The ‘work of God’: the growth of Neo-Pentecostalism in Brazil

Rafael Antunes-Padilha

Figure 1: Pastor Sergio Von Helde, member of IURD, kicking the image of the Holy Mary live on TV in 1995. Source: newspaper “O Globo” archives

In the first part of this series of articles on neo-Pentecostalism in Brazil, I talked about how IURD (the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God) megachurches came to the forefront of the political struggle in the country. This blog will unpick the political and linguistic strategies used by the IURD in its pursuit of power in Brazil, both at the micro and macro levels.

In my previous piece, I explored how the smaller churches serve a specific purpose of disseminating the gospel as a tool of recruitment. Those spaces also provide instruction and education in a system of ‘obreiros’ (a casual Brazilian Portuguese word for ‘workers of God’), young people who help the leadership and dedicate themselves fully to the Church in both spiritual and technical matters. Within this system, young people considered to display eloquence and charisma are sent to religious schools to acquire formal education in the gospel, techniques of conversion and marketing, thus becoming pastors themselves and potential future politicians like the present mayor of Rio de Janeiro, Marcelo Crivella.

This system can be considered somewhat ‘tentacular’, due to its low entry-level requirements and capacity to be implemented in communities where the state is absent and infrastructure is scarce. Using this model the IURD has become the most politically successful church in the country. Its model is easily replicable and allows leaders to gather financial resources quickly, calling on believers to sacrifice their incomes in order to help with what the pastors call the ‘work for God’.^[1]

This bottom-up recruitment has been used in conjunction with an astute media strategy. In 1989, Edir Macedo, founder of the IURD, began to purchase shares of the second-largest television broadcaster in Brazil. These purchases have evolved into the media empire he possesses today. This television kingpin’s main product is soap operas inspired by the Bible, like the blockbuster “The Ten Commandments” (later re-released as a movie). Macedo’s power, acquired through the Church’s intensive and constant campaigns for tithes, has allowed him to organize and finance the controversial and conservative Brazilian Republican Party (PRB).^[2]

The infrastructure composed by these media assets, mega or cellular churches, and their presence in almost every town in Brazil, has allowed Macedo to elect not only the current mayor of Rio de Janeiro, but 30 Church members to the House of Representatives in the last election. The PRB is an important support base for President Jair Bolsonaro’s Congressional coalition, and it is worth mentioning that the Vice-President of the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies also comes from the PRB party’s lines.

One of the most controversial appointments to ministerial leadership is Damares Alves, who now commands the recently established Ministry of Human Rights, Family, and Women. This institution was specifically designed to appease the ‘Evangelical Coalition’ that helped Bolsonaro to reach the executive office in last October’s general elections. An evangelical pastor and lawyer, Damares has also been accumulating controversies in a fashion that would make any Trump supporter blush.

From lying about holding a graduate degree, to making explicitly racist statements during a sermon, she has been labelled a professional polemicist by many media outlets. She often preaches on the indecency that shaped and continues to format the political life of Brazil, and before the election in 2018, she contended that ‘the time of politics is over, now it is time for the Church to govern the country’.

The erosion of democratic institutions in Brazil is accompanied by a specific political and religious discourse that escapes the universe of rational arguments and finds fertile ground on social media. With the technological development of smartphones and social media apps, the ideological dispute is projected at the individual level, aiming to manipulate the subconscious, rather than engaging in broader, conventional debate. This individualism can be perceived through the proliferation of the notion of ‘fake-news’ and ‘post-truth’ in recent years.

Armed with this knowledge, Bolsonaro frequently engages with his followers through Twitter or Facebook livestreams, even ditching a meeting with the French ambassador to cut his hair live on social media. Notwithstanding technological and institutional changes in Brazil that have enabled the Neo-Pentecostal movement to grow, the increasing bureaucratization of Brazil’s trade unions has allowed social and cultural services previously provided by the labor movement to be incorporated within the churches’ missions.^[3]

The fracturing of historical forms of anti-systemic organizations has been accelerated by the juxtaposition of digital media, television and the proliferation of radical conservative religious groups like the Neo-Pentecostals.^[4] Crippling even further the social importance of traditional movements like unions and civil rights organizations, the new Labour Code ended the mandatory contribution to workers’ rights organizations (from both labourers and the State), thus increasing the importance of the Churches’ social programs and sense of collective action in poor and working class communities.

