Brazil’s
evangelicals gain clout, close to electing first president — a Liberation
Theology adherent
Commentary by Julio Severo: Striking in
this report is the complete absence of journalistic criticism at the Pentecostalism
of presidential candidate Marina Silva. This is the same media that would never
spare Michele Bachmann, a Pentecostal/charismatic politician. The
only difference is that Silva is rabidly socialist and Bachmann is a
conservative. Even more striking is that Reuters, whose investigative
journalism should supposedly have no omission, did not comment on the
fundamental role of Liberation Theology in the spirituality and political
career of Silva. Even after her “conversion” to the Assemblies of God church al,
Silva extolled Liberation Theology as the “living gospel.” In the 2010 presidential
election, she attacked the conservative wave against abortion and
homosexuality.
Why did not Reuters choose attack her Pentecostalism?
By the same reason that it hid the fact that she is more Liberation Theology
than evangelical or Pentecostal. Socialism is her most important religion.
Now read the pro-Marina Silva report of Reuters:
Brazil’s
evangelicals gain clout, close to electing first president
By Anthony Boadle
(Reuters) —
Brazil's increasingly powerful evangelical Christians are tantalizingly close
to electing one of their own as president next month in what would be a
historic shift for the world's largest Catholic nation.
Marina Silva, an
environmentalist running neck and neck in polls with incumbent President Dilma
Rousseff, is a Pentecostal Christian who often invokes God on the campaign
trail and has said she sometimes consults the Bible for inspiration when making
important political decisions.
Some 65 percent
of Brazil's 200 million people are Roman Catholics but evangelicals are rapidly
gaining followers and power.
They grew from 5
percent of the population in 1970 to more than 22 percent in 2010 and the trend
has continued. Evangelical groups have made particular inroads among urban
working Brazilians who benefited from economic prosperity over the last two
decades and are now demanding a greater say in politics.
Recent polls
show evangelical voters would support Silva over Rousseff by a margin of about
54 percent to 38 percent if the two face each other in a runoff on Oct. 26, as
most expect.
In a tight race,
that could swing the result.
The
evangelicals' rise has drawn comparisons to the "religious right" that
began to influence U.S. politics in the 1980s.
There are
important differences - most Brazilians are politically well to the left of
Americans, perhaps inevitably in a country with one of the world's biggest gaps
between rich and poor. Silva and Rousseff both call themselves socialists and
push for robust welfare programs.
Infighting
within evangelical groups has also limited their ability to create a unified
bloc.
Yet similarities
with the "religious right" abound. Brazil's evangelical faithful have
turned their opposition to gay marriage and abortion, which are both illegal
here, into key national political issues.
Funded by the
tithes their followers are asked to pay, the more successful evangelical
churches are increasingly turning their newfound wealth into political
influence.
They have bought
up radio and television stations across Brazil and
financed campaigns to elect evangelical candidates, including many pastors, to
seats in Congress.
The evangelical
caucus in Congress showed its muscle in May by forcing Rousseff to revoke
authorization for public health service abortions in exceptional cases of
pregnancies caused by rape and of fetuses with brain defects.
For the first
time in a Brazilian election, there are two evangelical candidates running for
president. Silva has eclipsed the second hopeful, Pastor Everaldo, although he
has made his mark in debates by accusing Rousseff's government of trampling on
family values and seeking to legalize abortion.
Under
evangelical pressure, Silva has changed her party's position on gay rights. And
Rousseff, a Catholic who has rarely used faith in her political career, is now
presenting herself as a good Christian. "Happy is the nation whose God is
the Lord," she quoted from Psalms at one campaign stop.
"The
evangelical vote will be decisive in this election," said Rodrigo
Delmasso, a pastor of a Brasilia-based Pentecostal church, who is running for a
seat in the city's legislature.
"As the
community grows it's natural that our share of political representation grows
too," the 34-year-old pastor said during a campaign stop where he handed
out bumper stickers and posters to metro workers.
Delmasso said he
voted for Rousseff in 2010, but he now backs Silva, trusting she will sweep out
corruption after 12 years of rule by the leftist Workers' Party.
MORALITY
Many
evangelicals believe their churches are uniquely equipped to cleanse politics -
and society at large.
In a shabby
shopping center in the center of Brazil's capital, two theaters that used to
show porn films are now churches. In one that doubled as a strip club, pastors
preach about salvation from a stage where strippers once performed.
