RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – In the middle of this month, the Latin American Strategic Center for Geopolitics (Celag) presented a provocative study on the political presence of evangelicals in the region named “His Kingdom Come: Evangelical Churches and Popular Governments in Latin America,” by Yair Cybel and Sebastian Furlong.
Provocative because, contrary to the tradition of the conservative nature of these churches (more linked to right-wing governments, it was said), it proposes to review experiences of a rapprochement, of a fluid relationship, between these churches and progressive, left-wing governments, when not even of the presence of evangelical representatives in government.
This was seen/confirmed, say the authors, in five countries: Argentina, Peru, Mexico, Bolivia, and Venezuela.
“These are progressive governments with diverse characteristics, but with a common trait. Their particularities or nuances, all have political links with evangelical sectors,” the authors emphasize.
The obligatory basis for the study must undoubtedly be the presence of the evangelical population, what and how large its social base is to speak of its political strength.
The CELAG report summarizes:
- Currently, the number of evangelical believers already represents more than 20% of the Latin American population
- In Mexico, more than 10% of the population is evangelical
- In Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Argentina, and Panama, there is talk of a figure of more than 15%
- In Costa Rica and Puerto Rico, it reaches 20%
- In Brazil, there are figures that oscillate around 30% and
- In Central American countries such as Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua the number of the faithful exceeds 40%
CHRISTIANS
The study uses “evangelicalism” as a “generic name that includes: evangelical, pentecostal, and neo-pentecostal Christian churches”.
In the percentage count of evangelical presence in certain countries, the absence of Bolivia is striking. Perhaps this is due to the antiquity of the data through a census. The last time a population and housing census inquired about the religious affiliation of Bolivians was in the 2001 census.
In this consultation, 77.99% of the country’s inhabitants said they belonged to the Catholic Church; 16.22% to the Protestant/Evangelical Church (which includes the historic churches, Pentecostals, and others); 3.24% corresponded to other religions or cults of Christian origin such as Adventists, Mormons and similar; and 3.24% included different beliefs, among others. In addition, 2.43% stated that they did not belong to any religion.
The situation has not changed much. Shortly before the elections of October 20, 2019, on September 29 of that year, Página Siete published that, according to a statistical exercise carried out by the pollster Mercado y Muestras, 74.9% of the voting population was Catholic, while 13% defined themselves as Christian, and only 4.9% were Evangelical voters; 1.2% Mormon; 0.4% Jehovah’s Witness; and only 1.2% said they were atheists.
Despite the request of the Evangelical-Christians and the Catholic Church itself to include in the census ballot the question about the religion professed by Bolivians, the National Institute of Statistics (INE), at the beginning of April, rejected this request because the question of religious belief goes against the secular state, enshrined in the Constitution, according to its director, Humberto Arandia.
But, before looking at the evangelists-progressive governments’ nexus, it is good to specify, the authors point out, why, in general, evangelical churches tend to support right-wing regimes.
There are four clearly identifiable traits:
- Ultra-conservative positions concerning the family and restriction of social freedoms;
- Open defense of neoliberalism and the consumer society
- Great economic capacity linked to the contribution-conviction of their parishioners
- Media deployment from their own radio stations, television channels, and social networks
From the front side (governments to the left), however, the authors of the Celag study see that today “the relationship between evangelical churches and progressive governments is materialized mainly through two ways:
- On the one hand, the growing evangelical presence in the poorest territories reinforces intermediation with the state spheres to obtain resources for assistance or improvement in popular neighborhoods
- On the other hand, the search to establish themselves as pressure groups through periodic meetings with the highest government authorities and/or ministerial offices to influence public policies and the approval of bills that defend their interests
PASTORS
Now, scholars ask, what are the central religious traits at the base of Christian evangelicals? “They are based on the same foundational landmark of Pentecostalism: the anointing of their pastors by the Holy Spirit and a medieval orientation of fighting against the ‘devil’.