Figure 2: Jair Bolsonaro attending the “March for Jesus Christ” in 2019 performing his infamous “rifle gesture”. Source: diariodocentrodomundo.com.br

Although the Left and Liberal aisles of Brazil’s political life have tried to tie the government into a more “down-to-earth” and economically pragmatic agenda, considering the current recession that the country is going through, the Executive insists on pursuing a program that focuses on issues dear to conservative Christians. Laws establishing grounds for abortion, funding for science, and mainly women’s and LGBT+ have been constantly scratched out of the Civil Code by Bolsonaro and allies,  foretold by Bolsonaro’s acceptance speech, when he highlighted God as the ultimate force to rule above all Brazilians despite the country’s diverse religious beliefs, uniting Catholics and Evangelicals in the common goal to save the country from the ‘unethical’ left.

After the results of his election on October 28th, a prayer was held in the company of different members of the evangelical congressional coalition. Symbolic of the approximation of Bolsonaro with ultra-conservatives from the Neo-Pentecostal front, is his baptism by one Brazilian MP in the Jordan River in Israel, a holy place for Christians due to the baptism of Christ by John the Baptist. The moment was chosen for the launch of Bolsonaro’s presidential campaign and occurred at the same time as the first woman elected president by the Workers’ Party was impeached by the senate. The baptism was live streamed on social media and celebrated by many in the Neo-Pentecostal community:

Figure 3: Bolsonaro’s baptism in the Jordan River, accompanied by his sons and fellow politicians Eduardo and Flavio. The pastor is Everaldo, a former candidate for Brazil’s presidency and member of the Social-Christian Party. Source: extra.globo.com

Bolsonaro’s election showcases how far the evangelical speech reached in Brazil during the last years. Piggybacking the anti-left campaign in the medias, Neo-Pentecostal conservatism emerged in the political environment as a force to be reckoned with. This leverage, in terms of both membership growth and moralizing discourse, brought even greater conflict to the already divided Brazilian Catholics.

The veterans of the Charismatic Renewal – a movement that started in the United States in the 1960s that preaches for a spiritual renovation of the self, incorporating several elements of Pentecostalism like glossolalia (the act of speaking strange languages attributed to the Holy Spirit)—saw in Bolsonaro a positive shift towards the defense of eroded family values in the country. Therefore, by focusing on the customary agenda Bolsonaro manages to fissure the Catholic pole even further, not only by creating controversies that catches the public minds, but pitching particular groups within Catholicism against each other.

Neo-Pentecostal politicians often forge lobbying fronts with those Conservative Catholics, in order to constrain what they believe to be an attempt by leftists to instil “gender ideology” inside public schools. This blatant homophobia is perceived in this group’s organisation against the bill of education on combating homophobia. Called ‘School without Homophobia’, the Ministry of Education program was blocked in congress as constituting a “Gay Kit”, allegedly intended to turn kids into ‘homosexuals’.

From the varied perspective of left-Catholics, the radicalization of the Christian-right further deepens the differences between pro-LGBTQ, pro-Social Justice Catholics, and attempts by Pope Francis to reform and open the Church. In some cases, ultra-conservative leagues of Catholics started to name and shame progressive priests, and call out the Catholic Universities in Brazil for their complacency towards ‘communist-plagued’ academic departments.

However, the crown jewel of the Neo-Pentecostal strategic path to power is ultimately the president’s willingness to support their agenda, as the Commander-in-Chief Bolsonaro holds the power to nominate justices of the Supreme Court. Often, the conservatism of the National Congress faces opposition from the Federal Justices, like last May when the judges voted in favor of criminalizing homophobic offenses and making transphobia and hate killings severe felonies.

Soon after, speaking to an audience of members of Brazil’s largest evangelical denomination, the Assembly of God Church in Brazilia, Bolsonaro spoke about  nominating an evangelical Federal Justice. From the president’s perspective, the Supreme Court is trying to overrule Congress and run the country on their own. The opportunity to have a Supreme Court judge who promotes confessional votes in key legislations like the Law Against Homophobia is among one of the most important strategies to be deployed in order to turn Brazil into a theocratic country.

The holy alliance between authoritarians and the evangelical conservative movement must be closely followed by progressives and socialists alike. The present developments in Brazil can be perceived as a new blueprint for Christian, right-wing extremism to gain a foothold on power. The bridgehead of the alt-right lies in Christian conservatism, bringing back the importance of the religious as a space for political dispute, one in which the left still needs to learn how to operate.

