Evangelicals Represent the Greatest Conservative Force in the Brazilian Elections
By Julio
Severo
After the U.S. Big Media, including the
right-wing Fox News, said that Brazilian evangelicals are a powerful
conservative influence in the elections (see the report: Evangelicals
Can Put a Right-Wing Candidate in Brazil’s Presidency), now is
Europe’s turn. Reuters, a London-based service that was the first international
news service in the world, has published the headline “Brazil’s
evangelicals say far-right presidential candidate is answer to their prayers.”
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| In this Sept. 2, 2018 photo, evangelicals raise their hands in prayer as they listen to a song during a service at the Assembly of God Victory in Christ Church in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. (AP Photo/Leo Correa) |
Why do evangelicals have huge conservative
impact in the Brazilian elections, but not in the European elections?
The explanation may come from an uncommon
source: Marilena Chaui, a Brazilian Marxist philosopher. She stated in 2016
that the main opposition to socialism in Brazil is the Prosperity Gospel, known
in Brazil as Prosperity Theology. What is destroying the left-wing hegemony in
Brazil is, as she said, a “day-to-day, meticulous operation that has been done
in the ideological realm to convince people through the Prosperity Gospel…”
So
it is no wonder that the main leader leading evangelicals in the
political conservative wave in Brazil is Silas Malafaia, an Assemblies of God minister who
has espoused important tenets of the Prosperity Gospel. The Assemblies of God
is the major evangelical denomination in Brazil.
Neo-charismatics, or neo-Pentecostals, are
the overwhelming majority of the conservative leaders among evangelicals in
Brazil.
Because Europe has an overwhelming
majority of Protestants who are Lutheran and Presbyterian, there is no such
conservative force in elections or in their internal battles to halt socialism
and other evil ideologies in their midst.
In
Brazil the traditional Protestant churches suffer the same spiritual malady.
The Evangelical Church of Lutheran Confession in Brazil (ECLCB, the largest
Lutheran denomination in Brazil) adheres to Liberation Theology and its
Protestant version, Theology of Integral Mission, similar to the Social Gospel.
The Presbyterian denominations in Brazil have for decades embraced, in a lesser
or larger measure, Theology of Integral Mission, loved by many of their
ministers, including Caio Fábio, a former minister who was a Presbyterian
superstar who eventually got involved in sex and political scandals with
powerful left-wing leaders.
While Pentecostals and mainly
neo-Pentecostals are recognizing the evils of socialist administrations in
Brazil, the Lutheran church remains recalcitrant. In fact, the president of
ECLCB has sent a letter to all Lutheran ministers in Brazil threatening to sue
any Lutheran member who shares my articles denouncing Liberation Theology in
his denomination.
The Catholic Church in Brazil is not much
different from the Lutheran denomination. Its most prominent leaders do not
support conservative candidates.
By conservative I mean stances against the
homosexual agenda, abortion and supportive of life and family. Socialist
candidates, even when they are Catholic or Protestant, have a hard time to
embrace such stances.
Over one year ago, The Nation, the oldest
progressive magazine in the United States, had already recognized the
conservative impact of Brazilian evangelicals in a headline titled “Amid Crisis
in Brazil, the Evangelical Bloc Emerges as a Political Power.”
The Prosperity Gospel is a neo-Pentecostal
theology imported from the United States, the largest capitalist and Protestant
nation in the world. Even though there may be some exaggerations in its
teaching, its basic message is that the source of health, prosperity, job,
marriage and happiness is God, while progressives, both Protestants and
Catholics, tend to believe that government should be such source, and Christian
Marxism (Liberation Theology, Theology of Integral Mission, Social Gospel,
etc.) exerts its pressure to make the government to be a provider of people’s
needs, despising God’s role as the ultimate Provider.
Rodrigo Constantino, a Brazilian
conservative writer, published an article titled “Democracy and the Prosperity
Gospel,” written by Claudir Franciatto, who said,
“While
the large part of the Brazilian society that is not evangelical restricts
itself to call ministers, bishops and apostles of neo-Pentecostal (charismatic)
churches ‘thieves’… [those ministers, bishops and apostles] are bringing to
Brazil — secretly and imperceptibly — certain ‘Anglo-Saxon spirit’ of courage,
pioneerism and positive individual attitude, which shaped a nation like the
United States. This spirit was and is very necessary.”
Franciatto added,
“Neo-Pentecostal
ministers do not stimulate members to pray and remain sitting on their pews,
but to act — within and outside the church.”
