“Nosso Terreno”: Moral Crisis and Rightwing Evangelicals in the Political Sphere

Right-wing evangelical politics in Brazil have become presumptive, but they were prefigured during the simultaneous processes of national redemocratization and evangelical politicization in the 1970s. At this crossroads, leaders of several denominations adopted the language of acute moral crisis, laying the groundwork for an evangelical Right. Moral crisis itself became “nosso terreno”—the point of insertion for right-wing evangelicals in the political sphere, and one of several key issues that would divide reactionary evangelicals from their progressive co-religionists. By the time of the national constitutional assembly (1986), Baptists’ and Assembleianos’ position as vocal conservatives who largely supported the military regime and opposed ecumenicalism, leftist social justice initiatives, and communism had been established by years of pronouncements linking these issues to moral crisis. This paper begins an examination of those years, of the determinative contours of the gradual transition from things ethereal to things political—and the significance of these contours in facilitating the rise of the evangelical Right. The paper focuses on the remarkable similarities between the political development of an evangelical Right in Brazil and in the United States—indeed, I argue that personal and ideological links between the two religious communities (increasingly, one transnational religious community) strengthened determinatively in this period.