The Kingdom and the Outpost of Evangelical Power in Latin America | Opinion

The story of a family at the head of an evangelical church, immersed in a dark web of power that intertwines the most murky politics, justice, the business world and the intelligence services, made El Reino the series that was all the rage of the moment. But beyond its remarkable cinematographic virtues, the thriller manages to debate a key phenomenon: the accelerated incursion of Evangelical churches in Latin American politics.

In recent decades, there has been a demographic transformation in the religiosity of the continent, marked by the collapse of the Catholic Church and the dizzying rise of the evangelical population, which rose from 3% to over 20% in 60 years. Although the evangelical world encompasses a diversity of currents and faiths, the neo-Pentecostals are the protagonists of this development and of the commitment to take over the institution.

Its main success was the penetration into the working-class neighborhoods and the ability to contain the vulnerable, channeling hopelessness and despair. The same in the prisons. They challenge charismatic leaders with the oratory, generating an emotional bond and an enviable sense of belonging. They complete their territorial deployment with these mega-churches in lavish buildings in urban centers, radio and television stations, schools, musical groups, clothing and more. A whole cultural industry which reinforces its massiveness.

From this massiveness and this magnetism of its pastors and telepreachers, its leaders perceived the effectiveness of the “evangelical vote” and began to take legislative or local positions, almost always from spaces of right and far right. Faced with the growing discredit of traditional parties, they appear as the renewed face of conservative forces in fight against the expansion of rights like legal abortion or equal marriage.

The boundaries between religion and politics have always been blurred. But the ambition of this ecclesiastical branch to dominate power structures, as supports of the neoliberal creed and the front line of the anti-rights troop, shows a strong revival of religion as a political tool.

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Evangelicals separated from the Catholic Church with the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century. At the beginning of the 20th century, the Pentecostal current emerged in the United States, which spread to Latin America in the 1970s to counterbalance the advance of liberation theology. In 1982, he became president of Guatemala – by a sudden – the military and evangelical pastor José Efraín Ríos Montt, years later convicted of genocide.

Another antecedent bears the imprint of another dictator, the Peruvian-Japanese Alberto Fujimori, who won the 1990 presidential elections thanks to the support of some evangelical churches. Then he appointed Carlos García, pastor of the Baptist Church, as vice-president, and about fifty evangelical faithful were candidates in Congress for his party. Thirty years later, the Union of Evangelical Christian Churches played hard on daughter Keiko’s third – and frustrated – attempt to become president.

But it was without a doubt Brazil the nucleus of expansion of evangelical churches in South America, spread pastors throughout the region. It is also the country with the greatest political involvement, notably on the part of the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God and its powerful multimedia Grupo Record.

A power that is structured around the “Bible bench”, with dozens of legislators, and who succeeded in placing the Pastor Marcelo Crivella as Mayor of Rio de Janeiro, fired and jailed in 2020 for corruption. The greatest milestone of evangelical power was its role in the triumph of Jair Messias Bolsonaro, who was baptized in the Jordan River by an evangelical pastor. Last week, Bolsonaro proposed a pastor to the Supreme Court to keep his promise to appoint a “terribly evangelical” judge.

The ecclesiastical factor was also a protagonist of the coup in Bolivia in 2019. “The Bible returns to the Palace,” shouted de facto President Jeanine ñez, smiling, lifting a giant copy as she took office surrounded by military. The day before, businessman Luis Fernando Camacho, the main promoter of the coup, posed on his knees in the same Government House, also with a Bible in hand: “The Pachamama will never return to the Palace. Bolivia belongs to Christ ”. The coup plot had the support of the Church and evangelical leaders.

Central America is another epicenter of the evangelical foray in the political arena. Guatemala had as president between 2016 and 2020 the evangelical theologian Jimmy Morales, in Costa Rica the evangelical preacher Fabricio Alvarado arrived at the poll in 2018 and in Salvador Nayib Bukele governs, another representative of this church who came to militarize the Congress in shouting prayers and preaching.

In Colombia, evangelical pastors – allies of former President Álvaro Uribe – showed their weight in the ballot box when they pushed for NO during the plebiscite to ratify the Peace Agreement between the government and the FARC in 2016.

Although some progressive leaders like Lula or Andrés Manuel López Obrador have also made alliances with evangelical sectors, the hegemony of the reactionary orientation is clear, with the case of support for Donald Trump as the maximum expression.

The crusade is global and aims at the dispute of meanings. “The explosive growth of the neo-Pentecostal current in Latin America constitutes a very effective conservative emergency at the level of micropolitics, that is to say in the struggle for the constitution of contemporary subjectivities”, analyzes a complete report of the Institute. tricontinental.

Argentina: the future has arrived

The Kingdom is a fiction. “But a fiction which contains elements drawn from realities”, explains its director Marcelo Piñeyro. Realities which, in Argentina, still do not show a superlative dimension. For the moment. The strongest bet was the street mobilization against the legalization of abortion, in addition to a failed attempt to position the deputy of Salta Alfredo Olmedo in 2018.

The Christian Alliance of Evangelical Churches (ACIERA), which came out with the top caps against the series, has forged good links with several leaders of Ensemble pour le changer; In 2019, the macrismo appointed six evangelicals to Congress, and former military officer Juan José Gómez Centurión had Cynthia Hotton, an evangelical leader, as his running mate. For this year’s legislative elections, dozens of evangelical candidates are being presented, both in the JXC and in new spaces like the Frente + Valores or the Celeste Party. As in other latitudes, the leap to the politics of evangelical power comes from the right.

Gerardo Szalkowicz is editor-in-chief of NODAL. Author of the book “América Latina. Traces and challenges of the progressive cycle ”. He hosts the radio show “Al sur del Río Bravo”.