Coronavirus in Brazil: in the shadows of the pandemic the power of evangelicals grows
According to a survey by the firm Datafolha, this religious group positively evaluates the President’s administration, since they are contrary to prevention and confinement measures
Brazil exceeded 60,000 deaths because of the coronavirus and 1.4 million infected, but in the midst of the deep crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, leaders, pastors, parliamentarians, media owners and evangelical faithful consolidated their political power .
These religious groups were crucial for the extreme right-wing leader, Jair Bolsonaro, in his path to reach the Presidency, with a speech loaded with intolerance, authoritarianism and references to God.
During the second round of the 2018 presidential elections, they provided Bolsonaro with around 11 million votes. The brazilian President, aware of the importance of the evangelical vote, does his best to continue maintaining their support.
“Understanding the weight of the presence of the evangelical sector in Bolsonaro’s project of power is essential so as to understand how he came to govern Brazil and how he maintains himself, despite the succession of scandals in his government and, also, in his family”, said the journalist Janaína Figueiredo, in an article published by La Nación.
Since he assumed the Presidency in January 2019, Bolsonaro proposed himself to govern as a representative of a national-evangelical extreme right, promoting authoritarianism, sectarianism, westernism, anti-communism and economic liberalism.
The power of the evangelicals
Brazil is the country with the largest number of catholics in the world, with a total of 120 million people who put their faith in the Catholic church . However, a study by the firm Datafolha indicates that while the number of catholics is reduced by 1.2% per year, evangelicals grow by an average of 0.8% per year.
Jair Bolsonaro took advantage of the rise of that religious community, had himself baptized as an evangelical, and formed a political alliance to arrive and now remain in power.
According to the results of the 2010 national census, 20% of the Brazilian population belongs to a Pentecostal or Neopentecostal church. However, the researcher Mariana Kalil, a professor at the Superior War College of the Ministry of Defense, considers that the percentage should be higher, which explains why Bolsonaro still maintains a base of popular support of 25%, despite his disastrous management in the political, economic, social and health fields.
Added to this, is the fact that 30% of Brazilian deputies are evangelicals.
Obstacle to the prevention of COVID-19
Mariana Kalil studies the role of evangelicals in the pandemic and one of her preliminary conclusions is that these groups were, from the beginning, an obstacle in the elaboration of a risk communication strategy that would allow the severity of the health crisis to be transmitted to the population, and the need to comply with social isolation as a preventive measure.
“Evangelicals speak of the prosperity theory and believe that with religion one heals and is saved. If the Government — as the former Health Minister Luiz Henrique Mandetta tried to do — had applied harsh social distancing policies, Bolsonaro would have been treated as a traitor”, she explained to La Nación.
In Brazil, the pandemic is alarmingly progressing, while the President has received countless criticisms for opposing confinement and social distancing and for having classified COVID-19 as “a little influenza”.
However, according to a survey by the Datafolha firm, evangelicals evaluate the President’s administration in a more positive way, since they are against preventive measures.
Massive ceremonies in the midst of a pandemic
Influential evangelical leaders such as Edir Macedo, from the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God, and Silas Malafaia, from the Assembly Church of God Victory in Christ, are great critics of social isolation in Brazil and are aligned with Bolsonaro.
In several evangelical temples, in-person services continue where, despite measures taken to keep distance between the faithful and give disinfectant gel at the entrance, up to 3,000 are observed in the same room in an ongoing pandemic.
“They believe that God can solve it. The idea is that ‘God provides everything’ and you don’t need to do isolation”, Cecília Mariz, professor of sociology of religion at the Rio de Janeiro State University, told BBC Mundo.
Mariz indicated that behind this position there are reasons of faith and economic interests of some churches that fear that the crisis will decrease prosperity and the contributions they receive from their followers. “If you stop working, it decreases your tithe”, she stressed.
Pastor and historian Brian Kibuuka agreed with Mariz and stated that, in addition to a shared vision of the world and moral values, the relationship between Bolsonaro and evangelicals is related to a millionaire business threatened by the coronavirus.
“The only way out, today, for evangelical churches is to put pressure on the government to resume all economic and social activities. They cannot sustain themselves with closed churches. In addition, many owe millions to the Receita Federal (tax collection agency)”, said the pastor.
Political support
Bolsonaro’s denialist policy in the face of the fact that Brazil is facing a deep sanitary crisis and is the second country with the most registered cases and deaths from COVID-19, behind the United States, has plummeted his level of approval. 44% of the population considers his government as “bad or lousy”, and the protests are getting stronger every day.
Faced with this rejection, the President has chosen to take refuge in his religious allies. Earlier this month, he welcomed several evangelical leaders to the Planalto Palace, including Edir Macedo, from the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God.
After the meeting, everyone prayed together for Bolsonaro and repudiated “the social and institutional upheaval”, at a time when marches in favor of democracy were taking place in cities like Rio and Sao Paulo.
The representatives of the evangelical community said that God is the one who ‘elects’ and, if necessary, removes the political authorities from the country.
“Days later, the local press revealed that in recent months the Ministry of Communication (Secom) had delivered more than 30 million reais (5.5 million dollars) to evangelical media, including the Record group, which belongs to Macedo”, reported La Nación.
Faithful electorate
In order for Bolsonaro to preserve the fidelity of the evangelical vote, he must hold firm to the political and social ideals of these groups.
For the deputy and pastor Marco Antonio Feliciano, of the Republican party (Republicanos), currently 90% of Bolsonaro’s social base is evangelical, and assured that “support will remain firm as long as the president defends God, the country, the family and does not get involved in corruption”.
Aligned with the rhetoric of the President and his ministers, Feliciano attacks those who demand a political management of the pandemic focused on the preservation of lives and not on the protection of economic power.
He assured that “the political radicalization reached such a point that the left and other sectors that want to remove the President are playing the worse, the better; and between Bolsonaro and the virus, they defend the virus”.
For the researcher Mariana Kalil, the president is a reflection of his grassroots of social and political support, and stated that although Bolsonaro continues to make serious mistakes and there is evidence of his mismanagement, the faithful of the evangelical churches will continue to sustain “their support in the faith and on that basis everything is forgiven”.
For Kalil, these sectors have collaborated with the campaign “aimed at normalizing the pandemic and the deaths, just as they have always normalized violence in public security policies”.
Pastor Brian Kibuuka recalled that during the 1970s, evangelicals prayed for the military who assumed power after the 1964 Coup d’etat, and “today they pray for Bolsonaro, amid constant threats to the democratic system”.
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