What do evangelical leaders think about democracy and human rights?

A comparative analysis between supporters and criticals of Bolsonaro

Abstract

The article analyzes the positions on democracy and human rights of evangelical leaders who supported Jair Bolsonaro in 2018, seeking to identify in their speeches elements of the social forces pointed out by Almeida (2019) as part of the conservative wave in Brazil. Qualitatively, 24 interviews were conducted with evangelical leaders - 12 voters for Jair Bolsonaro in 2018, and 12 who declared being critics of the president. Interviews with Bolsonaro's opponents were used as a control mechanism to verify whether the arguments used by Bolsonarists were restricted just to this group. Our results reinforce what has been defended by Almeida (2019), that conservative evangelicals are a crucial arm of the Brazilian conservative wave. In our research, we found that the arguments of this group were in line with three of the social forces that compose the conservative wave: the economically liberal, the morally regulatory, and the socially intolerant ones.