Fernando Haddad attends a celebration of Divine Liturgy with Patriarch Kirill of Moscow in São Paulo. Credit: Roman Catholic Archdiocese of São Paulo.
The recent elections in Brazil have once again placed religion and politics at the fore of public debates. Not surprisingly, the election of President Jair Bolsonaro has focused attention on the growing influence of Evangelicals in Brazilian politics. This factor is now frequently touted alongside the affirmation that Brazil is the largest Roman Catholic country in the world. While Bolsonaro is himself a Roman Catholic, his election campaign played to an alliance of Evangelicals and traditional Roman Catholics. In the final run-off, the Evangelical vote showed a 2 to 1 split in favor of Bolsonaro, while the Roman Catholic vote was equally distributed between both candidates. Bolsanaro’s opponent was the Orthodox Christian Fernando Haddad. Added to this, Bolsonaro’s immediate predecessors in the Presidential Office were both influenced by Orthodoxy. Orthodox Christianity is in the political mix in Brazil, although it is frequently misunderstood (in the case of Fernando Haddad) or overlooked (in the case of Presidents’ Michel Temer and Dilma Rousseff).
Following a campaign television appearance in which he cited the Bible, Fernando Haddad was savaged on social media and from Evangelical pulpits. Continue reading