Afro-Brazilian religions in danger in Bolsonaro’s Brazil

Speaking to supporters during a campaign event last year, then-presidential candidate Jair Bolsonaro proclaimed: “God is above all. There is no such thing as a secular state. The state is Christian and if minorities don’t like that they can leave. Minorities must bow to the majority.”

Though identifying as Catholic, President Bolsonaro was baptized as an Evangelical Christian in 2016, in the waters of the Jordan River in Israel. Three years earlier, Mr. Bolsonaro married his wife Michele, in a ceremony conducted by prominent Evangelical pastor Silas Malafaia. Brazil’s head of state is therefore inextricably linked to the country’s Evangelical community, which accounts for 22 percent of the Brazilian population. (This percentage has risen sharply; in 1970, 5 percent of the population identified as Evangelical.)

A great deal of the more extreme facets of Jair Bolsonaro’s agenda—especially when it comes to moral and social values—can be credited to the influence the Evangelical church has on his politics. Damara Alves, an Evangelical pastor assigned to occupy the former ministry of human rights (rechristened the “Ministry of Women, Family, and Human Rights”), sparked controversy last week by declaring Brazil was entering into a “new...