This action outside the church is
largely conservative and capitalist.
The Catholic Church, ECLCB and other
traditional Protestant denominations in Brazil hate much more the Prosperity
Gospel, which is not embraced by them, than they hate Liberation Theology and
Theology of Integral Mission, which are embraced by them. They prefer any other
option, including occultist, than facing an evangelical reality different from
their particular “evangelical” delusion.
Yet, who is leading the conservative
revolution in Brazil are not Catholics or traditional Protestants. Neo-charismatics,
or neo-Pentecostals, are leading it.
Even though Brazil is the largest Catholic
nation in the world, the Catholic Church has not the conservative force that
neo-Pentecostals, who inherited such force from the United States, have to stem
the socialist tide in Brazil.
Venezuela may be a hard lesson to Brazil.
With a population 96% Catholic and a Catholic Church largely supportive of
Liberation Theology, Venezuelans elected about 20 years ago socialist Hugo
Chavez, who promised to take care of their needs. He promised to turn the
Venezuelan government in the provider of the Venezuelans’ needs. Today,
Venezuelans are starving. If Venezuela had a significant neo-Pentecostal
population, they would resist the socialist revolution embraced by the
Venezuelan Catholic Church.
The reality in Latin America is: the more
Catholic a nation is, the more socialist or inclined to socialism it is. Cuba,
Bolivia and Venezuela have all a common denominator: a massive Catholic
population. In the Cuban case, they had a massive Catholic population during
the communist revolution in the 1950s. Even today, Cuba is largely Catholic:
85% of its population is Catholic.
As the Latin American example shows,
Catholicism seems naturally to facilitate socialism. So it is not hard to
understand why in
the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s while the KGB supported the Catholic Church, the CIA
supported Pentecostal movements.
In Brazil Catholics are now some 60% of
the population and evangelicals, whose overwhelming majority is Pentecostal and
neo-Pentecostal, are some 30%.
If Brazil were 96% Catholic as Venezuela
is, the Brazilian people would be starving under socialism.
Other difference is sensitivity to
pro-life and pro-family values. For decades, the Catholic Church, backed by the
Lutheran and other traditional Protestant churches, has consistently supported
socialism in Brazil. Pentecostal and neo-Pentecostal churches supported it —
but much inconsistently —, because of the bad influence of former Rev. Fábio.
Yet, when neo-Pentecostals saw socialists in the government advocating abortion
and homosexuality, they changed course. Meanwhile, the Catholic Church, the
Lutheran Church and many Presbyterians did not learn from their sins: They have
largely kept their course loyal to socialism even after they saw their favorite
socialists promoting abortion and homosexuality.
The Catholic Church and ECLCB have never
learnt from their bad experiences with socialism. Meanwhile, neo-Pentecostal
televangelists learnt the hard way. But they did.
In spite of the neo-Pentecostals’ weaknesses,
especially in theology, Brazilians should praise God for neo-Pentecostals and
the Prosperity Gospel they brought from the United States. They are saving
Brazil from the socialism of Catholic Venezuela and the secularization of
Europe, where its traditional churches, both Catholic and Protestant, are
powerless to resist evil forces.
This is the difference of neo-Pentecostal churches:
They seek power from God and use it to influence the society. They do it while antagonized
by socialists, secularists, Catholics and traditional Protestants.
It is this power that the Big Media in Europe
and in the United States is seeing in action right now in Brazil.
This power is in action even in the United
States, where President Donald Trump, who was brought up as a Presbyterian, has
as his advisers Paula White and other adherents of the Prosperity Gospel. In
fact, the
same evangelical power that helped Trump in the United States is
helping Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, even though he is a Catholic. Evangelicals
are now the dominant conservative power in the United States and Brazil. And
the same
left-wing forces attacking in the U.S. elections are also attacking in the
Brazilian elections.
If Bolsonaro is going to win or not, I do
not know. But I know for sure that in the next elections, in the next years,
the evangelical power will be increasingly bigger, including in politics.
Brazil is going to have, sooner or later, a neo-Pentecostal president.
Where traditional Protestants and
Catholics are failing badly and even losing to socialism, secularism and
occultism, charismatics are advancing and conquering, even in politics. I do
not agree with everything of their theology, but I cannot deny that they are
impacting positively where no one else is having similar impact.
Thank God for charismatics, Pentecostals
and neo-Pentecostals and their love to seek God’s power and spiritual gifts!
Portuguese version of this article: Evangélicos
representam a maior força conservadora das eleições brasileiras
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