At the same time, they sustain a show aesthetic, a discourse of prosperity, entrepreneurship and a particular attraction for professional marketing”. But here is a central characteristic: in the absence of an “evangelical Vatican”, that is, the absence of a “vertical and integrating institution to which the different churches respond”, the rather autonomous behavior of pastors has spread.
This lack of an evangelical Vatican “has allowed preachers to install cults adapted to regions or cultural traits, giving rise to greater economic, political, and religious autonomy”. Charismatic pastors can establish their own rules for their presence in popular neighborhoods, in the solution of the problems of these popular sectors.
Since there are no rigid rules from above, “this situation also enables a Peronist, a Chavista, or a Castillista to be a preacher, as long as his political intervention is adapted to a biblical or theological reading of the process in question”.
Presences in politics that, the authors hasten to clarify, can be contradictory: “Baptist pastors lead the historic, revolutionary organization ‘Martin Luther King Center’ in Cuba, while their same co-religionists were pioneers in meeting with the coup president Jeanine Áñez in Bolivia”.
Now, why greater affinity with progressive governments (at least in those five countries?)
Because of their widespread presence in popular neighborhoods and rural areas and because of their capacity to “represent” the people’s demands for better living conditions:
“They obtain and manage resources and collaborate in sustaining the social fabric in times of crisis”. This phenomenon was not ignored by popular and leftist governments in the region, which based their credibility on the integration of the excluded into the political arena and the redistribution of income through state intervention”.
LINKS
But the authors of the Celag study still risk some conclusions that shed light on “the increasingly close link between popular governments and evangelical sectors”:
- The link between evangelical churches and popular governments is not a novel phenomenon.
- The political-partisan incursion of evangelical leaders and pastors has taken place on a personal basis, without the (formal) intervention of their churches or federations.
- In the world of political evangelism, there is a diversity of political-ideological views, even from the left. Still, something that cannot be denied is that a greater government commitment to the evangelists can slow down the generation of social rights, even going backward, “in pursuit of prioritizing the conservative ‘pro-life’ and ‘pro-family’ agendas”.
- Given their enormous territorial extension, progressivism, they say, would be wrong to confront them. “The challenge is incorporating them subordinate to the political construction of social justice and redistribution of wealth without going backward in fundamental aspects of a secular state”.
- Finally, it is not a question of going backward in history. “It should be noted that in countries where religion is the predominant axis of politics, social changes tend to be quite complex or regressive, as in cases where the fundamentalist visions of Hinduism, the most conservative Muslim factions (Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan) and Catholicism itself (what happens in Hungary or Croatia) govern. In this sense, the dilemma is whether this turn to the integration of evangelical sectors would not lead to a return to a past where religion was an element of political discord”.
ARGENTINA
IN ONLY 11 YEARS, EVANGELICALS INCREASED BY 70%
According to the Second National Survey on Religious Beliefs and Attitudes (2019), people who recognize themselves as “evangelicals” grew 70% in just 11 years: from 9% in 2008 to 15.3% in 2019. The evangelical advance has its correlate in the decrease of the faithful who identify themselves as “Catholics”: from 76.5% to 62.9% in the same period.
In the government-evangelical relationship, there were:
- Meeting of Cristina Fernandez with evangelical pastors to build ties with Peronism and broaden the social base of representation (February 2019).
- Incorporation of the Christian Alliance of Evangelical Churches into the government program “Argentina against Hunger” (December 2019).
- The Argentine Federation of Evangelical Churches supports the initiative to cancel the foreign debt and approaches positions with the government on the decriminalization of abortion (April 2020).
- Evangelical congregations make themselves available to the government to assist the sectors most affected by the economic crisis and the pandemic (May 2020).