Rafael Antunes Padilha is a Bachelor in Social Sciences from the University of São Paulo, with majors in Sociology, Political Science and Cultural Anthropology. His bachelor’s thesis was in Rural and Political Anthropology, focusing  on the economic dynamics of Italian Settler descendants in Brazil. Last August, Rafael graduated from the Pennsylvania State University in a Masters in Labour and Global Worker’s Rights (with a thesis on the Oaxacan labour movement and their struggle for broader democracy). He has just started a second masters, this time in Contemporary Philosophy at the University of Porto.

 

References

[1]https://medium.com/instituto-mosaico/o-suposto-projeto-de-poder-dos-evang%C3%A9licos-3fad45301e33

[2] A ‘tithe’ in the context of the IURD consists of a financial gift to the Church, presented as one of the ways to fall into God’s grace. Such financial contributions can collectively amount to millions of dollars.

[3] Silver, B. J. (2003). Forces of labor: workers’ movements and globalization since 1870. Cambridge University Press.

[4] https://theintercept.com/2019/01/31/plano-dominacao-evangelico/

Neo-Pentecostal Power in Brazil – Democratic Decay and the “Purification” of Politics

Rafael Antunes Padilha

Jair Messias Bolsonaro, a former Army Captain of the Brazilian Army, was recently elected President of the largest Latin American nation. Wielding the motto ‘Brazil above all, God above everyone!’, Bolsonaro has achieved infamy worldwide due to his bigoted, xenophobic and openly homophobic statements. On top of that, he reached the newspapers headlines over his anti-conservationist approach towards Brazil’s natural resources.

Recent investigations uncovered an active stance of the Executive in Chief, that ended up providing institutional backup to cattle and soy farmers and their eerie intentions of setting the Amazon rainforest in flames, in what has been called in Brazil ‘a day of fire‘. The country’s current trend of far-right populism and attacks against minorities has thrown Brazil into the international spotlight, sparking public debates over human rights and democratic decay. Despite claiming to be Catholic, the president typically peddles violent discourses to his most hardened supporters: the neo-Pentecostal Christians.

Neo-Pentecostal churches are a relatively recent episode in Brazil’s religious history. Pentecostalism emerged in the country throughout the 1970s and has had a steady membership growth of 7.9% a year; Neo-Pentecostals constitute 65% of all self-proclaimed evangelicals.[1] The rise of Neo-Pentecostal denominations in the country brought a new political force into the mainstream, in the form of several political parties created directly by, or with support from churches in the last twenty years.

Bolsonaro today is perceived by pastors and followers as a catalyst of change in a corrupt Brazil. Bolsonaro’s middle-name is Messias (Messiah) and his social media followers nicknamed him ‘the Myth’. Such a movement evokes the historical phenomenon of messianism in Brazilian politics, which has seen two civil wars attempt to suppress messianic popular figures in the countryside (namely the Canudos War in the 19th Century and the Contestado War in the 1910s).[2] The figure of a savior that shall free the poor masses from their sorrow and finally fulfill the national destiny of glory is an ever-present topos in the Brazilian popular imaginary.

In the present day, there is a profusion of different churches, denominations and eclectic liturgies in the local Pentecostal spectrum. No central authority has been established to bring coherence to the Evangelical Neo-Pentecostal movements’ desires and aims. However, there are among the notorious Televangelical denominations a comprehensive set of successful evangelising tactics that are similar in shape or form.

Figure 1. The multimillion Universal Church of God’s Kingdom Temple of King Solomon in Sao Paulo State. Source: Wikipedia

The Neo Pentecostals in Brazil differ from the Charismatics in the USA by their successful business model that produces strong geographical capillarity. Brazilian neo-Pentecostal megachurches not only manage to organize political parties but have also reached the highest echelons of the State’s administration, from army generals to rank-and-file nominees of ministerial cabinets. Today, local churches like the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God  (IURD in the Brazilian Portuguese acronym), founded by the Rio de Janeiro born Edir Macedo in 1977, and the International Church of God’s Grace, acquired diplomatic passports for their pastors through their connections in the Ministry of Foreign relations, as well as privileges to expand their operations beyond the country’s borders.

