Evangelicals and Elections in a Less Catholic Country
Ana Carolina Evangelista is a researcher and executive director of the Institute for Religious Studies (ISER). This article was written for issue 126 of the WBO weekly newsletter, dated July 19, 2024. To subscribe to the newsletter, simply enter your email in the form at the footer of the article.
Religious diversification in Brazil has been occurring accompanied by continued evangelical growth. In the last forty years the percentage of evangelicals has increased fivefold and currently reaches 31 percent of the population over 16 years of age. At the same time, the number of Catholics has dropped significantly, and the number of "no religion" and other religions has also been growing. Adherence to the evangelical universe has grown in all social strata but is predominant at the base of the social pyramid in urban and peripheral areas. We are talking about a population that is mostly low-income, Black and female. An evangelical belt has been forming in the outskirts of Brazilian cities over the last forty years. And in this growing religious transition in Brazil, evangelicals not only stand out because of their numerical presence, but also for their religious activism. Surveys from Pew Research indicate that 60 percent of evangelicals attend church and pray daily, compared to just 23 percent of Catholics. Evangelicals also share their faith more outside of their church.
We are talking, therefore, about an evangelical population that is growing and is more active and proactive in its religious habits in a country that previously had a non-practicing Catholic majority.
In this scenario, the growth of the influence of religion in the Brazilian State is not a new debate, but it once again has gained greater visibility following the 2018 election, of President Jair Bolsonaro. This is the case not only because he had historical support from a single religious segment, namely evangelicals, or because he explicitly mobilized a broader Christian identity in the political campaign and in office, but also because we have witnessed a conjunction of political forces and ultraconservative agendas closely linked to religious morals. But what are the new elements that we observe in the relationship between religious groups and politics?
To answer this question, it is important on the one hand to look at the articulation of both religious and conservative political leaders who are present in the Brazilian State in a way that grows, gains greater operability, and is not restricted to the influence of evangelical forces. On the other hand, this phenomenon is based on the religious transition in Brazil in recent decades and the nuances of the evangelical presence in society and politics.
From the point of view of the institutional organization of religious groups in this less Catholic and more diverse country, this evangelical universe also has some nuances. The so-called “Brazilian evangelical church,” normally presented in the singular, is not a homogeneous and uniform group. It is a mosaic of churches and groups with different theologies, governance models, and practices. It has a diversity that is not as present in politics if we analyze the profile of representatives elected to national and subnational legislatures, for example.
This "more evangelical" Brazil is also a nation with the highest homicide rates in the world, with the highest average unemployment rate in recent history, and with the highest level of disbelief in the country's institutions. For the general population and also for the evangelical segment of the population, issues such as public security and access to income are now heavily on people’s radar screens. Research from the Institute of Religious Studies has identified the fact that believers, and also elected legislators from the evangelical universe in Brazil, are connected to these demands and social dynamics that do not only concern their religious identification. At the same time, these are demands that take on more punitive approaches, controlling order, morals, and the family.
And how does this show up in recent elections?
In electoral terms, the forces of the Brazilian extreme right perceive this clamor and present themselves as the camp that will bring alternatives to this scenario of multiple crises, fears, and losses. What we have seen since the elections in 2014, but more actively since 2018, is a twin movement: the political work that mobilizes the religious to communicate with new electoral bases and the religious leaders who use the space of institutional politics to impose morality of the population as a general agenda. It is not just, therefore, about certain religious groups seeking to impose their morals on the entire society via State policies, but it is also about the new facets of Brazilian conservatism using religion to communicate with the people and the popular classes to create symbolic and affective bonds with them.
Since 2010, we have observed continuities and changes in the spectrum of candidacies that mobilize religious identities in electoral processes. Candidates that adopt the religious title on the ballot, for example, have grown with each electoral cycle, and this growth is concentrated in those candidates with an evangelical identity. But this identification in name, in itself, has not guaranteed electoral success. In addition to this explicit identification at the ballot box, the mobilization of a more diffuse Christian identity has also grown in political campaigns and legislation, sometimes using biblical languages and symbols and, at others, mobilizing religious moralities in a broad way.
Still in electoral cycles, but looking at the motivating elements of the electorate, different research projects have identified that some axes more strongly mobilize this base, which is considered religious and Christian in the defense of morals, the family, control, and in promoting order in the field of public security, all of which is permeated by a strong anti-left position.
It is important to point out that these are not agendas, nor ways of reacting to social demands, that are present only among the electorate from an evangelical religious base. It is also present among voters of different conservative stripes, with or without religious identification. There are many agenda items linked to what we have come to call “Bolsonarism,” which is an identification not necessarily with the figure of President Bolsonaro, but with the agenda of his government that is defended by its bases of support. This was notable in the 2018 elections, with spillovers into the elections for mayors and governors in 2020 and 2022, even with Jair Bolsonaro's defeat for re-election. President Bolsonaro continued and continues to be an efficient electoral leader also through strong adherence to the agendas that elected him.
There are other key elements that remain powerful regarding the presence of Christians in elections in Brazil. On the one hand, it is important to note the role of large evangelical Pentecostal corporations, such as the Assemblies of God and the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God and their real influence in elections for the legislative and executive powers. On the other hand, coordination between evangelical and Catholic politicians and candidates is growing. This rapprochement between Catholic and ultra-conservative evangelical political leaders is not new, but it took on new forms from 2010 onwards, with the reactions to the Third National Human Rights Program (the PNDH-3) and its proposals for advancement in the recognition of women's rights and sexual diversity in the country. This alliance that takes place within the scope of civil society and politics has expanded to other agendas such as education and public security, which includes issues related to gender.
The reaction of these religious-based political forces to advances in the expansion of citizens’ rights was not the only factor for this adherence to political and electoral forces, both in Brazil and internationally, of the extreme or the "new" right. Politicians – religious or not – have mobilized religion and its more individualizing and dogmatic contemporary forms as a way of presenting alternatives that would allow for a return to order, predictability, security, and unity. This is what the sociologist Christina Vital da Cunha calls the "rhetoric of loss," and the political scientist Flavia Biroli analyzes in the light of the "moralization of uncertainties."
