Amid Crisis in Brazil, Evangelicals Emerge as the Main Conservative Power
In the world’s largest Catholic country, the evangelical movement could select Brazil’s next president.
By Julio Severo
Introduction. The American Left is
keeping an eye on the increasing influence of conservative evangelicals in
Brazil. “The Nation,” the oldest continuously published weekly magazine in the
United States since 1865, produced this month a special article, titled “Amid
Crisis in Brazil, the Evangelical Bloc Emerges as a Political Power,” about the
political power of evangelicals in Brazil.
The following article, even though
edited, corrected, adapted and “conservatized” by my view as a Brazilian
evangelical insider, is largely based on the article of “The Nation”:
Although
Brazil remains the world’s largest Roman Catholic country, in recent decades a
massive growth among evangelicals has challenged Catholic hegemony. In 1970,
the percentage of Brazilian Catholics stood at 90 percent; today, it barely
clears 50 percent. During that same time span, the percentage of evangelicals
has risen from 5 percent to roughly 30 percent, thanks to the aggressive
evangelistic outreach efforts by Pentecostal and neo-Pentecostal (charismatic)
churches. Across the country, evangelical leaders are struggling to keep up
with the growth of their flock. Abandoned shopping centers, X-rated theaters,
and strip clubs have all become unlikely places of worship.
Such a radical transformation in
Brazil’s religious landscape has given rise to discussions about the emergence
of a “Brazilian Christian right” — a movement similar to the American Christian
right in its ability to reshape politics. Evangelical leaders already played a
crucial role in former Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff’s ouster, and their influence appears set to increase
for years to come. It was Eduardo Cunha, the speaker of the Chamber of Deputies
(the lower house of the Brazilian Congress) and one of Brazil’s most prominent
evangelicals, who led the drive to impeach Rousseff for moving funds from
several state accounts to conceal a budget deficit in the run up to the 2014
elections.
Although this was a violation of
the law, the two previous presidents resorted to the same sort of budgetary
tinkering without any consequences. “Cunha staged a constitutional coup,”
according to Paulo Iotti, a constitutional expert at the Group of Lawyers for
Sexual and Gender Diversity, a São Paulo–based homosexualist NGO. But in a fatality of destiny, Cunha himself was found
guilty of corruption, money laundering, and illegally sending money abroad.
In March, a judge sentenced him to
15 years in prison, one of the stiffest sentences ever given to a public official
in Brazil. Rousseff and former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who have
been embroiled in bigger scandals and corruption, have never been sent to
prison. They have been completely free. Cunha was the first major casualty of
“Operation Car Wash,” an anti-corruption dragnet that has so far ensnared some
60 percent of Brazil’s Congress as well as President Temer.
Cunha should be a cautionary tale
for anyone harboring the illusion that the political rise of evangelicals will
fix the ills of Brazilian politics. Corruption in Brazil is endemic since its
discovery 500 years ago. It is a historic evil thought incurable. The Brazilian
government has fully inherited the Portuguese system of pillage on Brazilians.
The Catholic Portuguese crown was notorious for looting Brazil and its riches,
especially through abusive taxes, and Brazilians are historically known for
evading such government pillage.
The expansion of Protestant
evangelism didn’t happen overnight. Protestants first landed in Brazil in the
19th century, with the establishment by European immigrants of mainline
Protestant denominations, like the Presbyterians, Lutherans, and Anglicans.
Classic Pentecostal churches, such as the Assemblies of God, soon followed. A
second wave of Protestants arrived in the 1940s with the advent of the
Foursquare Gospel Church, imported from California by preachers Harold and Mary
Williams. From its base in São Paulo, Foursquare quickly became one of the
fastest growing churches in Brazil. Key to their appeal was revival events
inspired by the evangelical campaigns of Billy Graham. Reminiscing about the
early days of his evangelism in Brazil, Harold Williams noted that while
attending a Graham crusade it dawned on him that “Brazilians love circuses. I
think they would be drawn to a circus tent for a revival.”
A third and final wave came in late
1970s and 1980s with the rise of the neo-Pentecostal movement, including many
evangelical fellowships (comunidades evangélicas). U.S. televangelist Rex
Humbard, whose TV programs were broadcast in Brazil since 1975, is thought to
have had a decisive role in general evangelism and expansion of the
neo-Pentecostal movement in Brazil. “The 700 Club,” presented by Rev. Pat
Robertson, who prayed in the Brazilian TV with his gift of revelation, was also
a powerful inspiration.
Universal
Church of the Kingdom of God (UCKG), founded by Bishop Edir Macedo in 1977, is
an exceptional case, because it embraces practices rejected by all the other
neo-Pentecostal churches. UCKG founder openly supports abortion and
his denomination rejects prophecies and revelations as “demonic,” teaching that God only speaks
through the Bible and nothing else. UCKG, whose founder lives in the United
States, adhered to a pro-abortion and cessationist stance very common in the
PCUSA, the largest Presbyterian denomination in the U.S.
