The battle for the evangelical vote: why Lula can still challenge Flavio Bolsonaro in a key stronghold

SAN PAULO.– "Maybe your daughter started college, or your son switched to a different school, and now they bring crazy ideas home that can destroy your family. That is the devil trying to enter your home. Pray with me and tell the devil: Not here, you will not get in today!" shouts a pastor at the Temple of Solomon in São Paulo, world headquarters of the evangelist Universal Church of the Kingdom of God, at a Thursday night event attended by LA NACION. At the gathering, titled "Therapy of Love," around 2,000 people raise their hands in clear religious fervor and comply with the request. In an election in which the leading candidates are practically in a statistical tie, and in a country well aware of the importance of the evangelical vote, both Brazil's current president and Workers' Party (PT) candidate, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, and the senator and representative of the Liberal Party (PL), Flavio Bolsonaro, are competing for that sector, which could prove key to next Sunday's election. According to a latest Datafolha poll published Thursday, the son of the former president convicted for attempted coup fluctuates between 47% and 52% of voting intention among evangelicals, while the leftist leader gets 26% of the support. But as Brazilians increasingly reject attempts at direct political influence by their pastors, and as factors unrelated to religion such as race, gender and socioeconomic status come into play, the contest for the evangelical vote is more open than it appears. The discreet influence of pastorsThe political history of evangelical groups in Brazil is not new, and since their emergence on the scene in the 1980s, the sector has managed not only to influence elections but also to gain suprapartisan political representation in Congress in the form of the Evangelical Parliamentary Front (FPE). According to experts consulted by LA NACION, it used to be common for pastors to use the spaces of their churches to directly present their official candidates during religious rites and to distribute campaign material in the temples themselves. Flavio Bolsonaro greets his supporters during a campaign event in Belém, Pará state, BrazilFilipe Bispo - APHowever, as Brazilian courts began to consider the instrumentalization of faith in churches as an abuse of political and economic power and closed the legal circle around the pastors' actions, they began seeking to influence their faithful in more discreet ways. Today, religious leaders "move away from the logic of the Church's official candidacies and begin to support candidates who defend ideas, values and customs capable of mobilizing their faithful, such as the defense of the traditional family, the rejection of feminist agendas and in favor of gender diversity, and the defense of religious freedom," Cleto Junior Pinto de Abreu, who holds a PhD in Sociology from the University of São Paulo (USP) and is a member of the Nucleus of Religions in the Contemporary World at Cebrap, told LA NACION. According to the expert, the change in the way influence is exercised means religious leaders avoid explicitly mentioning a favorite political figure, but help link certain candidacies with a shared identity, emphasizing ideas such as spiritual warfare and dominion theology. This new approach also responds to Brazilians' rejection of attempts to influence their partisan choices in religious spaces. According to data from the research "Religion and public life in Brazil" published in September by the Institute of Religious Studies (ISER), 82% of respondents disapprove of discussing politics in churches, 83% of being told whom to vote for, and 90% disapprove of candidates' campaigns in religious communities. Flavio Bolsonaro, center left, speaks with his supporters during a campaign event in Rio de Janeiro, BrazilSilvia Izquierdo - APAt no point during the nearly two hours that LA NACION was present at Thursday's event did the pastor refer to the imminent elections or to any candidate's campaign. Nevertheless, calls to keep the family united multiplied, along with demonizations of divorce and rejection of "strange" or "different" ideas. According to Abreu, despite the resistance of some faithful and minority groups within evangelicalism, this type of discourse effectively means this electorate has a greater inclination to vote for conservative and right-wing candidates. "That does not mean that leaders can automatically determine the vote of the faithful, but that they contribute to orienting the issues, values and identities from which those decisions are made," the expert explained. Leaving the temple, Alessandro, around 45 years old, appeared very convinced of his vote in a conversation with LA NACION. Flavio Bolsonaro campaigning in São Paulo, BrazilAllison Sales - AP"Bolsonaro is going to win! The one we have in government is a brute who is good for nothing. With the father we were already better off, now Flavio has to win, he is a family man, a decent man," he said when asked about his preference for Sunday. The contest for the evangelical voteIn the final stretch of the campaigns, the contest for religious votes moved to the center of the stage when