THE ORIGIN OF CHRISTIAN NATIONALISM

Poll: Nearly half of Americans think the US should be a Christian nation

But those who say that tend to avoid hard-line positions and have different views about what a Christian nation should look like.

Photo by Brad Dodson/Unsplash/Creative Commons

October 27, 2022

By 

Jack Jenkins

(RNS) — Forty-five percent of Americans believe the U.S. should be a “Christian nation,” one of several striking findings from a sweeping new Pew Research Center survey examining Christian nationalism.

But researchers say respondents differed greatly when it came to outlining what a Christian nation should look like, suggesting a wide spectrum of beliefs.

“There are a lot of Americans — 45% — who tell us they think the United States should be a Christian nation. That is a lot of people,” Greg Smith, one of the lead authors of the survey, said in an interview. “(But) what people mean when they say they think the U.S. should be a Christian nation is really quite nuanced.”

The findings, unveiled Thursday (Oct. 27), come as Christian nationalism has become a trending topic in midterm election campaigns, with extremists and even members of Congress such as Georgia Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene identifying with the term and others, such as Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado and Pennsylvania Republican gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano, expressing open hostility to the separation of church and state. In the road show known as the ReAwaken America Tour, unapologetically Christian nationalist leaders crisscross the country spouting conspiracy theories and baptizing people.

“More than four-in-ten U.S. adults say the country should be a ‘Christian nation,’ but far fewer want churches to endorse candidates, speak out on politics” Graphic courtesy of Pew Research Center

Pew’s findings suggest the recent surge in attention paid to Christian nationalism has had an effect on Americans, although some suggested politicians may be staking out positions to the right of those who merely say America should be a “Christian nation.”

“I used to think it was a positive view, but now with the MAGA crowd, I view it as racist, homophobic, anti-woman,” read one response to the question, according to the report.

According to the survey, which was conducted in September, 60% of Americans believe the U.S. was originally intended to be a Christian nation, but only 33% say it remains so today. Most (67%) say churches and other houses of worship should keep out of political matters, with only 31% endorsing faith groups’ expressing views on social and political issues.

Even those who believe America should be a Christian nation generally avoided hard-line positions. Most of this group (52%) said the government should never declare any particular faith the official state religion. Only 28% said they wanted Christianity recognized as the country’s official faith. Similarly, 52% said the government should advocate for moral values shared by several religions, compared with 24% who said it should advocate for Christian values alone.

But the pro-Christian America group was more split on the separation of church and state: 39% said the principle should be enforced, whereas 31% said the government should abandon it. An additional 30% disliked either option, refused to say or didn’t know.

Most in the group (54%) also said that if the Bible and U.S. laws conflict, Scripture should have more influence than the will of the people.

“Among those who want U.S. to be a ‘Christian nation,’ upward of half say Bible should influence U.S. laws and take precedence over the will of the people” Graphic courtesy of Pew Research Center

Smith stressed that some respondents who expressed support for a Christian nation “do mean that they think Christian beliefs, values and morality ought to be reflected in U.S. laws and policies.” But many respondents “tell us that they think the U.S. should be guided by Christian principles in a general way, but they don’t mean that we should live in a theocracy,” he said. “They don’t mean that they want to get rid of separation of church and state. They don’t mean they want to see the U.S. officially declared to be a Christian nation. It’s a nuanced picture.”

Among U.S. adults overall, only a small subset believe the U.S. government should declare Christianity the national faith (15%), advocate for Christian values (13%) or stop enforcing the separation of church and state (19%).

Partisanship strongly shaped the responses, with those who are Republican or lean toward the GOP far more likely to say America should be a Christian nation (67%) than Democrats or Democratic leaners (29%). Republicans were also significantly more likely to say the founders intended the country to be a Christian nation (76%), although nearly half of Democrats agreed (47%).

These divisions appear to reflect national political trends. While Democratic lawmakers — especially members of the Congressional Freethought Caucus — have voiced concerns about Christian nationalism’s role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, many congressional Republicans have declined to condemn the ideology, with only a small number affirming support for the separation of church and state.

The outsized presence of white evangelicals in the GOP may play a role. In Pew’s survey, white evangelicals were the faith group most likely to say America should be a Christian nation (81%). But they were followed by Black Protestants (65%), a heavily Democratic group. White nonevangelical Protestants were more split, with 54% agreeing the U.S. should be a Christian nation.

Photo by Aaron Burden/Unsplash/Creative Commons

Catholics were the only major Christian group where a majority did not express support of the idea (47%) of a Christian nation, though they were split along racial lines: Most white Catholics (56%) agreed America should be a Christian nation, while Hispanic Catholics were the least likely of any Christian group to say the same (36%).