Pentecostalism,
the fastest growing branch of evangelical Christianity, was introduced to Latin
America by U.S. missionaries a century ago.
These days,
virtually every town and neighborhood in Brazil seems to
have a Pentecostal chapel where vibrant song and prayer blare over loudspeakers
onto the street outside. Many converts say the uplifting services and emphasis
on material prosperity are more appealing than what they found in the Catholic
Church.
The exodus is
happening across Latin America and is especially strong in Brazil.
The Catholic
Church retains political influence of its own - gathering all the major
presidential candidates for a debate in Aparecida, the shrine of Brazil's
patron saint, earlier this month, for example.
But while it
bans its priests from engaging in politics, evangelical preachers are free to
launch their own political careers from the pulpit or televangelist studios.
Recently, at the
doors of a church in Brasilia, youths in shirts and ties handed out campaign
flyers to people attending the service. A vote for the evangelical
congressional candidate was "the same as voting for the Church," one
of the youths said.
One major goal
of evangelicals is to keep expanding their caucus in Congress, which has grown
from 17 in 1985 to 76 today - about 15 percent of the Chamber of Deputies.
They have in
many ways followed the path taken by the U.S. Christian right, which didn't
really get involved in national politics until the early 1980s when one of its
own - Pat Robertson - ran for president, said Andrew Chesnut, an expert on
Brazil's Pentecostal boom.
"Up until
then, American evangelicals saw the political arena as the devil's arena where
even forthright Christians could be contaminated," said Chesnut, a
professor of religious studies at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond.
"The view
was that if they had critical mass they could elect their own people and that
would inoculate them from the contagion of the political arena. That was the
same in Brazil."
CONVERSION
Silva's rise
could further boost political engagement among Brazilian evangelicals. Many,
like Silva, are Afro-Brazilian women who come from a poor background.
Silva came to
the faith somewhat late in life. She was born to illiterate rubber-tappers in
the Amazon rainforest and wanted to become a Catholic nun as an adolescent,
before turning to environmental activism and a career in politics.
Her conversion
to Pentecostalism came in 1997 after her doctor said only a "miracle"
would heal her fragile health, wrecked by malaria, hepatitis and lead poisoning
when she was a child on the rubber plantation.Silva has tried to strike a
careful balance between pride in her faith and not alienating more
secular-minded Brazilians. She said in an interview this month that "the
Bible is without a shadow of a doubt a source of inspiration," but
immediately added that all of her decisions are "taken on a rational
basis."
One campaign
jingle celebrates "the faith of every believer and the reason of every
atheist."
Last month, her
Brazilian Socialist Party issued an official platform supporting gay marriage
and making homophobia a crime but Silva quickly reversed the stance after
Brazil's best-known televangelist, Silas Malafaia, threatened to withdraw his
support for her.
It was a costly
embarrassment for Silva, losing her support among young and urban middle-class
voters and fueling broader concerns that she flip-flops on major issues.
Rousseff tried
to capitalize, announcing after Silva's gaffe that she would push through legislation
granting evangelical churches the same tax benefits as the Catholic Church.
Analysts say
many evangelical voters are still up for grabs. Brazil's poor depend on social
programs introduced by the ruling Workers' Party, and could vote for Rousseff regardless
of what their pastor may say.
Rousseff has the
backing of Brazil's second-largest evangelical church, the Universal Church of
the Kingdom of God. Silva belongs to Assemblies of God, which has more members
but is less well-organized.
Rousseff even
attended the opening last month of a 10,000-seat, 11-story Solomon's Temple
built in Sao Paulo by the Universal Church's leader, Bishop Edir Macedo. A
media magnate, Macedo has a fortune estimated by Forbes magazine at $1.24
billion.
Macedo's PRB
party backs Rousseff and even has a seat in her cabinet. But he exerts more
influence with his ownership of the second largest television network, Rede
Record.
Bishop Robson
Rodovalho, a physicist who founded a Pentecostal church in 1992 that now has
more than 1 million followers and a TV channel, said he expects that Silva
still has room to grow her support in coming weeks.
"Much of
the Church will converge on her candidacy," he told Reuters before going
on stage to preach to the sound of rock music in a darkened church hall lit
with discotheque lights.
"Brazil is
a real democracy. It's only a matter of time before we have an evangelical
president. That's a fact."
(Editing by
Brian Winter and Kieran Murray)
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