word spread that Flavio, himself an evangelical, intended to strip the title of patroness of Brazil from one of the main symbols of Catholicism in the country, Nossa Senhora Aparecida (Our Lady of Aparecida). Although the PL candidate quickly came out to reject that version, and Lula himself took advantage of his campaign events to assure that in a possible fourth term the figure would keep her privileged status, the incident demonstrates how present the religious factor and the dichotomy between evangelicals and Catholics are in both campaigns. In principle, the experts consulted by LA NACION agree that Lula and the PT are strong in Catholicism and have difficulty making inroads in the evangelical segment, while the Bolsonaro family has its stronghold within the latter sector. Lula greets his supporters during a campaign walk through downtown Rio de Janeiro, BrazilMAURO PIMENTEL - AFPNevertheless, all of them qualify the direct association of a religious profession and preference for a candidate, as well as the homogeneity of the vote of either religious identity. "Evangelicals are not separated from national life, so the issue of security, among others, is one of the factors that have an impact. When we also cross different variables in the polls we see, for example, that among Black evangelicals support for Lula is greater than among white evangelicals," Clemir Fernandes, a sociologist and director of articulation at ISER, told LA NACION. The expert explained that the way voters evaluate proposals and policies on the issues most important to the electorate—according to a poll by the consultancy Quaest last month, security, the economy, health and corruption—will influence their vote regardless of their religious profession. Furthermore, Fernandes pointed out that other factors such as race, belonging to a socioeconomic sector, gender or region often have more impact on the vote than religion. A Lula supporter poses for a photo while holding a flag of the Brazilian president during a campaign walk through downtown Rio de Janeiro, BrazilMAURO PIMENTEL - AFPIn that sense, perhaps the biggest bet of Lula's government to win the favor of evangelicals has been a recent series of measures with high political impact, such as the increase announced two weeks ago in the main social assistance program, Bolsa Família, or a new phase of the debt renegotiation program Desenrola. Along the same lines, data from the ISER research show that 90% of the Brazilian population agrees that online betting generates addiction and destroys families, so the recent prohibition and push to criminalize the sector by the PT government could prove beneficial for its performance in the election. The relationship with the BolsonarosAt the same time, evangelicalism's preference for the Bolsonaro family could be affected, in part, by the selection of Flavio as candidate. According to Juliano Spyer, a Brazilian anthropologist specializing in evangelical Christianity, who spoke to LA NACION, the former president's eldest son "is not a name respected by the pastors of the large denominations, and he does not have the closeness or familiarity with the faith that, for example, Michelle Bolsonaro has," the Brazilian politician and wife of Jair Bolsonaro. In this regard, the expert explained that even the sector's link with Bolsonaro father himself was not direct but through intermediaries, "especially with pastor Silas Malafaia, as a political intermediary with other national figures linked to the same faith, and with Michelle, in the relationship with the common believer through the internet and, especially, with women." Bolsonaro at an event with evangelicalsArchiveThis possibility of a split between the Bolsonaros and evangelicalism becomes even clearer when we look at how this religious sector's partisan support has shifted throughout history. In 1989, in his first run for the presidency, Lula was the object of demonization and rejection by Pentecostal pastors. The scenario changed with the PT leader's presidential victory in 2002, when he obtained the support of important evangelical religious leaders. The leftist leader kept that backing during his first two governments, although it began to destabilize throughout the 2000s, a process that intensified after Dilma Rousseff's election in 2010. From then on, evangelicalism began to shift toward other sectors and ended up being decisive in Jair Bolsonaro's election in 2018. Followers of Flavio Bolsonaro advance with a framed image of his father during a campaign event in Rio de Janeiro, BrazilSilvia Izquierdo - APThus, according to experts, the sector's support for Lula during his first terms should be understood as a pragmatic decision and not as an ideological bet. Which is why an expert like Abreu can believe that the eldest son of the Bolsonaro clan may still have hope. "For these sectors, the election of [Jair] Bolsonaro represented an advance in what they understand as a spiritual war between Good and Evil. To the extent that the political dispute came to be framed as a spiritual battle, Bolsonarism among evangelicals was able to survive the absence of [Jair] Bolsonaro from the contest, shifting toward other names within the political field," the sociologist noted. BrazilElections in BrazilLula da Silva