Lula and Bolsonaro’s tough battle for the hearts (and votes) of evangelicals in 2022

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Polls show that the president is losing support even among the evangelicals considered to be the most loyal to him, albeit still retaining influence. “Bolsonaro may increase the Bolsa Família (Family Grant), but Lula was the one who created it,” says an evangelical voter.

“I pray for Bolsonaro every day. This pandemic has nothing to do with the government, and when it came we thought it was something from the apocalypse,” says a woman who declined to be identified, when leaving an evangelical service in Baixada do Glicério, central region of São Paulo.

In a flattering tone, she says that president Jair Bolsonaro is an evangelical – in fact, he is baptized by the Catholic Church, and was re-baptized in 2016 in the Jordan River, in Israel, by an evangelical pastor, without denying his previous baptism – and claims to share the same values as her. A friend next to her listens attentively and agrees. But, in the end, she says: “Next year I will vote for Lula.”

These words, at times contradictory and leaning towards two radically opposite political spectrums, are not isolated. A little over a year before the 2022 elections, the entry of ex-president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) in the race for the Planalto – after his corruption convictions were overturned by the Supreme Court – threatens Jair Bolsonaro even in the sector considered to be the most loyal to the current president: the evangelical electorate.

They account for about 30% of the over 210 million Brazilians. In 2018, 70% of this portion of the population gave their vote to the far-right candidate, who took the political debate to the field of morality during his campaign, focusing his speech on conservative Christian family values to the detriment of a left-wing committed to minority rights.

However, according to some analysts, the 2018 successful formula may not be enough for 2022. Brazilians are in the midst of a pandemic that has killed over 500,000 people and pushed the unemployment rate to over 14%. Hunger is once again ravaging homes and inflation is eroding the meager income in these difficult times. Meanwhile, vaccination is slow to progress in the Bolsonaro Government, which has been erratically and negatively managing the health crisis.

It is likely that the debate for the next campaign will focus more on issues such as health and economics. “Post-pandemic Brazil is going to be chaos. Many businesses have closed their doors and the economy will not improve,” says Kaiala dos Santos, 25 years old and an attendee of the Assembly of God.

She worked as a cashier in a snack bar until early this year, when she was fired and joined the unemployment lines. “The only ones happy today in Brazil are the rich,” she says. Since then, she has been living in a church “sister’s” house with her two daughters, ages 7 and 3. Pregnant, she says that Bolsonaro “played with the pandemic” and does not see an easy future.

But she already knows who she will vote for in 2022: “They say Bolsonaro gave emergency aid, but Lula or any legislator would do the same in this situation,” she explains. “Bolsonaro may even increase the Bolsa Família, but people know that it was Lula who created it.”

Her perspective differs from that of Simone Pereira, another Assembly of God member. She supports the official government discourse by saying that the economy was starting to improve before the pandemic.

“The economy is doing badly now, but the Government has nothing to do with it. Once the pandemic is over, things will improve again,” says the woman, who works in the retail sector. She has experienced up close the ups and downs of the restrictive measures and the resulting drop in customers and turnover. She laments the high number of unemployed people – almost 15 million – but also believes that there will be more job offers next year. “With that I think Bolsonaro’s popularity will also rise again,” she says.

The dispute in 2022 is expected to be fierce. The last Ipec poll, released on June 25, showed that Lula is the clear leader in the presidential race, with 49% of the preferences, giving him a chance to win in the first round. Furthermore, among the evangelical electorate, he comes in 9 points ahead of Bolsonaro: the ex-president has 41% in the first round, while the current president has 32%.

The Atlas Político poll, which has a different methodology, showed on June 7 that the president is still far ahead of the ex-president among evangelical voters. While the former scores 54% of the valid votes, the latter has 31% -the remaining voters are divided among other potential candidates.

“There is a general deterioration of the government, including within the evangelicals. But they continue to be the group with whom the president dialogues the most,” explains Andrei Roman, Atlas’ executive director. “If Bolsonaro can’t retain the evangelicals, then everything is lost.”

This point is pivotal and is inducing the main candidates to change their tactics. Monday, June 21, PDT pre-candidate Ciro Gomes recorded a two-minute video extolling Christian values and how they should guide politics. With the Bible in one hand and the Constitution in the other, he recalled, “Brazil is a secular republic, but these two books are not in conflict.”

