Healing the Nation: Portrayals of Democracy in Official Social Media Profiles of Igreja Universal during the Election of Bolsonaro in 2018

In 2018, Jair Bolsonaro was elected president of Brazil with the decisive support of Pentecostal denominations, such as Igreja Universal. Bolsonaro became known in the international media as an example of the possible rise of what was then called global authoritarian populism. Previously, debates in the sociological literature of Brazilian Pentecostalism emphasized the nature of its political participation either as an integral part of the re-democratization process (Campos 2005; Chesnut 1997; Freston 1993, 1995), or as an index of structural sociopolitical limitations (Baptista 2009; Souza 2012). The role of Pentecostalism in the 2018 elections provides valuable data to test some of the previous conclusions made in this discussion about the consequences of Pentecostal participation in politics. The data used was collected from the official social media profiles of Igreja Universal in 2018. It was then coded based on the theoretical alternatives established by the literature. Using this data, I clarified shifting understandings of Brazilian democracy in the church's online political rhetoric. Ultimately, I created the term "status quo radicalism", which allowed for a quick and smooth transition between moderate right to authoritarian right-wing endorsements.