As founder of the IURD, Edir Macedo is the precursor of the neo-Pentecostal movement in the country in its present form, and also the architect of the managerial culture within the religious structures. Macedo is vocal in his defense of the ‘Gospel of Prosperity’, according to which, the church’s mission is to obtain happiness and material gains in the earthly life for its flock. A huge component of the church’s activities lies in encouraging generous monetary donations from the followers of the church, which it presents as one of the ways to fall into God’s grace. Those financial gifts are commonly named tithes and can collectively amount to millions of dollars or even to real estate properties.

Figure 2. Edir Macedo, owner of the Universal Church. Source: revistaforum.com.br

Such economic power afforded the IURD a powerful institutional leverage during the 1990s and 2000s that has been built, brick by brick, with the support ofthe center-left Workers’ Party. This alliance between the social democratic left and the largest evangelical groups to pursue electoral victories, ended up opening the gates of the public debate to more conservative discursive repertoires, like the rise of homophobic discourse in Brazil. The former head of the Executive branch of the government for the Workers’ Party, Luis Inácio (Lula) da Silva – a Catholic whose views were influenced by his brother, a friar in the Theology of Liberation – saw in the evangelical demographic an opportunity to advertise outside the oppositional, elitist mainstream media to a more left-leaning administration.[3] Using pastors and TV channels under evangelical ownership, the Workers’ Party managed to advertise its governmental agenda to the poor masses.

With such a formidable institutional framework boosting their religious infrastructure, the largest evangelical churches developed a robust model of conversion and congregation that allowed them to project power overseas, facilitated by the leniency of the State. From Africa, Europe and North-America, the IURD alone now has a foothold in 180 countries and claims to have 12 million active members. In order to amass large numbers of followers, they tend to focus on marginalized and disenfranchised groups (economically and racially).

In the cases of Brazil and Mozambique, religious traditions such as Candomblé (and other animist expressions) are cast as scapegoats for all the evils and hardships that people face in their lives. I witnessed this phenomenon when accompanying a relative in one IURD church service. On the ‘Altar’, the pastor summoned a family from the region whose son was addicted to drugs. Socio-economic problems like violence, substance abuse and poverty are then treated as the work of Exú, an important and traditional figure for religions of the Yoruba matrix in Brazil. The young man, according to the pastor, had attended a ritual in a terreiro (a religious space for Afro-Brazilian beliefs) because of a girlfriend who forced him to partake in ‘demonic’ Candomblé practices and rites. That contact allegedly let the evil spirits take his soul and led him to use cocaine and other substances.

This approximation of different beliefs to evil is neither a novelty, nor usually authentic. These ‘testimonies’ or rituals of cure and exorcism are very often a ‘make-believe’ played by hired actors that appear in different churches or televangelical shows. In a not so remote past, Our Lady of Aparecida (Patron Saint of Brazil and one of the Saints with the largest group of followers in the world) was also associated by IURD with the devil and pointed out as the ultimate cause of all Brazil’s underdevelopment and suffering. The clear message of Pastors and evangelical churches’ leadership is to demonize any competitor in the religious marketplace.

The heavy emphasis of IURD churches on planned parenthood (here meaning the usage of birth control pills, imposition of one single child for each couple and going further to support abortion in some cases) and the tithe can be explained as an attempt to convert marginalized individuals into economic agents for the church, that being, a way of controlling the followers’ family budget expenditures in order to keep the money flow to the institution as strong and stable as possible. The tithe is a source of direct income transfer from the members, like a pension, that enable the religious organisations to design services to improve the quality of living of many of the churches’ members.

In a country like Brazil, where despite the average global real increase of wages above inflation has improved millions of peoples’ lives, the economic toll in middle-income families is still expensive. The high costs of private healthcare and education are the main destination of families’ incomes, considering the poor quality of the public services available. In that manner, the church (IURD) sees larger families as a challenge to their campaigns for large sums of tithes. If one has too many mouths to feed, by the end of the month they will not have enough to give as a contribution to the church.

For the Brazilian philosopher Marilena Chauí, the mixing of the spiritual and the economic, and the heavy focus on the entrepreneurial ideology of late capitalism, have guaranteed the survival of the Gospel of Prosperity. According to the IURD’s ‘Theology of Neoliberalism’, the world we live in is the final work of God, and we should therefore manage it in order to unleash prosperity and wealth to all.