Two days later, shortly after winning yet another battle in the Supreme Court, which validated the partiality of ex-judge Sergio Moro, it was Lula’s turn to leave his message directed at the Christian public. On Twitter he wrote: “God has always been there in everything I’ve lived through. Including my imprisonment.” Later, he attacked the current president: “If God symbolizes love, fraternity, and goodness, Bolsonaro cannot be sent by God.”

In turn, Bolsonaro met with evangelical leaders during his visit to Chapecó (SC) on Saturday, when he held another motorcycle rally.

For Pastor Edson Rebustini, from the Biblical Church of Peace, it will be difficult to reverse evangelicals’ support for Bolsonaro. He points out two basic reasons that lead him to support the current president. “I believe in him as a sincere politician, an honest person. Sometimes he exaggerates, he lets out a few swear words, he says what people don’t like to hear, but that’s his way,” he argues. “In addition to his integrity, evangelicals strongly support him because of his conservative, pro-family values.”

Since he is also the president of the São Paulo Pastors Council and is in contact with leaders from all over the state, he believes that his opinion is shared by the vast majority of evangelicals. “There are over 600 municipalities and 99.99% of the people I hear are willing to vote for Bolsonaro again.”

Despite this support, he does not call himself a Bolsonarist since, he assures, he does not support the president even when he is right. “The left-wing only supports those who are also left-wing,” he explains, saying he disagrees with the president when he discourages the wearing of masks or praises ex-president Fernando Collor, for example. “But the left-wing nowadays advocates agendas that evangelicals don’t support,” he says, in yet another reference to the conservatism of the electorate and its opposition to issues such as abortion.

PT’s strategy

PT knows that part of its strategy for 2022 involves understanding the demands – which are many – of the evangelical electorate, and building bridges with them. The issue is not new to the party. In 1989, when Lula ran for the first time, Universal Church of the Kingdom of God’s Bishop Edir Macedo, one of the largest in Brazil, associated the PT’s image with that of the antichrist.

The approximation with the electorate would only come in the second round of the 2002 elections and would gain momentum in the following years, in the 2006 and 2010 tallies – when evangelicals gave a majority of their votes to PT. It was during this time that the evangelical caucus in Congress also gained strength and national expression.

The union came to an end in the 2014 elections, at a time when the rumor about the so-called gay kit in schools had spread. That year, over 50% of the electorate supported PSDB’s Aécio Neves against Dilma Rousseff.

The gap has only widened since then. But Lula left prison saying that during his 580 days in the Federal Police jail in Curitiba he watched religious programs on open TV and was able to understand their leaders’ capacity for persuasion. He has been stressing in interviews that the left needs to come back to an understanding with this segment, a coordination led by people like federal deputy Benedita da Silva (PT-RJ), a member of the Assembly of God, and the president of the legislature of Rio de Janeiro, André Ceciliano (PT-RJ).

During his visit to Rio de Janeiro in early June, Lula had an undisclosed meeting with Manoel Ferreira, the head bishop of the powerful Assembly of God of Madureira, according to Folha de S. Paulo newspaper. The meeting occurred at the Ceciliano ranch and was attended by Benedita and PT’s national president deputy Gleisi Hoffmann.

According to Folha, Lula expressed his desire to have an evangelical vice-president, but the 89-year-old bishop replied that this mission would fall to his son Samuel Ferreira, who currently commands the Madureira Assembly of God and supports Bolsonaro.

Former mayor of Maricá Washington Quaquá is also helping to coordinate with evangelicals in Rio, the Bolsonaro clan’s electoral base. “About 50% of our affiliates are evangelicals, people of the people, from the periphery. That would make a church, one of the largest in Brazil,” he explains. He continues: “I advocate that we organize our evangelical base, as we did with the union movement and the landless movement in the 80s, in a theology of solidarity, truly Christian,” he argues.

And how would this organization work? “In addition to the debate on the practical needs of life, on the economic agendas, Christ was closer to the collective and distributive arguments and to tolerance than the opposite. But this is a debate that the PT has not yet embraced,” he argues.

He also states that society has changed and that evangelical churches also represent a place of sociability, as were the Roman Catholic “base ecclesial communities” in the 1980s. “We need to rescue a generous, collective, tolerant Christian theology, to dispute the cultural hegemony of the popular classes. Only the right-wing does that”, he completes.

