How religion collided with race and politics in Brazil’s presidential election

Since Brazil’s runoff elections, most attention has been focused on President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s surprise upset.

gave a narrow lead to challenger Flávio Bolsonaro – son of former President Jair Bolsonaro, who is now serving for efforts to overturn the 2022 election. In , however, , compared with the younger Bolsonaro’s 48%.

Yet the close results still highlight the country’s deep polarization, , which have played . According to , Catholics were , while evangelicals staunchly backed Bolsonaro.

But Brazil’s evangelicals have diverse beliefs and identities. As , I believe the full picture of how faith shapes the country’s politics is more complicated – especially when it comes to race.

Changes in Christianity

According to the , 57% of Brazilians are Catholic and 27% are evangelical. That is a stark shift from just 30 years ago, when 8 in 10 Brazilians and 1 in 10 were evangelical.

Beyond Christianity, 1% of Brazilians , which draw on African religions. Two percent follow Spiritism, a movement that around the turn of the 20th century. Four percent belong to other religions, and 9% have no religious affiliation.

One measure of evangelicals’ growing influence is political. Almost 1 in 5 members of Brazil’s Chamber of Deputies, the lower house of Congress,

Jair Bolsonaro’s wife, Michelle, ahead of his 2018 election victory. His slogan of “God, country, family and freedom” won . As Flávio, his son, ran in the 2026 election, he also talked about religion, such as declaring that .”

But not all evangelicals are the same. Latin Americans often One wing of Protestant churches in Brazil is decidedly conservative and shares characteristics with evangelical churches in the United States. However, the category also includes denominations such as Methodists, Lutherans and Presbyterians.

Then there are Pentecostal groups like the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God and The Assembly of God, .

, a Brazilian think tank , shows that members of Pentecostal and evangelical churches are more likely to reject Lula’s Workers’ Party than any another faith group, while practitioners of African-rooted religions are more likely to reject Bolsonaro’s Liberal Party than any other group.

Religion and race

Surveys also show , among many Brazilians that race does not matter in their society.

Forty-five percent of Brazilians referring to people with multiracial ancestry. Forty-three percent identify as white, and 10% as Black. Around 0.6% are Indigenous, and 0.4% are East Asian.

Black Brazilians are , while those identifying as white tend to support Bolsonaro, and people identifying as Brown are evenly divided.

Examining the intersection of religion and race is also important to understanding Brazil’s diversity. About half of Black Brazilians are Catholic, and ; in fact, , a majority are of African descent.

Independent Black Christian denominations did not emerge in Brazil the way they did in the U.S.; those churches’ creation was, in part, a result of segregation. However, Black groups within religious organizations have long been to . Despite these efforts, leadership in both Catholic and evangelical circles has remained largely white.

During the late 2010s, a new generation of activists took the helm, concerned about and , and some started to more vocally criticize the Bolsonaro administration. During the 2022 election, 14 evangelical organizations created a “” calling for the government to not favor any one religion, policies to address police violence against Black youth, women’s rights and other issues.

In 2025, political scientist and I attended in São Paulo, which brought together 400 Afro-Brazilian evangelical laity and clergy calling for racial justice and progress in reducing socioeconomic inequality. A key point was rapprochement with Candomblé and Umbanda, . Ivanir dos Santos, a priest or “babalawo” in the Candomblé tradition, blessed the closing service.

2026 election

Throughout the current Brazilian election cycle, religion has become a polarizing force in its own right. For example, on Instagram, one will see posts like “Real Christians don’t vote for Lula,” or “I’m Christian, and I support Lula.”

Evangelical support for Jair Bolsonaro has been a prominent feature of all recent elections. But this time, it was less unusual to see evangelicals publicly support the left – many of them Preto or Pardo.

“,” for example, a group affiliated with Lula’s party, brought together prominent Black evangelicals and Catholics on panels and held prayer rallies. The group’s Instagram page who are evangelical Christians, including former Environment Minister Mariana Silva, pastor and legislator Henrique Vieira, Attorney General Jorge Mesias, legislator and former Rio de Janeiro Gov. Benedita da Silva, and André Janones. Janones, a legislator from one of Brazil’s most populous states, was the 10 million-member WhatsApp group that was pivotal in Lula’s victory.

Lula’s victory is just one more example of how race intersects all facets of Brazilian society, including religion. I believe these durable divisions will mark Brazil’s political and religious landscape for the foreseeable future.