Just as PCUSA supported left-wing
Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, UCKG supported left-wing Lula and Rousseff in
Brazil.
There is no shortage of
explanations for why Protestant evangelism is thriving. The polling data
suggest “a more personal connection with God,” a more active worshiping
experience, and a church with a greater emphasis on moral values. Another
school of thought emphasizes the more democratic structures of Protestant
churches relative to those of the Catholic Church.
Like the rise of Jerry Falwell’s
Moral Majority in the early 1980s, which ushered in the emergence of the
American Christian right, Brazilian evangelical leaders have entered the
political fray motivated by a sense of moral outrage. These leaders point to
the moral decay that has taken place in Brazil under Lula and Rousseff’s
Workers’ Party (PT). They condemn the rise in secularism; the advent of gay
“marriage,” imposed by the Federal Supreme Court in 2011; the growing
acceptance of abortion, although illegal; and the ubiquity of pornography.
Their preferred venue for decrying Brazil’s descent into sin is the March for
Jesus, an annual gathering that draws hundreds of thousands to downtown São
Paulo. Held just ahead of São Paulo’s famed gay pride parade, the event
showcases an evangelical agenda dominated by opposition to the gay agenda and abortion.
In constructing their advocacy
against moral decline, Brazilian evangelicals take their cues directly from the
American evangelical conservatism, a process facilitated by the many
transnational ties linking the American and Brazilian evangelical communities.
By the late 1980s, according to The New York Times, there were already 2,800
Protestant missionaries from the US in Brazil, and “dozens” of different
US-based churches and missions. California-based Trinity Broadcast Network
(TBN), the world’s largest religious broadcaster, reaches 220 Brazilian cities
in 23 Brazilian states, covering 45 million people.
With American influence, the
Brazilian branch of Bethany House Publishers published in 1998 for the first
time in Brazil a book addressing the challenges of the homosexual militancy.
Titled “O Movimento Homossexual” (The Homosexual Movement), the pioneering
book, written by Julio Severo, was based on U.S. homosexualist actions that
could be copied in Brazil — and eventually they were actually copied.
Severo’s
conservatism is a result of his experiences with U.S. conservative
missionaries, including TV shows of Rex Humbard and Pat Robertson, and books of
U.S. conservative evangelical authors. His book was distributed freely among
members of the Brazilian Congress in 2004. Bethany in Brazil was founded by
American missionaries.
Severo delivered the opening speech
at the first conference of the Evangelical Parliamentary Caucus in Brasilia,
the Brazilian capital city, in 2004. He addressed the multifaceted threats of
the homosexual movement. The conference was filled with evangelical congressmen
and the most prominent evangelical leaders in Brazil.
The first magazine of the
Evangelical Parliamentary Caucus also featured an article by Julio Severo
against the homosexual agenda.
In
2012, Silas Malafaia, the most prominent Assemblies of God leader in Brazil,
published in Brazil the Portuguese version of Louis P. Sheldon’s “The Agenda:
The Homosexual Plan to Change America.” Sheldon’s book was also distributed
freely among members of the Brazilian Congress.
Also significant is that in the
last two decades several American Christian groups, many of the veterans of the
American culture wars, have set up shop in Brazil. A notable arrival is
televangelist Pat Robertson’s American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ), with
the establishment of a Brazilian subsidiary, the Brazilian Center for Law and
Justice, connected to Silas Malafaia. The ACLJ, a right-wing alternative to the
far-left American Civil Liberties Union, is famous for upholding a biblical
definition of marriage (it helped draft the Defense of Marriage Act) and for
defending the First Amendment rights of Christians.
Despite their shared origins and
mutual admiration, the Brazilian evangelical community is not a carbon copy of
the American one. The American Christian right is remarkable for its ecumenism
with the Catholic Church and the Unification Church, founded by Rev. Moon, who
presented himself as a new “messiah” to fulfill what Jesus Christ was not supposedly
able to fulfill. The reason for such union was that Moon was anti-Marxist and
conservative. But such ecumenism is hardly the case in Brazil, where
evangelicals are at war with the Catholic Church over the issue of “Catholic
privilege.” Evangelical churches want the government to grant them the same tax
breaks and benefits traditionally given only to the Catholic Church, such as
support for Catholic schools, monasteries, and seminaries. Many Brazilian
evangelicals also aggressively target Catholic doctrines, as Mary’s worship, as
their main evangelistic concern.
