The book Jesus and John Wayne (Captain Swing) describes the rise of the evangelical right in the US from the first televangelical preachers, Billy Graham or Pat Robertson, to cold war anti-feminists like Phyllis Schafly, going through the unlikely conversion of Donald Trump in the president of the so-called Moral Majority.
His book has a very American approach. But in Brazil, evangelicalism is also transforming culture and politics. Would it happen in other countries?
Since I published the book, hundreds of people have called me to tell me that the same thing is happening in their countries.
How is it exported?
First it was through the missionary movement. In the Brazilian case, the Southern Baptists. In the 20th century, evangelicals began to dominate global missions. It is a consumer culture that uses modern media to spread its message.
This modern element of evangelicalism is perhaps not understood.
Use the market to grow through popular culture. The Christian publishing industry is invisible to non-evangelical people but it is huge. It is very difficult for a local Christian literature to flourish because, as is the case in Brazil, the American publisher Thomas Nelson has flooded the market with American evangelical authors. The same goes for radio and television. And so American evangelicalism is crossing borders.
In Brazil they say that if you live in the prosperous southern area of ??Rio, you go to a psychoanalyst and that, on the other hand, if you live in the poor periphery or in a favela, you go to the Universal Church of God…
Could be. In the US, many white evangelicals are upper-middle class. But it can attract those with less purchasing power. That idea of ??the teaching of prosperity, that God blesses those who obey, is strong. If you obey, you will have success in life, and prosperity. Your family too. This is therapeutic. Furthermore, evangelicalism gives people a sense of belonging, an identity, and a purpose in life. And applied to the entire country it translates into Christian nationalism. They may seem fanatic. But they internally believe that they are saving the nation.
Perhaps it could be said that the US has exported an economic model that has created extreme inequality and atomized society, and now exports the psychological solution: evangelicalism.
Well yes. This makes quite a bit of sense. Evangelical conviction denies inequality and whitewashes history. So whatever problem you have is your problem. A problem between you and God. This can be attractive if you see yourself as an individual trapped in structures of inequality that you cannot change. In a paradoxical sense, thinking that between you and God it is possible to fix the problem can give you a sense of power.
Can the same phenomenon occur in Europe?
I think so. Europe is much more secular than the US But evangelicalism is easily transported. Unlike Catholicism, it does not have roots in any particular place. And it doesn’t have a hierarchy. It is a very enterprising cult. It can take root anywhere. Compete successfully in a marketplace of religions and ideas. In other words, if there is a recovery of religious faith in Europe, it would be logical to think that it will come from evangelicalism. There is a lot of money behind evangelicalism that comes from the US through missionary organizations. They raise millions of dollars and use it to expand their empires. And obviously there is a link between this movement and the new right.
