UC San Diego

This thesis explores the current involvement of Pentecostals believers with politics in Brazil, with emphasis in the career of Pastor and Congressman Marco Feliciano. I argue that the Pentecostal engagement with politics in Brazil can be explained by the existence of a Pentecostal model of democracy. This model emerges from the participation of Pentecostal believers in the advent of a new democratic state from 1986, a year that saw the end of a 21 year military dictatorship in the country. In my view, these believers partake of both the existing social imaginary of what it means to be part of a democratic state and appropriate it within a Pentecostal view of the world. It is my contention that, stemming from this model, Brazilian Pentecostals developed a complex political theology in which political engagement became part of what it means to be a committed Pentecostal. The political theology that emerged among these Pentecostals intertwines religion and politics in two ways. The first, what I call Political Evangelization, is the attempt by pastors to evangelize churchgoers in a political way by preaching to them about the importance of being politically involved. The second, which I refer to as the Evangelization of Politics, relates to the work of evangelization implemented in the Brazilian National Congress by those Pentecostal pastors who are also congressmen