The key vehicle for the
evangelicals’ participation in politics is the Evangelical Parliamentary
Caucus, arguably the most effective lobby in the Brazilian Congress. Its growth
mirrors that of the evangelical movement. In 1985, the evangelical caucus had
17 members; by 2006, membership had grown to 57, or 12.5 percent of the
513-seat Chamber of Deputies. By 2014, 93 members or 15 percent of the Chamber
of Deputies and five members of the Senate (a body with 81 members) belonged to
the caucus. These percentages become more meaningful when considering the
fragmentation of the Brazilian party system. The leading party usually commands
less than 20 percent of the Congress. Most of the evangelical caucus’s members
come from Pentecostal denominations. Most of them, if not all, are “pastors” or
“bishops” of their respective denominations. Research suggests that having the
title of “pastor” attached to your name enhances the political fortunes of the
candidates “by making the religious connection more visible.”
The evangelical caucus has been the
only power in the Brazilian Congress to block the homosexual agenda.
Evangelical leaders argue pro-homosexuality bills grant special rights to gay
supremacists and harm religion freedom, such as the liberty of pastors to quote
Bible verses that condemn homosexuality. While the Brazilian Left copies the
American Left in its efforts to impose the homosexual agenda in Brazil, the
evangelical caucus has been encouraged by Malafaia, Severo and others to copy
the American evangelical conservatism.
With
general elections scheduled for next year, a stampede of candidates is already
jockeying for the presidency, and evangelical voters could end up crowning the
winner. But this will hinge on the capacity of the evangelical community to
rally around a single candidate. Unlike American evangelicals, Brazilian
evangelicals are not wedded to any particular party. During the last election,
for instance, the evangelical vote went to the evangelical Marina Silva, a former
environmental minister in the Lula administration running under the banner of
the Brazilian Socialist Party, who came in third.
Pentecostals
are generally conservative on abortion and homosexuality, but Silva is a
special case. She was converted to the Assemblies of God, but her ideological
roots in the Catholic Church, especially the Liberation Theology, were never
abandoned. Even so, she was mistakenly portrayed in the U.S. evangelical media
in 2014 as “conservative.”
Silva will likely make another run,
as will her old boss, Lula, assuming he can successfully appeal the graft
conviction that could send him to jail for nearly 10 years. Another possible
contender is Sergio Moro, the federal judge in charge of Operation Car Wash,
who actually sentenced Lula. Yet another serious candidate is João Doria, the
millionaire media mogul and former star of Brazil’s “The Apprentice,” who last
year shocked the political world by getting himself elected mayor of São Paulo,
South America’s largest city.
Doria
is very similar to Trump, having the same liberal history and both were stars
in “The Apprentice.” The evangelical worry is that he is not against the
homosexual agenda, just as Trump has not opposed the homosexual agenda. U.S. embassies under Trump continue
promoting this dark agenda, even though he had issued, under evangelical
pressure, an order barring transgender soldiers in the military. Malafaia and
other Pentecostal leaders think that they can exert the same pressure on a
possible President Doria.
Another
possible candidate for evangelicals could be Congressman Jair Bolsonaro, a
right-wing politician who compared same-sex “marriage” to pedophilia.
Bolsonaro, who is known for praising the military rule in Brazil, is admired
among evangelicals for his opposition to the homosexual agenda. But he is best
known for his uncontrolled words and temper. Even though he was baptized in
Jordan River, in Israel, in 2016 in a political stunt to signal a conversion to
evangelicalism, time has been enough to disprove it. There is no sign of an “evangelical”
Bolsonaro and the Pentecostal minister who baptized him, Pastor Everaldo, is a
shrewd political strategist. Since the “evangelical” baptism, their
relationship and stunt soured and both have parted ways. Among evangelicals,
Bolsonaro’s main negative point is his strange connections to the Brazilian
Rasputin, Olavo de Carvalho, a self-exiled Brazilian
immigrant in the United States who has consistently advocated the dark idea that evangelicals, especially the
Protestant America, invented an alleged “myth” of the Inquisition, which
tortured and murdered Jews and Protestants. For Carvalho, the Inquisition was
good and necessary, a real human-rights “champion.” He became notorious in
Brazil in the 1980s for his astrological activities and for having founded the
first Brazilian school of astrologers.
Whether Doria or Bolsonaro, both
Catholic, could find support among evangelicals remains unclear. Yet, if the
American experience with Trump is any guide, Doria in his entrepreneurship and
Bolsonaro in his opposition to the homosexual agenda are eligible to receive
evangelical support. If a Pentecostal candidate emerges, Doria and Bolsonaro
will have no chance. But whatever happens, a clear paradox is already on
display: In a country famous for its hedonistic culture, its Catholic
syncretism with African religions and its sex-charged Carnivals, Christian
conservatism has among evangelicals its most powerful representation.
With information from The Nation.
Portuguese version of this article: Em meio à crise no Brasil, evangélicos destacam-se
como a principal força conservadora
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