Evangelical moral economies and Bolsonaro government in pandemic times

Abstract

The paper focuses on the relationship between evangelicals and the Bolsonaro government through the analysis of some moral discourses. For this, it moves away from the distinctions between what would be strictly religious and what would be strictly political, and from the distinctions between form and content. The approach turns to the way the state relates to religious agents or “regulates” religious activities, and turns to moral discourses and sensory forms. Among the elements, the following stand out: the idea that evangelicals are a persecuted minority, the defense of the concept of unrestricted religious freedom, the sensory forms of Pentecostal evangelicals and evangelical public culture in general. The hypothesis is that these elements and moral values ​​are mobilized and combined with the power strategies of the leaders of the largest Pentecostal churches and the power strategies of President Jair Messias Bolsonaro. But not only for them, there is a sharing of these elements by a broader contingent of Brazilian evangelicals. In times of Covid-19 pandemic, it becomes even more evident that so-called evangelical moral economies are mobilized in favor of opportunism and irresponsibility.