[RESUMO] Author of the book “Faith and the Rifle”, about the relationship between religion and crime in Brazil, researcher comments on the new documentary of Petra Costa, who passes on the country’s recent political earthquakes, from June 2013 to attacks of January 8, 2023, in the light of evangelical growth.
He drives his car while talking to a team that films him to the documentary. Suddenly, a biker passes left and cuts the car of Malafaia, which puts his hand in the horn without mercy. “To stop being abused. Who does he think he is?” “You’ll learn to drive this crap. I was a biker.”
It could just be a crossing between stressed drivers. But the pastor has a lesson to give. With hints of theology, he justifies his anger using the sacred. “People think that pastor is for Vim (sic) and stepping around the neck,” he complains. “Jesus turned a table in the temple, brother. Personal does not know the Bible. Jesus took the whip and broke out the gang that was naughty in the temple. He became a table, whipped, had no cake, the Jesus of love, of goodness, of peace …”
Always ready from up and defending his personal and political interests, Malafaia is supported by the figure of an irascible and intolerant Jesus.
After cursing the biker, the pastor buys other fights throughout the documentary: confronts President Lula (who calls cachaceiro) and minister of; attacks the militants; The truculence of Jair Bolsonaro’s speeches back.
Christ is his club and his shield. “Most pastors stayed on the Mount of Religion. The seven hills (are) culture, entertainment, economy, education, politics … They stayed on the Mount of Religion. They alienated. I don’t,” explains Malafaia.
Six years after launching, he ran for the Oscar for best documentary of 2020, Petra Costa managed to sequence at “apocalypse in the tropics”.
Both investigate a cracked Brazil, flirting with right -wing extremism, disillusioned with politics. “Democracy” It focuses on the period that goes from, going through the protests against Dilma Rousseff and his, reaching. “Apocalypse “accompanies the Bolsonaro government, and the
The two films oppose historical facts with the first -person narrative and the director’s memories. The appeal allowed Petra, to look at the period of the military dictatorship and Lava Jato from the saga of his family, owner of one of the great Brazilian contractors, a. In the 1970s, the parents of Petra, Manuel and Marília broke with their family to participate in the armed struggle. The director brings this emotional baggage to describe the sunset of democracy.
In “Revelation”, Petra is the skeptical narrator, graduated in good schools, who knew what “Aea Formula of Oxygen” was, but had not read the Bible and knew nothing about “the apostle Paul, John of Patmos or the four Knights of Revelation.”
She says in the documentary that she only started a more close reading of the holy books after a visit to Congress, when she won a gift bible. From then on, finally began to learn the language of a part of the population that seemed to speak another language and, surprisingly, was gaining power in the country.
The growth of evangelicals was one of the most important social phenomena of the last century in Brazil. . This hegemony remained unshakable during almost the whole Brazilian history. It began to flexible relevantly especially after the 1980s, throughout the country’s urbanization process.
The breach of the monopoly of Catholicism made room for a fierce dispute in the belief market. Over time, Brazilians who lived in cities abandoned their rural worldview, forged around farms, work in the fields, with memories of Casa Grande and Senzala, to invent and internalize new ideas that allowed them to face the challenges of modern life.
Pentecostalism gradually became one of the most demanded beliefs in this new scenario because.
The growing religious conversions for a long time lived well with the. In redemocratization, voters supported the parties and politicians who made the 1988 Constitution, which tamed inflation, which created the Unified Health System, which promoted the growth of enrollment in schools and universities and created innovative income and income programs.
Even with all the problems in the country, these voters continued betting on the state and rationality to define their directions, while religion served the individual and his family in the private sphere.
This border seems to have broken up at some point in the past decade, especially after 2013, when patience with governments and politicians was running out.
The streets showed an urgency desperate for something that neither Petra nor most believers of the New Republic were able to understand.
There was resentment, cry for recognition and respect. This feeling gained direction and meaning with the help of the sacred, promoting a new clash with the public sphere. Symbols and messages from religion gave this diffuse revolt and reordered the spirit of those who felt lost.
Pentecostal preaching, which already reached the masses via radio, television concessions and spread in the neighborhood church, gained new dimension and new spaces for debates with the popularization of social networks.
Throughout the documentary, Petra seeks to decipher this new language that directs behaviors and invades politics, being used to legitimize authorities, produce obedience and promote causes.
Some characters in the film show how the revived faith of Pentecostals stimulates love-self, self-confidence and
The political force of Pentecostalism, in the director’s reading, can be understood by the book of Revelation, which speaks about the end of the approaching times.
According to popular interpretations of today, Jesus will return with his armies to combat evil, in a war capable of promoting freedom and peace. The Covid crisis and the incessant wars in the world offer the perfect context for this speech to have resonance.
Religion gains space in this scenario in creating the language of Holy War, in which the struggle for the seizure of power in the name of Jesus is fought, exerting the dominion of the seven hills quoted by Malafaia. Opponents trying to contain this sacred ambition are now identified as allies of the devil.
Bolsonaro is his perfect commander, a Messiah military in the surname, who carries a deep resentment of the New Republic’s thinking elite and survived an attack on the eve of the election in a kind of miraculous deliverance.
It is necessary to have faith and to dispense with critical sense to commit to an action like that of January 8, which ends the documentary, whose images mix with those of prayer currents. The end of the movie has this bleak tone.
however, published after the movie was ready, brought good news. Evangelicals grew up slower than in the previous decade. It can be a reaction to the abuse of leaders who have filled with poison and hatred the message of Jesus, in a country that still lives the political challenge of creating a collective project common to all Brazilians.
These leaders face resistance among the evangelicals themselves, some of them present in the documentary. There is margin for optimism. After all, the Brazilian never had a vocation for fundamentalism. It changes aside according to the context and the pendulum of history.
