UC San Diego

This thesis examines the political posturing and rhetoric of two major Protestant denominations in Brazil—Presbyterians and Methodists—during the Vargas Era (1930-1945). During the Vargas years, the Catholic Church saw a renewed period of expansion, consolidation, political activism, and political cooperation with the government that worried the smaller Protestants groups. As a response to the approximation between the government and the Church, Protestants used their official denominational periodicals to encourage, direct, and organize Protestant political efforts during this period. To explore how this rhetoric was used, this thesis focuses on a number of specific political issues: religious freedom, the Constitution of 1934, education policy, the proclamation of the Estado Novo, Brazilian Integralism, European fascism and communism, and World War II. Almost without exception, and in an attempt to preserve what they saw as precariously protected rights to religious conscious, Protestants often opted to position themselves in direct political opposition to whichever stance the Catholic Church maintained on these issues. These Protestant periodicals demonstrate that they were politically attentive and conscious, and had a “bloc” mentality when it came to their positions on these issues. Anchored around the Constitution of 1934 and World War II, Protestantism in Brazil found new movements—on a national and international level—through which to engage their political opposition to hegemonic Catholicism on a level that hadn’t been theretofore seen.