(PL-RJ), which had already declared itself, thought it worth reinforcing the message. On the last Sunday of 2025, the senator left his seat at the service at Lagoinha Church, in Orlando. He responded to Pastor André Valadão’s call for everyone there who wanted to be reconciled with God to come to the pulpit: “Let me pray for you.”
When sharing the moment on social media, he evoked God, “the doctor’s doctor”, who would “restore the health of” and renew “our strength” for the 2026 election.
Jair’s firstborn remained in Orlando for New Year’s Eve, which took place at a mega event led by Valadão at a local arena, Vira Brasil. The evangelical cast included high-profile figures in the segment, such as .
Before Christmas, Flávio publicized another participation in a religious event, this time on national soil. Alongside his brothers Carlos (PL-RJ) and Jair Renan (PL-SC), he was compared by the host to the one who in the Bible leads the people of Israel in conquering the promised land.
Bolsonaro’s children would be “the Joshuas at the front of the battle”, according to senator Magno Malta (PL-ES), who led the preaching flanked by his daughter Maguinha Malta.
The senator should not stop there. He plans to intensify appearances at evangelical events, a flank that his father, treats as a decisive electoral asset — it represents 27% of the Brazilian population. The strategy involves presenting oneself as a reliable interlocutor, capable of dialoguing with leaders who, in recent years, have oscillated between loyalty to Bolsonaro and the search for less conflictual alternatives in the conservative field.
Anthropologist Lívia Reis, from Iser (Institute of Religious Studies), points to a patent “attempt to recall Bolsonaro’s popularity by Flávio, to try to legitimize his candidacy in the segment”.
With one caveat: the scenario that elected the father eight years ago is no longer the same. “From 2016 onwards, the main evangelical leaders came together around a project and, more importantly, a common enemy. At that moment, the Catholic Jair Bolsonaro was the only figure with the potential to defeat the PT.”
Hence we see almost no resistance, among this evangelical leadership, to the man who had three marriages and spoke bad words. The reading is that there was something bigger at stake. “What we observed was a collective effort to carry out a moral cleansing of Bolsonaro’s figure and to elevate him to a place of ‘chosen by God’ for the mission of governing Brazil. In this plot, she played a fundamental role, because she was in fact the evangelical”, says Reis.
Cut to 2026, and Flávio is far from the support that his father had in this religious part. Firstly, there is Michelle herself, preferred by some leaders to form the presidential ticket, preferably as vice-president of governor Tarcísio de Freitas (Republicanos-SP).
This is the case of , openly averse to this senator’s electoral adventure. The pastor, one of the most vocal names on the Bolsonarist right, says he has nothing against Flávio personally, but does not consider him a good option to face the left, which would be salivating over his entry into the presidential contest. “Did you see Lula and the PT attack him? No, because he is the best guy to defeat. They are terribly strategic.”
Malafaia places all movement surrounding Flávio’s candidacy under suspicion. “This is a shame, guys. [Bolsonaro] he was hospitalized for surgery, emotionally fragile, his son goes back there, ‘dad, you have to write here, because people don’t believe him [que ele era presidenciável]’. That’s not strategy, it’s trying to shove it down people’s throats.”
He publicly exposes dissatisfaction with the senator’s candidacy that radiates to the forefront of evangelical power. Most of these pastors of national stature, period. But it is already accepted that, without Bolsonaro’s support, the governor of São Paulo will opt for the safest move and seek re-election. And the line moves.
Flávio will have the endorsement of this leadership, but with less intensity than that obtained by Jair in 2018 and 2022. The pastors would not risk, however, leaving Bolsonaro’s son 01 in the electoral drift — if a ticket headed by him is really irreversible, there would be manifestations sympathetic to it, even if less effusive.
The pastor himself who prayed for Flávio at the end of the year avoided greater alignment with him. Questioned by SheetAndré Valadão said that he did not invite the senator either to the New Year event or to his service. Flávio went because he wanted to, just as his father would have done the times he visited the Lagoinha Baptist Church.
“I’m not a Bolsonarist and never have been. My political positioning is not based on a candidate, but on principles closer to those I believe in. I’m not linked to any candidate,” he stated.
Yours was not read like that. Valadão had clashes with minister Alexandre de Moraes, then president of the TSE (Superior Electoral Court), and welcomed Bolsonarist politicians to his pulpit, such as deputy Eduardo Bolsonaro, whom he called “precious, dear” in a speech in which he compared communism to “a bacteria waiting for the immune system and its defenses to drop before returning”.
What we see for now is a more fragmented horizon, says the Iser anthropologist. “This has to do with everything that happened to Bolsonaro himself, who went from an image of a virile man to that of a man weakened and swallowed by the system he was willing to fight.”
Reis also does not rule out greater restraint in criticizing Lula (PT), who is expected to seek his fourth term. “We may be surprised by leaders who once supported Bolsonaro refraining from campaigning against the president.”
For the researcher, Flávio starts from a more uncomfortable situation than his father in the believing electorate, “especially because he did not inherit his charisma”.
