Political Scientist
Ana Carolina Evangelista
Executive Director, ISER, Institute of Studies in Religion | Brazil
Short Bio:
Ana Carolina Evangelista is a Political Scientist with MSc in International Relations (PUC-SP), MA in Public Management and Policy (FGV/EAESP) and a PhD Candidate in Social Sciences and Contemporary History at CPDO/FGV. With more than twenty years of experience in civil society organizations and political and technical advisory activities on governmental institutions, she is a Senior Researcher and the Executive Director of Institute of Studies in Religion in Río de Janeiro (Brazil). Her research studies are focused on democratic innovation in Latin America, the Brazilian political system, elections and the role of religious groups in politics. Ms. Evangelista is also a Political Columnist at Revista Piauí and Canal O Meio.
Event: SDGs Conference 2024 | Date: Sept 25, 2024 |
SPEECH
At the 9th Annual SDGs Conference, I represent the Institute of Studies in Religion, a research organization on the importance of faith-based communities and religion for social life in Brazil. In my reflections, I will be stressing the challenges we are facing regarding politics and the work we need to accomplish to promote the diversity of the religious groups in Brazil. Religion comes at the frontline everywhere when politics is discussed in Brazil nowadays in election coverage or in regard to the latest situation in the National Congress, especially about Christian voting intentions or a politician justifying his vote or a new legislative proposal based on religious references. Why are we seeing more religion in politics in Brazil today or in other countries? Whether the influence of religion in public and political life is a positive or a negative aspect, Brazilian society is divided in between.
Significant differences have been viewed between Evangelicals, Catholics, and people with other religious affiliations or no religion at all in Brazil including older and younger adults. There is also an important division in Brazilian society between those who agree and disagree that the federal government should promote specific Christian moral values. But is everything really about religion? I will say no as most of it is about political polarization and the use of religion for specific political purposes. What we see in Brazil today is not an indiscriminate invasion of religion in politics. We are witnessing a systematic radical and instrumental incorporation of religion or a conception of religion and especially certain Christian values like the anti-democratic far-right political Pope increasing its influence in our countries. I am not referring to the Christian values of solidarity, community, social justice, and universal human rights.
What is happening to democratic principles and threats to a plural democracy in Brazil and elsewhere? Who is using who? We are talking about politicians using certain religious leaders and narratives, and religious businessmen using the institutional political environment to increase their influence and therefore their religious corporations. The terms religious businessmen and religious corporations are not by chance. I would like to stress that because we have a vast and diverse Christian Evangelical and Catholic field in Brazil. I am talking about a part of some churches, denominations, and leaders who are more worried about their entire religious empire than their role as a religious leader. In a broader sense, the resident population has been dealing with different social, economic, and public security crises for several years.
Brazil is not the only country facing such a crisis. Far-end political forces are the ones most mobilizing religion in specific ways when dealing with people’s daily and concrete challenges referring to the social, economic, and security crises. In this context, politicians and religious figures are not mobilizing religion, even the well-known religious ones, in a more individualistic and dogmatic contemporary form as a way to offer alternatives for restoring order, predictability, security, and unity. Religiousness is also being used as a rhetorical resource of belonging and restoring order, or at least what they call order, by ultra-conservatives to advance their agendas in institutional spaces, especially in terms of liberty and rights of certain social groups as women and LGBTQ+ communities.
At the same time, it is not only about certain religious groups seeking to impose their morals on society through state policies but also about the new dimensions using religion to communicate with people and boost symbolic and emotional ties with society. Today, this construction makes it nearly impossible to separate religious traditional morals, political agendas, social demands, and personal expectations from Brazil’s Presidential elections. This social state is new for us, and it is challenging the plurality and the quality of our democracy.
For instance, we have always had an important presence of different religious leaders in the public and political spheres in Brazil in a more plural way. But today, the religious leaders with political strength and a prominent public voice are predominantly ultra-conservatives coming from various groups being represented in politics. They are not taking into account the religious diversity of Brazil and neither the separation between church and state that we have had since the 19th century.
It was especially after 2010, that public opinion and voting in polls in Brazil started highlighting divisions related to religious identity and belonging, and none of this happened by chance. It was a period of reaction to the third national human rights program presented by the second term of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. This reaction led to an unprecedented alliance between Catholics and Evangelical branches in Congress to defend the fighting against the advances in women’s reproductive rights and the recognition of LGBTQ+ rights. This issue dominated the presidential election at that time and remained central to public opinion until today. In subsequent national polls, this growing alliance expanded to other agendas such as education and public security, a sort of new more radical religious cross-cutting conservative agenda that became a pillar of our national Congress today.
Today, this has been an important vector of anti-democratic political radicalization including intolerance and imposing specific norms and rules of behavior to the entire society. Just like in the USA, more than a problem of polarization, we are facing a providential and dangerous fundamentalist use of religion as a sort of political weapon. In conclusion of my remarks, I would like to underline that we do not fully apprehend all the layers behind the rise of a far-right that has expanded its social base and also occupies the public space to vocalize its demands in our society today. Understanding the role of religious groups in contemporary institutional politics, not only in Brazil, and how this is being played by anti-democratic and fundamentalist political groups has become essential. This is just the tip of the iceberg to better understand the ways to protect plural democracy in our countries.