Religião, secularização e política: os impactos da relação entre Bolsonaro e os evangélicos para o pluralismo democrático no Brasil

Abstract

The present work aims to analyze the relationship between religion and politics in Brazil, more thoroughly the impacts that the political-religious link of the Bolsonaro government with the evangelical segment inserted in the political scenario, in the public space and in the guarantee of our socio-political and socio-religious plurality. We start from the debate about the phenomenon of secularization and the place of the religious element in the modern and contemporary world, especially from the theoretical and analytical perspectives that see religious language as part of the social fabric in the most diverse societies. Thus, our work is inserted both in the field of sociology of religion, as in the area of political science, inclined to observe the link between the sphere of the religious and the political. Our methodology is qualitative and is based on a wide literature review, which deals with secularization and the place of the sacred in modernity and the contemporary; in the field of social sciences that investigates the evangelical religious phenomenon in Brazil and in works that analyze both right-wing and extreme-right populism, as those who observe the conservative advance in current politics, especially the national reality. This allows us to observe the most recent religious demographics of the West and the Latin American continent; the configuration and impacts of the evangelical presence in the Brazilian political environment of recent decades; and examine aspects of the political relationship of the Bolsonaro government with evangelicals, such as the appointments of figures from the evangelical world to high positions in the federal government, decrees and laws of the president in nod to the segment, and especially the speeches, statements and speeches by Jair Bolsonaro and also by religious leaders of the group, guided by a populist language of reactionary Christian background. After this movement, we present our main hypothesis: in theory the religion present in the public space does not offer a danger to democratic regimes of pluralistic background, but when coopted by populist politicians and religious leaders reactionary and intolerant, as is the case of Bolsonaro in Brazil and a significant portion of the evangelical segment, configure harmful aspect of democratic policy.