Few Jewish (16%) or religiously unaffiliated Americans (17%) thought the U.S. should be a Christian nation, followed by an even smaller subset of atheists and agnostics (7%).

Age is also a factor. Among Americans ages 65 or older, 63% said America should be a Christian nation, compared with 23% of 18- to 29-year-olds.

Pew asked half of respondents to define a “Christian nation” in their own words and used their open-ended answers to group most people into three categories: those who see it as general guidance of Christian beliefs and values in society (34%); those who see it as being guided by beliefs and values, but without specifically referencing God or Christian concepts (12%); and those who see it as having Christian-based laws and governance (18%).

Those who think the U.S. should not be a Christian nation were more likely to describe a Christian nation as having Christian-based laws and governance (30%) than did those who believe it should be (6%).

The survey polled the other half of respondents about their views on Christian nationalism. Among all U.S. adults, fewer than half (45%) said they had heard anything about the term. Non-Christians were more likely than Christians overall to have heard or read anything about Christian nationalism (55% vs. 40%), and Democrats were more likely to express familiarity than Republicans (55% vs. 37%).

But researchers noted that while 54% of those surveyed said they hadn’t heard of Christian nationalism, respondents overall were far more likely to view the concept unfavorably (24%) than favorably (5%), suggesting that people familiar with the concept generally view it negatively.

As Christian nationalism digs in, differing visions surface

As Christian nationalists get more specific, ideological and theological divisions have reemerged.

Tennessee Pastor Greg Locke speaks at an event as part of the ReAwaken America Tour. Screengrab

October 28, 2022

By 

Jack Jenkins

WASHINGTON (RNS) — When Tennessee Pastor Greg Locke took the stage at the ReAwaken America Tour in Pennsylvania over the weekend, the throngs who had come out to hear conspiracy theories and inflammatory rhetoric about Democratic candidates instead heard Locke aim some of his sharpest criticism at a surprising target: Pope Francis.

“If you trust anybody but Jesus to get you to heaven, you ain’t going,” Locke said, his voice rising. “You say, ‘Well what about the pope?’ He ain’t a pope, he’s a pimp … He has prostituted the church.”

It was an odd note to strike at a rally where perhaps the biggest name on the speaker’s roster was retired Gen. Michael Flynn, a Catholic who later made it a point to mention his faith while voicing support for Christian nationalism. “I’m a Christian — I’m a Catholic, by the way,” said Flynn.

Former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn speaks Nov. 13, 2021, at Cornerstone Church in San Antonio. Video screen grab

Locke had aired his anti-Catholic position a few days before in a Facebook post advocating for burning rosaries and “Catholic statues.” When another user urged him to abandon the anti-Catholic rhetoric, Locke doubled down. “Catholicism is idolatry 100%” he wrote. “I will not be silent whether you follow or not. It’s a false pagan religion and so filled with perversity it’s ridiculous.”

Anti-Catholic rhetoric has long been a theme in nativist American thought, which includes some forms of extremist Protestant Christian agitators such as the Ku Klux Klan. But in the current Christian nationalist surge that fuels the ReAwaken gatherings and others like it, the ideology has served more as a glue holding together a wide range of right-wing coalitions. Locke’s remarks injected an uneasy tension, raising the prospect that what was once a unifying force is now prone to causing potential divisions in right-wing ranks.

The theological differences among the hardline Christian nationalist groups — some now emboldened to the point of embracing the Christian nationalist label — have been present from the start. Texas Pastor Robert Jeffress, who rose to national prominence as an early supporter of then-candidate Donald Trump, is an ardent purveyor of Christian nationalism. As far back as 2018, Jeffress preached an Independence Day-themed homily titled “America is a Christian nation,” and he now sells a book of the same name.

Before then, the pastor was known for railing against the Catholic Church. In 2010 he argued it was little more than a “cult-like, pagan religion,” adding, “isn’t that the genius of Satan?” A year later, he also decried the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as a “cult” and a “false religion.”

But Jeffress and other faith leaders’ sectarian rhetoric faded as they made common cause in support for the president. After Trump was voted out of office, Catholics and conservative Protestants were unified in the Stop the Steal movement. By the time the movement culminated in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, a curious form of Trumpian ecumenism had taken hold, as rioters of several faiths prayed together as they led the assault.

In the aftermath of Jan. 6, several types of extremists gravitated toward Christian nationalism and claimed it as their own, some linking it to opposition to pandemic restrictions, masks and vaccines and others incorporating the ideology into attacks on LGBTQ people.