One aspect usually disregarded by the Brazilian Left (represented by the Workers’ Party and Socialism and Liberty Party, the main left in Congress), is that the church has successfully empowered commonly marginalized communities with this ideology. With the economic growth of the 2000s, the harnessing of those groups by the evangelical denominations – through the proliferation of small devotional spaces and an evangelical-only network of clothing, food, and furniture, accompanied by the decline of the Catholic Church that refuses to further its reforms and compete in equal standards with the new Christian options in the religious market – produced a circular exchange of money and goods strengthening the new religious organisation itself. Whereas Catholics tend to support more charitable and donation-driven practices, evangelical denominations dedicate resources and efforts in developing a welfare system for their followers under a tight and authoritarian grip of the church’s leadership.

However, the economic boom that Brazil experienced during the years of the  Workers’ Party government (2002-2016) was depicted by the churches not as a direct consequence of a robust democracy and progressive policies, but rather as the result of strictly individual-centered efforts. In a broader sense, whilst the Left decided to relax their grassroots strategies and working-class commitments of the past, even departing from their alliances with progressive Catholics, Neo-Pentecostal televangelical groups used the Left’s traditional anti-hegemonic strategies to conquer a bigger flock. Garages were converted into small temples in every favela, and pastors began to occupy a central role within social-movements (trade unions, prison community rights organisations and anti-poverty groups) and institutions like the notorious Landless Workers’ Movements.

On the surface, the doctrine of ‘brother votes for brother’ implemented by the Evangelical coalition subsumes national politics into a theocratic system that disables the secular qualities of the Brazilian State. However, in reality, the strategic positioning of Neo-Pentecostal candidates (usually bishops), comes as a necessary step in the acquisition of financial resources or tax deductions for the churches’ benefit. The last stage of the political neo-Pentecostal movement pursues the steering of the presidential nomination for the Supreme Court of Justice. Success in this objective could enable ultra-conservative Brazilians to appoint someone who supports their votes as a judge under the Confessional Practice, which is the conscious decision of a policy-maker or judge to make decisions based on the bible rather than the constitution and liberal civil rights.

This demographic shift in the judiciary could result in the blockage of the relatively progressive current nominated bench of the Court, that during the last years criminalized homophobia, approved the bill on same sex marriage, and is about to vote on the decriminalization of cannabis. The most dangerous aspect of this intertwining of Church and State is the presumption of a fixed Christian morality above all. The dynamics of liberal democracy are based upon the balance of forces and different opinions meeting halfway. If the laws, customs and desirable behaviours are written in stone by some kind of ‘enlightened’ authority, diversity is then rendered as deviance. The new social-political landscape of Brazil poses a threat not only to the rules of the democratic game, but also to other religious minorities or dissident voices within Christendom.

Rafael Antunes Padilha is a Bachelor in Social Sciences from the University of São Paulo, with majors in Sociology, Political Science and Cultural Anthropology. His bachelor’s thesis was in Rural and Political Anthropology, focusing  on the economic dynamics of Italian Settler’s descendents in Brazil. Last August, Rafael graduated from the Pennsylvania State University in a Masters in Labour and Global Worker’s Rights (with a thesis on the Oaxacan labor movement and their struggle for broader democracy) after a brief period working in South America with Corporate Social Responsability, and freelance research for organisations such as the ILO. Currently, he is preparing to start a second masters, this time in Contemporary Philosophy at the University of Porto.

References

[1] P. Semán, ‘¿Quiénes son? ¿Por qué crecen? ¿En qué creen?: Pentecostalismo y política en América Latina’, Nueva Sociedad, 280 (2019), pp. 26-46.

[2] For more on the War of Canudos, see https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0205w53; For the Contestado War, see https://www.imdb.com/videoplayer/vi3716720153 and T.A. Diacon, Millenarian vision, capitalist reality: Brazil’s Contestado rebellion, 1912–1916, (Duke University Press, 1991).

[3] The ‘Theology of Liberation’ is the embracing by some Roman Catholics priests in Latin America of Karl Marx’s critique of Capitalism. According to this theology, the Church should have a ‘preferential option for the poor’ and first satisfy their physical, social and economic needs before attending spiritual necessities. For more information, I cannot recommend enough the book Introducing Liberation Theologyby Leonardo Boff and his brother Clodovis Boff.