Memories of the boom versus memories of corruption

Another component promising to be in play in the 2022 elections is memory. “In the old days I had access to many things and I was able to eat. Today a bag of rice costs R$30 (US$6), oil and beans cost R$10,” says Kaiala.

Quality of life has also greatly changed for Marcos Xavier, 35 years old and a regular at the God is Love church. A little more than 10 years ago, Marcos lived in Alagoas, his home state, and used to make about R$6,000 a month with his work. “Before we had credit, we could finance a brand new car. That is how I financed a store,” he recalls. Today, after family issues and also problems related to alcohol and drug abuse, he works as a street vendor and lives in a City Hall shelter.

In 2018, Marcos cast his vote for Bolsonaro. “At least he is not involved in any corruption case. I know his son [Flavio Bolsonaro] is involved in the salary-splitting scheme, but that has nothing to do with the government. He is a grown man,” he argues, in defense of the current president. On the other hand, he complains that Bolsonaro tried to “govern alone.”

For 2022, he will seek mainly experience. “I’ll vote for Lula, I think he has more leverage, knows how to talk to deputies and senators to get what’s best,” the man adds, depicting the pragmatism of a complex and diverse electorate, which makes up the lower social classes and presents demands that go beyond the church space they attend.

Pastor Edson also believes, as does Simone, that the economy will have positive results next year and expects this to be reflected in Bolsonaro’s popularity. “Lula had a good phase, right?” he says. However, he points to another type of memory: that of the corruption charges during the PT governments. “We can’t forget what happened until recently,” he argues.

He recalls that treasurers and important PT leaders, such as Lula himself, have already been arrested. “The list is long. How can I want him to return to power? Our option is Bolsonaro because we don’t want corruption to return.” When asked about suspicions that government Ministers and his son Flavio Bolsonaro are suspected of wrongdoing, he says he advocates that all be investigated.

How the evangelical electorate votes

Vinicius Valle, PhD in Political Science from the University of São Paulo and author of “Entre a religião e o lulismo” (Between Religion and Lulism), explains that the evangelical electorate has different priorities when electing positions in the Legislative and Executive branches.

In the former case, the logic of looking for a similar person, with the same values, prevails. “The church is very close to the people. And it is amid this strong sociability that evangelical candidates will emerge. They are there, in the community, circulating and being seen as people from a close universe,” he explains.

In the latter case, the logic is to look for someone who can administer society as a whole and address issues such as the economy and employment. “For the economic issue, evangelicals tend to move away from Bolsonaro. They are suffering from lack of jobs, their material lives are being affected. There is an attempt by the president to detach himself, but it is increasingly difficult to maintain this narrative,” argues Valle.

Another issue at stake is that Lula, because of his communication skills and his history, is able to “subvert” the left versus right divide and go beyond his ideological field, according to Valle. One thing is the famous pastor, another is the neighborhood pastor.

Churches have the capacity to mold themselves to the local reality, to offer a type of discourse, a type of worship,” he explains. “If a pastor speaks to a believer who has changed his discourse or who receives the Bolsa Família, he’s not going to run the risk of losing that believer. It’s a religious market.”

On the other hand, anthropologist Jacqueline Teixeira, PhD in social anthropology and researcher at USP’s Urban Anthropology Center, believes that the anti-Pt sentiment will continue to be strong in the South and Southeast. Particularly in places like São Paulo’s inland region, where progressive administrations have had little impact when compared, for example, to São Paulo’s capital.

“In those places, although people are giving up on Bolsonaro, they are not necessarily thinking about Lula,” he says.

Another obstacle for the left are the so-called customary or identity agendas, such as gay marriage and feminism. “This moralities agenda, which was strong in the Legislative branch, entered the Executive branch strongly. As this is a topic that builds political engagement, it has a chance to grow and share the scenario with health, economy, and education,” she explains.

According to Quaquá, leader of the PT in Rio, the teachings of Jesus Christ apply to these cases: “Evangelicals may disagree, but if they are guided by the New Testament and the teachings of Christ, they must respect it,” he argues. And he attacks the evangelical leaders: “What Silas Malafaia [of the Assembly of God], Macedo and these phonies do is trample on the New Testament and reaffirm the Old. They forget that Christ came into the world to establish a new religious paradigm.”

Source: El Pais