Democracy through the spirit: the Universal Church and its interconnections with Brazilian democracy

Abstract

The connection between Evangelical church actors and contemporary Brazilian federal politics has raised many speculations, especially regarding the association of these churches with neoliberalism and populist governments. In a different manner, this article aims to show how churches from the third wave of Pentecostalism, and the Universal Church in particular, engage in the most recent historical phase of Brazilian democracy that began in the late 1980’s. The grow of Universal Church and the democratic development of Brazil are investigated in parallel here, giving light to the different political connections and arrangements this church has been part of in the last decades. This makes it possible to understand what the alliances between the Universal Church and the country’s presidency actually mean for both the church institution and its common members.