Party rule.
Lula, lately leading the polls, is to recover the electorate by all means. The leader of the Workers’ Party organized several meetings with influential pastors such as Paulo Marcelo Schallenberger of the Assembly of God Church. By opting for Geraldo Alckmin, a moderate right-wing Catholic who has intelligent relationships with conservatives and evangelicals, as his running mate, Lula is making a breakthrough in this community.
It avoids debatable topics like abortion and instead focuses on economic problems like inflation and unemployment. The Workers’ Party even had a short-lived podcast aimed at attracting evangelical voters (the assignment was abandoned due to disagreements within the party).
Lula effectively courted the evangelical electorate in his two winning campaigns in 2002 and 2006, just as Rousseff did in 2010 and 2014. However, winning over other evangelicals is inevitable, according to de Oliveira.
“For a long time, the left’s mistake of thinking that evangelicals represented nothing,” he says.
Three months before the election, evangelicals are being courted through political parties from all walks of life. The network represents 30% of the electorate and has taken root in the country. “When Lula and Bolsonaro communicate with evangelicals, they know they are communicating with everyone. from Brazil,” says Cunha.
The pastor of Oliveira is that this electoral bloc will be decisive. “Whoever succeeds in defeating evangelicals will win this election,” he said.
This article was from the French original.