Where does democracy end and theocracy begin for Brazil?

When does a democracy end, and a theocracy begin? Have India, Hungary and Israel already slipped into the latter category? Is it possible that Brazil and the United States will also cross the line?
We never thought we would ask ourselves these questions, but they have not left our minds for the last decade – until we were able to address them more directly in the form of a film, Apocalypse in the Tropics, which looks specifically into the relationship of the far right and Christian fundamentalism in Brazil.
We are two Brazilian women, one an activist and community organizer turned producer – Alessandra Orofino – the other an anthropologist turned film-maker – Petra Costa. And we began the journey that would lead us into this film from different places: one of us spent years embedded into the highest circles of institutional democracy, filming presidents, ministers and judges up close through a period of tremendous turmoil.
The other was trying to organize people from the ground up – developing social justice campaigns that would get millions involved in decision-making, or give tens of thousands access to solidarity networks on the ground. Both of us witnessed scenes that would foreshadow the tremendous impact that religious fundamentalism would have on our country’s politics.
In 2016, Costa was filming The Edge of Democracy, trying to understand how democracies across the world wound up in such a state of crisis and whether they could survive it. We were in the midst of an economic crisis and a controversial impeachment process. And so Costa went with a film team to the capital, to try to understand what was happening to our democracy. And instead of finding politicians discussing the issues at hand she found an evangelical pastor and congressman and his followers walking through the halls of Congress and blessing the seats of lawmakers. They were determined to establish a government of “true believers” and to topple the “wall between church and state” once and for all.
That same year, Orofino founded an organization that selected and trained volunteers to support women in situations of violence, mostly from intimate partners. The organization grew and quickly drew the attention of church leaders in some communities, in one case – the pastor complained that the woman had decided to leave the abusive relationship she was in. In a way, the organization had stepped into a role that evangelical churches had been filling mostly on their own: that of an on-the-ground support network to some of the most vulnerable among us.
At the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, this dual role played by the evangelical churches reached its apex: while some pastors quickly organized their communities to face the disease – both through material and spiritual means – many also recognized the vacuum the political crisis that ensued was creating at the highest echelons of government and immediately started to seek more and more power.
Our far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro, lost ally after ally. Meanwhile, he needed theological backing to his publicly professed thesis that Covid was not really that bad and that we needed to carry on with life. It was then that he tightened his connection to some evangelical leaders who fought to keep their churches open, while calling for prayers and fasting as an appropriate response to the illness. One of them was Brazil’s most prominent televangelist, pastor Silas Malafaia.
The first service we filmed inside Malafaia’s church was directed towards young people and he preached that he would be the minister of a generation that “would change history”: valuable Christians that would occupy positions of leadership in every dimension – or “mountain” – of society. That discourse, we would discover, was at the center of a theology that surreptitiously informed much of what we were witnessing: dominionism, a theology that claims Christians should control every aspect of society.
Over the next four years we filmed Malafaia fulfilling a part of this prophecy as he helped orchestrate the naming of the first evangelical pastor to the supreme court. He told us first hand how he pressured the president and the senators for the nomination to be approved. Then, when the 2022 election approached, and Lula had the lead in the polls, Bolsonaro and Malafaia started to attack the supreme court and the voting system and incite the population towards an insurrection against the rule of law, which would lead to our own January 8 in 2023 (a bad imitation of the American January 6).
Bolsonaro lost and the coup attempt did not succeed. But our democracy feels as fragile as ever. Dominionists continue to be determined to fulfill their prophecy in all levels of our society. Evangelicals now make up over 30% of the Brazilian population, and, even though they are a diverse group, they have become one of the most powerful and united voting blocs in the country’s history. In 2022 being evangelical was the highest predictor of voting for Bolsonaro – more than race, class or gender. Some evangelical leaders claim that they will soon represent the majority – and many, like Malafaia, openly state that if a country has a Christian majority, then that majority has not only the right but the duty to impose its will over religious minorities.
If the marriage between religious fundamentalists and the far right continues to succeed around the world, we could soon witness the destruction of one of modernity’s greatest inventions – the separation between church and state. Which curiously enough was not invented by atheists but by Christians after centuries of religious wars – where millions were killed, tortured and enslaved, simply for being of a different faith. Many evangelicals we spoke to in Brazil are already feeling the growth of religious intolerance within their movement, with some leaders persecuting pastors and followers who do not align with their vision for dominion over politics.
After the journey we went through making this film, we could only find ourselves with a new appreciation for two things which might seem at first contradictory: the importance of spirituality for humankind, and the existential danger that the mix between politics and religion presently holds for democracy. At the same time, we came to realize that political engagement requires faith – maybe not in God, but in democracy itself. And when that faith falters, theocracies may well be around the corner – offering something seemingly moral and righteous to fight for.
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