A igreja evangélica e as eleições : o envolvimento da Igreja Assembleia de Deus nas eleições presidenciais de 2018 na cidade de São Leopoldo

Abstract

This dissertation analyzes the participation of the São Leopoldo Assembly of God Church in the 2018 elections. In recent decades there has been a considerable increase in the number of evangelicals in Brazil – a country that has the largest number of Catholics in the world also has one of the largest contingents of evangelicals on the planet. There is a religious transition underway in the country, in which Demographer Jose´Eustáquio Diniz points out that Catholics will be overtaken by evangelicals by 2030, with this rate of growth in membership maintained. Among evangelicals, the second largest church in Brazil – Assembly of God, organized in the country 113 years ago, has more than 12 million faithful, according to the 2010 IBGE Census. Also according to IBGE, it represents 30% of this multifaceted segment and which There are hundreds of denominations that are structured in Brazilian territory. In this essentially popular, poor, black and female environment, we will trace historical paths and understand the religious motivations that generate mobilization and aggregation in certain candidacies in the presidential elections. More specifically, we want to understand why the Assembly of God Church of São Leopoldo, a city in the Metropolitan Region of Porto Alegre, with more than 217 thousand inhabitants (according to the 2022 IBGE census) supported the majority of Jair Bolsonaro's (PSL) candidacy in the 2018 elections and try to understand how this church installed in the city for more than 80 years acted in these elections. The São Leopoldo Assembly of God Church has, according to the 2010 IBGE Census, a contingent of 15 thousand adherents, out of a total of 54 thousand evangelicals that was surveyed by the same Census in the city.