But within this cohort, the different variants of Christian nationalism began to show themselves and develop. Even as Locke was becoming a major Christian nationalist voice, Nick Fuentes, the white nationalist head of the group America First, and a Catholic, was on the rise as well. While Locke has advocated for burning rosaries, Fuentes has celebrated the idea of “Catholic Taliban rule.”

Meanwhile, Andrew Torba, the head of the alternative social media website Gab, which has been widely shamed for sharing antisemitic messages, has presented in a new book another form of Christian nationalism, one that rails against groups that center on End Times theology — particularly the belief that the Second Coming is imminent. Torba and his co-author refer to these ideas as “an eschatology of defeat” and blame their advocates for a moral decline of society.

“You cannot simultaneously hope for a revival of Christian faithfulness in our nation while expecting the world to end at any moment,” Torba and his coauthor wrote.

Torba’s critique is not likely to go down well with various evangelical, Pentecostal and Charismatic traditions that have made the End Times central to their message, among them Trump’s biggest supporters. Jeffress has published two books focused on the topic — “Countdown to the Apocalypse” and “Twilight’s Last Gleaming.”

FILE – Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., speaks at a news conference held by members of the House Freedom Caucus on Capitol Hill in Washington, on July 29, 2021. Boebert has spoken by phone with Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., just days after likening her to a bomb-carrying terrorist. By both lawmakers’ accounts, the call on Nov. 29, 2021, did not go well. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik, File)

Rep. Lauren Boebert, who made headlines earlier this year for arguing against the separation of church and state, also outlined support for the theology in a recent speech.

“Many of us in this room believe that we are in the last of the last days,” she told attendees at a Republican dinner in Tennessee. “You get to be a part of ushering in the second coming of Jesus.”

These differences are unlikely to affect the Christian nationalists’ common front immediately or slow their approach to the coming elections. Hardline Christian nationalists across the ideological spectrum are more apt to focus on Democratic candidates and their supporters as a common enemy. Nor are figures such as Locke likely to topple a conservative Christian coalition that dates back to the 1970s, when a truce was struck between the likes of Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell and the anti-abortion Catholic right.

If Trump runs for reelection in 2024, it’s likely many who trumpet Christian nationalism will simply set their differences aside — just as they did the last two times he ran for office.

But with many on the extreme right distancing themselves from Trump, and the pandemic and COVID-19 vaccinations no longer making the headlines they once were, the faithful who are drawn to rallies such as ReAwaken America may encounter new fissures as they debate new causes to rally behind — or against. Some Christian nationalist voices, such as Jeffress, have already peeled off. “There is no legitimate faith-based reason for refusing to take the vaccine,” the pastor told the Associated Press last year. He also declined to argue that the 2020 election was “stolen,” a common refrain among many right-wing Christian nationalists.

And even if attendees and speakers at the ReAwaken America tour write off pastors like Jeffress, a question remains: How long will Catholics like Flynn abide attacks on their faith from even their most stalwart Protestant collaborators?

A modern witch celebrates the cycle of life and death at the confluence of cultures

This time of year, a bruja, or witch, practices central Mexican Indigenous rituals and modern pagan ones, both honoring the Earth and “us as individuals as part of nature.” But the holidays of the Day of the Dead and Samhain are not the same.

The Rev. Laura Gonzalez poses after teaching about Day of the Dead at a bookstore in Chicago in 2019. Courtesy photo

October 28, 2022

By 

Heather Greene

(RNS) — As Americans of all faiths prepare for Halloween with costumes and candy or the Day of the Dead with food and flowers, the pagan community is also preparing for its holiday celebrating death and rebirth.

Samhain is the third and final harvest festival of the pagan Wheel of the Year, as the holiday calendar is known in many Earth-based religions.

“(Modern) Pagans have incorporated the seasonal concern with the dead in a holy day that celebrates the cyclicity of life, death, and rebirth,” writes folklorist and pagan scholar Sabina Magliocco in her book “Witching Culture.” 

Not unlike the Day of the Dead and Halloween, Samhain (a Gaelic word pronounced “Sow-en”) includes feasting and honoring one’s ancestors, though those celebrating Samhain are likely to add some divination. Based largely on Irish folk religion, it is a time when the divide between the physical and spiritual worlds are believed to be thin.

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The Rev. Laura González, who is a practicing witch and a pagan educator and podcaster in Chicago, celebrates all three. “(My practice) is a hodgepodge,” she laughs.

