The Rise of Evangelical Political Power in Brazil

Brazil's evangelical Protestant, chiefly Pentecostal and neo-Pentecostal, population has grown from a small minority in the mid-twentieth century to a major political and cultural force today, driven substantially by churches such as the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God, founded in 1977 by Edir Macedo, which built a large media empire including television networks and has translated religious growth directly into organized political representation through the evangelical caucus, one of the Brazilian Congress's largest and most disciplined voting blocs on questions of sexuality, family law and religious liberty. This evangelical political rise contributed significantly to the 2018 election of President Jair Bolsonaro, who campaigned explicitly on evangelical-aligned social positions despite his own nominal Catholic background, cementing an alliance between conservative evangelical leadership and right-wing politics that reshaped Brazilian electoral coalitions built for decades around Catholic-linked liberation theology and labor movements.

Brazil's constitution guarantees religious freedom and maintains separation of church and state since a republican 1891 constitution ended the Catholic Church's colonial and imperial-era establishment, though Afro-Brazilian religious communities, including Candomble terreiros, report continuing incidents of vandalism and violence, often linked to a subset of evangelical actors who characterize these traditions as demonic.