BRASILIA (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 per cent of Brazil’s 200 million people are Roman Catholics but evangelicals are rapidly gaining followers and power.
They grew from 5 per cent of the population in 1970 to more than 22 per cent 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 per cent to 38 per cent 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 US 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 foetuses 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.
Many evangelicals believe their churches are uniquely equipped to cleanse politics – and society at large.
In a shabby shopping centre in the center of Brazil’s capital, two theatres 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 US missionaries a century ago.
These days, virtually every town and neighbourhood 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.
