Not all evangelicals sing to Bolsonaro’s tune

“But I can’t keep quiet, I won’t keep quiet! When pastors and churches, to support a candidate, make little guns with their fingers.” 

In front of the Candelaria church in downtown Rio de Janeiro, a sound truck blasts out a rap track set to gospel instrumentals. A crowd of Christians, both evangelical and Catholic, is gathering for a demonstration in support of former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the frontrunner in Sunday’s presidential runoff.

The song is called “Messias,” a new release by Leo Gonçalves, Kleber Lucas, and Clovis, big names on Brazil’s gospel music scene. A collaboration with five other young Christian artists, it is a critique of the politicization of Brazil’s churches and a challenge to many evangelicals’ uncritical support of far-right President Jair Bolsonaro.

“It’s a record of history. We don’t know who will win the election, but we want to register that we do not support this government, that there are Christians who never backed Mr. Bolsonaro,” explains Anderson Ribeiro, an evangelical rapper who goes by the stage name MN MC and is one of the song’s composers, to The Brazilian Report.

Mr. Bolsonaro, who is originally a Catholic, received 70 percent of the evangelical vote in 2018, according to exit polls. Recent data suggests he may receive a similar level of support from this segment of the electorate in the runoff on Sunday – but the remaining 30 percent are much more vocal in their opposition than they were four years ago.

One reason for this is how entrenched support for Mr. Bolsonaro has become in most churches. Viviane Costa, a Pentecostal pastor, describes churches’...