From social media to Sunday service, how Brazilian churches compete for followers

On June 20, the Christian community will march together, across all denominations, in the March for Jesus, one of the biggest religious events in the world. Though all of them will join hands for a day, it is not the case for the rest of the year. For the last few decades, Brazil has been the stage for a religious competition that Christian leaders are watching closely. In thirty years, the proportion of Evangelicals increased more than threefold to reach 22.2 percent in 2010, while that of Catholics decreased by a third.

The key success of Evangelicals is how they were able to reach out to the general population. For Shirley Roels, Professor Emerita at Calvin College and specialist on U.S. Evangelicals’ business ethics, the attraction is the “prosperity gospel”: the belief that it is God’s will to bless its most faithful followers with wealth. “Prosperity gospel is global. It is a very powerful approach because it appeals to the human yearning for security, to feel like we are controlling our future,” she says. “We only have to go back to Adam and Eve to see that we always wanted to be independent.”

“While the North American influence on Brazilian Evangelicals is not new, it has been boosted by the prosperity gospel,” says André Ricardo de Souza, coordinator of the Group of Religion, Economy and Politics at the Federal University of São Carlos. With prosperity theology stronger than ever, the religious demographics of Brazil is a stark contrast from 60 years ago. “Until the 1960s, there was almost no religious market, it was only the Catholic Church,” he says. “Now, there is a huge market for churches.”

To try to prevent the breakdown of its monopoly, the Catholic Church first used a softer strategy, engaging in interreligious dialogue with Evangelical churches. It has since shifted tack, following the strong increase of Evangelical presence in the country. “The Catholic Church has decided to participate in the religious market,” explains Mr. De Souza. “But...