Brazil: Where Does Democracy End, Theocracy Begin? FarRt, Xian Fundament, Dominionism; New Film

Last edited Thu Sep 12, 2024, 02:49 PM - Edit history (1)

'Where does democracy end and theocracy begin for Brazil?' The Guardian, Sept. 10, 2024. Edit. By Petra Costa and Alessandra Orofino.
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When does a democracy end, and a theocracy begin? Have India, Hungary and Israel already slipped into the latter category? Is it possible that Brazil and the United States will also cross the line? We never thought we would ask ourselves these questions, but they have not left our minds for the last decade – until we were able to address them more directly in the form of a film, Apocalypse in the Tropics, which looks specifically into the relationship of the far right and Christian fundamentalism in Brazil.

We are two Brazilian women, one an activist and community organizer turned producer – Alessandra Orofino- the other an anthropologist turned film-maker- Petra Costa. Both of us witnessed scenes that would foreshadow the tremendous impact that religious fundamentalism would have on our country’s politics. In 2016, Costa was filming The Edge of Democracy, trying to understand how democracies across the world wound up in such a state of crisis and whether they could survive it. We were in the midst of an economic crisis and a controversial impeachment process. Costa went to the capital, to try to understand what was happening to our democracy.

Instead of finding politicians discussing the issues at hand she found an evangelical pastor and congressman and his followers walking through the halls of Congress and blessing the seats of lawmakers.

They were determined to establish a government of “true believers” and to topple the “wall between church and state” once and for all.. At the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, this dual role played by the evangelical churches reached its apex. While some pastors quickly organized their communities to face the disease – both through material and spiritual means – many also recognized the vacuum the political crisis that ensued was creating at the highest echelons of government and immediately started to seek more and more power.

Our far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro, lost ally after ally. He needed theological backing to his publicly professed thesis that Covid was not really that bad and that we needed to carry on with life. It was then that he tightened his connection to some evangelical leaders who fought to keep their churches open, while calling for prayers and fasting as an appropriate response to the illness.. If the marriage between religious fundamentalists and the far right continues to succeed around the world, we could soon witness the destruction of one of modernity’s greatest inventions – the separation between church and state...
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/sep/10/democracy-theocracy-brazil-us