Evangelicalism grows in Brazil’s favelas amid poverty and violence

RIO DE JANEIRO – Pastor Marcio Antonio stands at the pulpit in a one-room evangelical church built precariously above barbed wire fences and illegally hung electrical cables, exhorting his flock in a Brazilian favela to improve their morals.

A former drug dealer in Cantagalo, an informally built hillside settlement where most residents lack official property rights, pastor Antonio and his flock at the Assembly of God Church are part of a growing trend.

Evangelical churches are expanding rapidly in Brazil, home to the world’s largest Catholic community, especially in poor favelas, experts and parishioners said. These communities, which developed from squatter settlements, often do not have the same services as formal Brazilian neighbourhoods in terms of healthcare, sanitation, transportation or formal property registration.

“The government doesn’t help us, so God is the only option for the poor,” pastor Antonio, (37) told the Thomson Reuters Foundation following his Sunday sermon.

Wearing a white linen robe over a black shirt and tie, Antonio was born and raised in the favela where he preaches to a congregation of two dozen from a clean, one-room church with a tiled floor and fans buzzing overhead.

Like other poor young men, the lure of easy money drew him to the drug trade before he found God and a new mission.

“There are a lot of problems here in the favela,” said Antonio, eating plain white bread and drinking black coffee after a two-hour sermon. “Poverty, a lack of work, crime, mental health issues – the church helps with these things.”

In favela communities where the state often doesn’t have much of a presence, evangelical churches are gaining members, partially by providing social services like education, security and economic development, analysts said.

With conservative outlooks on birth control, abortion and other issues, the rise of evangelical churches drawing a base from poor communities is shifting Brazil’s political landscape to the right.

Protestants, many of whom are evangelical, comprise more than 20% of Brazil’s 200 million population, up from less than 3% in 1940, according to the Pew Research Centre, a US based demographics organisation.

In favela communities, the proportion of evangelicals is generally higher, sometimes about 50%, said Jeff Garmany, a lecturer at King’s College London’s Brazil Institute.

“People in favelas are dealing with serious issues of stigma, poverty and violence,” Garmany told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

“The state’s inability to adequately deal with these issues allowed the churches to grow and make inroads with people.”

With more than 20% of Brazil’s big city residents living in informal favelas, the growing sway of evangelicals among the working poor has translated into political power.

“The evangelical churches aren’t just providing religious services in the favelas, they’re addressing social issues people are dealing with head-on,” Garmany said.

In Cantagalo, one of three inter-linked favelas in southern Rio de Janeiro with a combined population of about 30 000, there are two Catholic churches and more than 15 evangelical churches, pastor Antonio said.

In Rio de Janeiro, Brazil’s second-largest city known for samba parties and skimpy bikinis, an evangelical bishop who opted to skip the city’s raucous carnival celebrations was elected mayor last year. –

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