Christian Nationalism and the Rise of Charismatic Publics in Brazil

This presentation argues that what was earlier held as an open “marketplace” of religion in Brazil has broken out of the private sphere to hold sway as a political force in the form of an emergent Christian nationalism. Taking Michelle Bolsonaro’s speech to a crowd on February 25th as its point of departure, I track the transit of three phenomena between religious sites and the public sphere: spiritual deliverance, Biblical Hebrew imagery, and Protestant-Catholic ecumenism. This presentation uses the theoretical concepts of discursive chains of equivalence and charisma to analyze the motifs listed above as tools political actors are using to blur the boundaries between religious authority and secular space. It ends with a reflection on the ways such blurring affects national conversations surrounding secularism, race, and freedom of speech.