Who are the evangelical women linked to , a group that has been trying for years to build bridges between the left and a segment so averse to Lulism?
For First Lady da Silva, a breath of hope in the approaching electoral whirlwind, contrary to what Pastor Silas Malafaia may think. “He had the nerve to go on a social network and said that I was talking to insignificant women. He is insignificant, because every woman is important to me”, at an event with PT believers or those sympathetic to the party.
The meeting mentioned by the pastor took place in 2025 at the Coletivação, church in Ceilândia (DF). Malafaia said at the time that the first lady was at best able to bring together women without “a single shred of expression in the world.”
When rescuing the speech, Janja took it completely out of context. There is a “monumental difference”, according to him, between “expressionless” and “insignificant” women. “A woman may have no expression in society, but be extremely significant to her home, her family and her church.”
The debate between the two focuses on a group that is small in number, but strategic for the president (PT). These women try to reconcile Christian faith and agendas historically associated with the left. They reject the idea that being a believer implies automatic adherence to conservatism and want to dispute a religious narrative monopolized by pastors aligned with Bolsonarism.
It’s people like Nilza Valéria Zacarias, 54, author of the book “A Casa da Rita”, advisor to the Presidency and a “great friend” with whom Janja says she talks a lot to organize meetings throughout Brazil. The objective is to identify obstacles that evangelical women “saw in us, from the progressive camp”, and listen to what these women have to say — the majority of whom are black and low-income. And also the basis of churches.
Nilza has a lot to say. It was who made her realize the relevance of women in Christianity, said Janja at the PT event. He gave examples: upon resurrecting, Jesus first revealed himself to Mary Magdalene, and turned water into wine after another woman, Mary, warned that the drink was missing at a party. “We also need to look at the Bible from a female perspective,” said the first lady.
Nilza recognizes that the right has managed to establish in the popular imagination “the idea that the left has to be fought”, but sees signs of saturation at the base. The partisanization of temples, according to the coordinator of the Front of Evangelicals for the Rule of Law, generates a side effect of emptying.
“Pastors who insist on their speech, assuming candidacy, will continue to lose people. There is a tiredness with the excessive political discourse of recent times”, says Nilza, who has been from a Baptist family for generations — she attends Rio’s Nossa Igreja Brasileira.
Nilza remembers when she studied at a Catholic school, as it was the best in the region. She was called a pagan by colleagues because she was not baptized into Catholicism. Times have changed, and evangelicals have left the social fringes. There is no reason to treat them as an electoral monolith now, he says.
“There is no human being who only calls himself evangelical in life. Everyone is evangelical and something.”
The same woman who “recognizes Christ as the one who promotes life” leaves the house every day “to have a life.” “She goes to work, takes a crowded bus, has no one to leave her children with, she’s on Sisreg [sistema que organiza filas no SUS]suffers violence. It is crossed by what passes through all women.”
Mother, grandmother, caregiver for the elderly, social service student, party leader and daughter of a founder of the PT, Dagmar Santos, 46, lives next to a “very Bolsonaro congregation” in Lauro de Freitas (BA). She prefers to pray in a more progressive church, which for her gets the right tone: it doesn’t hit the ideological key, or it would scare the membership, she says. “We are doing the Lord’s call. We don’t adopt a line of positioning between right and left.”
Dagmar was in the room where Janja said something in the same vein: “Ah, left and right… If we continue with this, we might end up skating like a car stuck in the mud, you know? I think it’s the progressive camp that believes in the values that are in the Gospel.”
It failed to combine with the millions of evangelicals who joined Jair Bolsonaro (PL) and allies in recent years — the same group that, despite having more conservative values than the average population, .
Dagmar accuses pastors who, “in a very malicious, very perverse way”, realized that many believers are unable to detect the political interests embedded in preaching. He is also uncomfortable with “a Bible instrumentalized from the perspective of masculinized and oppressive men against women.”
That’s why so many brothers of faith “follow this line of demonizing what is different”, he says. She credits the unpopularity of the left in churches to a greater difficulty in reaching the base, “due to false moralism, due to the installed hypocrisy”.
For Dagmar, the biggest mistake in the field has been the way it guides falling into the discursive trap of who is “for or against life”. Who is going to be against life anyway? Criminalizing a woman who terminates a pregnancy is “subjugating her twice to violence” and condemning her “in inhumane conditions from a spiritual perspective”, he states.
The topic was not mentioned at the PT meeting. Too much of a minefield.
It was possible to feel which fronts, in the view of those present, should be prioritized: the fight against feminicide and domestic violence, without forgetting that the church is usually the first refuge for attacked faithful.
Maternal mortality, food insecurity and lack of places in daycare centers and schools also affect many evangelical women and, therefore, should be on the agenda.
Councilor in Goiânia Aava Santiago (PSB) shed light on what she considers to be “one of the cruelest statistics in this hypocritical country, which is on a true crusade against women”. Conservatives say that “motherhood is sacred”, but they agree with the relaxation of labor laws, he said. Bottom line: many professionals return from maternity leave and are fired. “The face of poverty in this country is still a mother with her small child on her lap.”
HAS Sheet Aava defends that the left does not fall into ideological traps. “Those who are obsessed with these issues are precisely the extreme right, not the government or the progressive camp, nor the vast majority of evangelicals”, he states. “If you ask any of my sisters from the Assembly of God what is a priority for them, they won’t say who proposed marriage. They will talk about daycare for their grandchildren, jobs for their children, time with their family.”
The councilor says she has a lots of shepherd uncles. Everything he believes in, he says, he learned neither in social sciences college nor in political activism. “I first learned in church, in Sunday Bible school, by reading the Bible. In fact, politics is a method to apply what the Gospel has taught me since I was born.”
