December 16, 2019 8.42am EST
The expression “evangelical
drug trafficker” may sound incongruous, but in the Brazilian city of Rio de
Janeiro, it’s widespread.
Charismatic Christianity is on
the rise across Brazil. Slightly less than a
third of all Brazilians identify as evangelical, up from 5% in the 1960s.
The 2020 national census is expected to show significantly
more growth.
In Rio, where the evangelical
population increased
30% in the first decade of this century, even some of the most
notorious drug dealers claim to be spreading the gospel.
Brazil’s evangelical turn
I study violence in Latin
America, and I’ve observed a sharp increase in reports of religiously
motivated crimes in Rio de Janeiro since 2016, in particular attacks
on “terreiros” – the temples of the Candomblé and Umbanda faiths.
According to Brazil’s
Commission to Combat Religious Intolerance, over
100 Afro-Brazilian religious facilities nationwide were attacked by
drug trafficking groups in 2019, an increase on previous years. A national
emergency hotline created to report such attacks finds that 60% of incidents
reported between 2011 and 2017 occurred in Rio de Janeiro.
Persecution of these Afro-Brazilian
religions, whose adherents are largely poor black Brazilians, has been
around since at least the 19th century.
But the current wave of
religious bigotry is more personal, and more violent, than in the past. As the
Washington Post recently reported,
Afro-Brazilian priests are being harassed and murdered for their faith.
Candomblé and Umbanda practitioners fear leaving their homes. Terreiros have
closed due to death threats.
Rio’s Commission to Combat Religious
Intolerance, a group created in 2008 by religious minorities, reported
about 200 such incidents in the city between January and September 2019 – up
from 92 in all last year.
Evangelicalism on the rise
The increase in religious hate
crimes coincides with the growing political and cultural clout of evangelicals
in Brazil. Evangelical lawmakers currently hold 195
of 513 seats in Brazil’s lower house of Congress, giving them the
power to shape the national debate on abortion, religion in schools, gay
marriage and other social issues.
Many Brazilian Protestants
attend mainstream services, and are horrified by rising discrimination against
those who practice other faiths.
But the fastest-growing
denominations in Brazil are the harder-line Pentecostals
and Neopentecostal churches – including the wildly successful Assembly of God and
the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God.
Both spread what’s called
the prosperity
doctrine, promising personal
salvation and financial success to people who trust God, work hard and
cut out all alcohol, gambling and other vices.
For many poor people in the
Rio’s hardscrabble “favela” neighborhoods, this is an appealing offer.
As ever more Brazilians
convert to evangelicalism, traditional religions there are losing members.
Between 2000 and 2010, when the latest national census was taken, the number of
Catholics in Brazil dropped 9%. Followers of the Afro-Brazilian religions Candomblé
and Umbanda declined
23%.
Good vs. evil
Some evangelical leaders who
preach the prosperity doctrine also see these Afro-Brazilian
religions as dangerously un-Christian, even evil.
Edir Macedo, the
multi-millionaire bishop of Brazil’s Universal Church of the Kingdom of
God, wrote in his
1997 book “Orixás, Caboclos and False Gods or Demons” that
Afro-Brazilian religions “seek to keep us from God. They are enemies of Him and
the human race.”
“This struggle with Satan is
necessary…to eternal salvation,” he added.
The book sold 3 million copies
before it was banned
by federal authorities in 2005. But Macedo still peddles his message to
his estimated 5.2 million followers at 13,000 affiliated churches.
For preachers espousing a
binary spiritual worldview, “good” Christians must wage holy war against “evil”
practitioners of Candomblé and Umbanda.
Though black commentators point
out that this theological interpretation is just thinly veiled religious
discrimination, some parishioners are heeding the call to “cleanse”
the world of Satan’s work.
That includes a handful of
drug kingpins, who prohibit adherents of Afro-Brazilian religions from
practicing their faith in gang-controlled neighborhoods. Residents caught
wearing the religious garb of Candomblé and Umbanda may be expelled from the
community.
The prison-to-church pipeline
My research suggests that
Brazil’s chaotic,
overcrowded prisons exacerbate the evangelical-gang connection.
The government is only
nominally in control of most public prisons in Brazil. In practice, they are
essentially governed
by one of two competing Brazilian drug trafficking organizations, which run
their trafficking and racketeering businesses there and recruit
their rank and file from behind bars.
Faith groups, too, have a
long tradition in Brazil’s prisons. Previously, these prison ministries were predominantly
Catholic. Today, however, 80 of the 100 faith-based organizations
subcontracted to run social programs in prisons are
evangelical churches.
As a result, charismatic
Christianity has spread quickly through the criminal justice system.
Jailhouse conversions are
common. Inmates who adopt evangelicalism are frequently housed in separate prison
wings that stand
out for their order and cleanliness. Some have even established
their own ministries inside jail. Developing positive relationships
with local Rio pastors while in jail can tighten a gang’s grip on power once
released.
Converted traffickers control
many Rio de Janeiro favelas, particularly in Baixada Fluminense, a sprawl of
townships in the city’s poor northern outskirts.
Over the past century, the
area has seen waves
of migration from Brazil’s north and northeast, where Afro-Brazilian
religions have traditionally prospered. Baixada Fluminense has at least
253 Candomblé
and Umbanda terreiros, more than any other municipality in the state.
Baixada Fluminense is also one
of Rio’s most dangerous corners. Murder rates have fallen slightly across most
of the city over the past decade, but not in Baixada Fluminense. According to
Brazil’s Institute
for Public Security, 2,147 of the 6,714 murders reported in Rio state so
far this year occurred in Baixada Fluminense.
Described by locals as a “Wild
West,” the area is home to famously
corrupt public officials who have long worked with militia
and mafia groups to intimidate their rivals. This patronage
relationship allows drug traffickers, evangelical or otherwise, to operate with
impunity.
More than a
third of violent attacks on Afro-Brazilian temples this year occurred
in the Baixada Fluminese.
Fighting back
The Brazilian government has
started taking notice. In November 2019 the federal
public prosecutor’s office urged Rio de Janeiro authorities to
compensate victims of religious intolerance both “materially and symbolically,”
particularly in Baixada Fluminense. But proposals on how, concretely, to
support them remain on paper only.
Brazilian faith communities,
in contrast, are actively fighting back against rising religious discrimination
in Brazil. In September, an estimated 100,000 people joined Rio’s annual
walk for religious freedom, one of the largest gatherings since the
procession’s inception 12 years ago.
Evangelicals, Catholics,
Baha'i, Buddhists, Jews and Hari Krishnas packed Rio’s iconic Copacabana beach.
Dressed in white, the traditional color of Candomble and Ubanda religious
celebrations, they marched in solidarity with Afro-Brazilians.
There may be conflict in
Brazil’s religious diversity, but there is unity, too.
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