BOLIVIA
EVO ENACTED RELIGIOUS FREEDOM LAW
According to a Statista survey (2018), in Bolivia, 11.6% of the population identifies as evangelical, 2.5% as Adventist, 1.6% as Pentecostal evangelical, 1.2% as Mormon, and 1.1% as Baptist evangelical. In the 2019 presidential elections, the data revealed that 17.9% of voters were Christian-evangelical, and in the case of the Aymara, only 65.9% are Catholic, 22.5% are Christian, and 4.8% are evangelical. At the socioeconomic level, it is worth noting that 21.8% of the population is evangelical Christian in the popular sectors.
Evangelists and the State were related:
- The National Association of Evangelical Churches joins the Justice Summit organized by the Bolivian government and states its willingness to participate in “diverse aspects of State building” (January 2016).
- Former President Evo Morales promulgated the Religious Freedom Law -whose background was to recognize the different churches and spiritualities- with the support of the National Association of Evangelicals of Bolivia (April 2019).
PERU
IN 35 YEARS, EVANGELICALS QUINTUPLED IN NUMBER
As researcher José Luis Pérez Guadalupe explains, “in 1972 Evangelicals in Peru were only 2.5% (Catholics, 96.1%),” but by 2007 they quintupled this figure to 12.5% (with 81.3% Catholics). By 2017, Perez Guadalupe estimated between 15% and 18% of the evangelical community in Peru.
In the evangelical-Castle relationship, there was:
- The Colectivo de Cristianos Comprometidos expresses its support for Pedro Castillo’s candidacy in the second round against Keiko Fujimori.
- The Colectivo Ciudadanía Cristiana por el Desarrollo y el Buen Vivir (May 2021) also supports him.
- Pedro Castillo prays next to the young evangelical preacher Anthony Lastra (Centro Cristiano Vida de Dios), who points out that God chose the rural teacher “as president of the country”.
- Pedro Castillo’s wife and children – he confesses to being Catholic – belongs to the Church of the Nazarene. Precisely, the president’s house in Cajamarca is located in front of a church of this congregation.
MEXICO
STATE-CHURCH SEPARATION IS CONTRAVENED
Population Census: 11.2% of the population is recognized as Protestant and evangelical, a relatively smaller number than the rest of the region due to the significant prevalence of Catholicism. However, the growth of these faiths is sustained, and to the detriment of Catholicism: between 2000 and 2020, Catholics went from 92.9% to 77.7%, while Protestants rose from 7.3% to 11.2%.
Relationships:
- The Social Encounter Party (PES), with evangelical roots, joins the coalition Juntos Haremos Historia which reaches the presidency of Mexico with the candidacy of AMLO (December 2017).
- The PES presents a project to allow tax-deductibility of donations to churches, another to regulate education with a gender focus and a last one to allow private financing of political parties (2018).
- The National Electoral Institute grants re-registration of the PES, despite the fact that 15 ministers of worship participated as voting affiliation leaders, contravening Mexican secular legislation that establishes the separation between churches and state (September 2020).
VENEZUELA
CHAVEZ ASSUMED A BIBLICAL SLOGAN FOR HIS CAMPAIGN
The Bolivarian movement led by Hugo Chavez saw the Evangelical sector as a potential ally since the beginning of the 1990s. In the campaign that led him to the presidency, Chavez mentioned Evangelicals as one of the civil society groups he wanted to mobilize for his “democratic revolution”. His paraphrase of a biblical verse: “He who has eyes let him see, he who has ears let him hear,” became the main slogan of his candidacy.
Close relationship:
- Evangelical Christian sectors march in support of President Nicolás Maduro with a mobilization called Gran Caminata por la Paz y Prosperidad de Venezuela (April 2018).
- Maduro signs a decree declaring January 15 of each year as National Pastor’s Day in tribute to Martin Luther King and at the request of the Evangelical Christian Movement for Venezuela (December 2019).
- Maduro approves the proposal to create the Evangelical Theological University of Venezuela (December 2019).
With information from La Razón