the rise of evangelicals in Brazil: Q&A with Ed René Kivitz
Pastor Ed René Kivitz is a senior pastor of Agua Branca Baptist Church in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Photo by Wesley Parnell.
BRASILIA — The “empowerment” of the so-called Brazilian evangelical church must be written like this — in quotes — because when religion allows itself to become a political instrument of control, it loses credibility. Also, it betrays the cause of the true gospel.
Baptist theologian and pastor Ed René Kivitz, author of this analysis, is a jarring voice among the best-known evangelical leaders who often make headlines in Brazil — the pastors-deputies, ministers, or owners of television channels who haunt important offices of the federal government, in Brasília, the country’s capital.
The number of evangelicals already exceeds 30% of the Brazilian population, with a 61% increase in the decade ending in 2010, according to research institutes Datafolha and IBGE. Their political representation has also grown. This is the most remarkable change in religious profile ever recorded in a country known as the largest Catholic nation in the world — with over 100 million who identify as Catholic. Demographer José Eustáquio Diniz Alves, from IBGE's National School of Statistical Sciences, thinks Catholics will cease to be a majority in Brazil by 2030, when evangelicals will predominate in the Brazilian religious framework.
Having a critical view of the related ascension of evangelical politicians, especially the ones linked to “Bancada Evangélica” — a group of 94 congressmen known for their conservative agenda — Kivitz is often booked to give talks and lectures across the country, in which he reaffirms the right of Christians to defend their values in the public sphere but not to impose them on the whole of society. “Religious logic is by definition anti-plurality and opposed to diversity,” he says.
For the theologian, by using the name of God at all times in his speeches, President Jair Bolsonaro commits sacrilege. “The use of the Bible and the god-name speak to dimensions of the human unconscious that no other kind of speech can reach. Appealing to the name of God and the symbolic capital of religion implies sacrilege, for God ceases to be an end and becomes a means,” Kivitz said in an interview with Religion Unplugged about the evangelical rise and its implications for Brazilian society.
The number of evangelicals is growing like never before in Brazil, and the influence of church seems to have reached its peak. The Bolsonaro government has pastors in high positions and these religions have never had such political power. What impacts does this movement have for the evangelical church more broadly?
Ed René Kivitz: Evangelical representations have for the first time in their history in Brazil the possibility of using the political power of the state to affect the moral guidelines based on their religious convictions. On the other hand, the private space of religion operates as a public space for political bargain: the pulpit becomes a stage, the March for Jesus [annual event that calls thousands of evangelical Christians to the streets in Sao Paulo] is indeed a March for President, congresses and religious events begin to promote and defend the Government, and become — directly and indirectly spaces of ideological formation of power. The evangelical contingent is now seen and instrumentalized as a useful and differentiated electoral mass, which vulgarizes religious experience, reduced to the strategic-electoral aesthetic. When a state and a government come to be seen with the arms of the agendas and interests of a religious segment, the degeneration is twofold, the public and the experience of faith.
President Bolsonaro often quotes from the passage of the Gospel of John, which states that the truth sets free. The motto of his campaign was also "Brazil above all, God above everyone". Does this kind of speech contribute to the strengthening of the evangelical church? Why?
Kivitz: The use of the biblical text is a discursive strategy to establish ideological link with the conservative Christian religious public. The use of the bible and the name of God speak to dimensions of the human unconscious that no other kind of speech can reach. Appealing to the name of God and the symbolic capital of religion implies sacrilege, for God ceases to be an end and becomes a means. In this sense, the empowerment of the so-called evangelical church must be in quotation marks, for religion captured for purposes extrinsic to its identity will always lose its credibility. Evangelicals dazzled by the apparent benefits that membership of the government gives them are in fact betraying the cause of the Gospel.
What do you mean by “betraying the cause of the Gospel”?
Kivitz: To betray the cause of the Gospel is to throw away the credibility and (the remaining) authority of the evangelical church: to discredit the messenger is to discredit the message.
How have your colleagues from other faiths evaluated this new scenario? What they say?
Kivitz: Some see religious fundamentalism occupying the state. Others fear the protofascist tendencies of the use of religion by political power. For the more traditional religions such as the indigenous and those of African descent, one fears, given the level of religious intolerance of a certain segment of evangelicals, that once again the state is used as a form of criminalization or extermination of certain forms of religious and social life. Some fear a kind of censorship or persecution of the plurality of cultural expressions and sensitivities of those who do not profess any formal religion.
The current government criticizes the former for the equipment of the public machine by the left. But in his speeches, President Bolsonaro often expresses the desire to place “evangelicals” in certain strategic positions. Can we speak of an evangelical rigging of the machine? For what purpose?
Kivitz: Our Constitution states that the Federative Republic of Brazil is a Democratic State of Law. This means that political power must be exercised in a manner that safeguards the plurality of society, and the rights and freedoms of all citizens under the law. Machine rigging occurs when one of the representatives of society uses the privilege of governing to enforce its particular worldview, whether ideological or religious. The support of religious leaders in government does not necessarily imply rigging as long as they act following the democratic terms set out in the constitutional pact.
Some currents of theological thought — such as the one advocating the establishment of a "Christian worldview" — point to the social and economic advantages of having evangelical Christians using influence through their moral values in the field of political power. How do you interpret these currents?
Kivitz: Participation in the spheres of political power is a prerogative of citizens. Christians are also citizens. And many citizens are also Christians. It is natural for every citizen to bring both their worldview and their ethical and moral values, as well as their religious beliefs, into the public arena. Defending their values ??in the public arena is a Christian right, imposing them on the whole of society is a betrayal of the democratic pact. The testimonies of early Christianity were developed and structured at a time when there was no state, no rationalizing logic of politics, no theory of the specialization of powers. Preaching is different from colonizing.
What could be wrong with having so many evangelicals promoting their religious agenda in the higher spheres of power?
Kivitz: For example, the collapse of democracy, and in turn the threat to diversity, would imply the decline of public spirit and subversion of the responsible exercise of citizenship. The reduction of secularism endangers social pluralities, enables the uniformity of certain life forms and the criminalization of differences. Religious logic is by definition anti-plurality and opposed to diversity. Religion is based on dogmas and taboos, truths to be believed and behaviors to be observed. It is imperative to state that the social environments characterized by the guarantee of individual freedoms, including in terms of beliefs and moral codes, are the most favorable for the experience of the Christian faith.