The Rev. Laura Gonzalez celebrating Tlaxochimaco 2022 in Little Village, Chicago. Courtesy photo

González merges modern paganism with Mexican traditions, including practices indigenous to central Mexico, where she is from. “At their core, modern paganism and these indigenous practices both honor the Earth,” she said. Nature reverence is essential, she said, to her spiritual path.

“Let me describe to you what happens in my life,” González said in a phone interview. On Oct. 1, the decorations go up for Halloween, a purely secular holiday for her. Then, around Oct. 27, she sets up a Day of the Dead altar to honor deceased relatives, as most Mexicans do about this time, she said. “My mother died on Oct. 27, 2011. I believe it was her last wink to me,” said González.

Since then, González has been honoring her mother with bread and coffee but has also made it her mission to teach others about the Day of the Dead and its origins. She teaches those traditions as well as modern paganism both locally and over the internet at the pagan distance-learning Fraternidad de la Diosa in Chihuahua, Mexico.

On Samhain, González always hosts a small ritual for her Pagan students and participates in Samhain celebrations, either as an attendee or organizer. Some years she travels to Wisconsin to be with fellow members of the Wiccan church Circle Sanctuary.

Samhain is traditionally honored on Oct. 31, but some pagans celebrate it Nov. 6 or 7, an astrologically calculated date. Regardless, group celebrations must often yield to modern schedules, and González said she will celebrate an early Samhain this year.

“My (Samhain) celebration is for the ancestors and for the Earth going into slumber — the Goddess goes to sleep,” González said. She likes to focus her ritual on modern pagan trailblazers, often referred to as “the mighty dead,” rather than on her relatives, which she honors on the Day of the Dead.

González’s central Mexican indigenous practice and her modern pagan practice, rooted in  northern Mexico and the United States, “are very similar,” she added, both honoring the Earth and “us as individuals as part of nature,” something she believes has been lost in modern Day of the Dead traditions. However, she quickly added, “Indigenous practices are not pagan.”

Growing up in Mexico City, González was surrounded by mainstream Mexican culture, with Day of the Dead festivals and altars. As she was exposed to the Indigenous traditions that are still woven through Mexican culture, she explained, she began to study folk magic and traditions, as well as “Native philosophies.”

The Day of the Dead, she said, “is the ultimate syncretic holiday,” a merger of the European-based Catholic traditions with Indigenous beliefs and celebrations. “The practices brought to Mexico by the Catholic colonizers were filled with pagan DNA,” she said. All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day contain remnants of traditional Samhain and other older beliefs, she noted.

“These colonizers came to a land filled — filled — with skulls and its imagery,” she said, which must have been frightening and somewhat of a culture shock, she added.

An altar during Tlaxochimaco 2022 commemorations in Chicago. Courtesy photo

González is now actively participating in the revival of the Indigenous traditions as a teacher and celebrant. The Indigenous holiday, she said, is a 40-day celebration. The first 20 days is called Tlaxochimaco, or the birth of flowers, and the second is Xoco Huetzi, or the fall of the fruit.

“We all are flowers,” she explained. We grow, flower, bloom and then become fruit. Eventually falling and becoming seed, and the cycle continues. The Aztecs “used this mythology to describe life and life cycles,” she said.

“But there are people who do not make it to fruit. They die young,” González explained. These people are honored during Tlaxochimaco.

During Xoco Huetzi, celebrations are held to honor those who have made it to old age before passing. Both festivals traditionally involve dancing, she said, which is considered an offering to the dead. 

The 40-day celebration was eventually condensed into two days aligning with the colonizers’ Catholic traditions, she said, becoming the modern Day of the Dead celebration, a holiday that is quickly becoming as popular north of the Mexican border as Halloween is.

While González is not offended by purely secular Halloween celebrations, even with its classic depiction of witches, she struggles with the growing commercialization of the Day of the Dead. “I know what I am, and I know what I celebrate,” she said, speaking of Halloween. “I find it funny that the wise woman has been made into something scary.”

What does offend her is people dressed as sugar skulls. “It’s a double-edged sword,” González said. “It’s a source of pride knowing the world loves our culture,” she said. However, she added, “You love our culture, you love our music, you love our food, you love our traditions, you love our aesthetics, you love our parties and holidays, you love all of that, but you don’t love us.”

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An example of a Samhain altar. Photo by Heather Greene

This is the definition of cultural appropriation, she added.

“The world is filled with racism, discrimination, colorism, classism,” she continued. “There is a disconnection between the thing and the people who made the thing.” She likened this to a second wave of colonization.

Her recommendation: “If you like Day of the Dead stuff,” she said, “shake a tree and a Mexican artisan will fall from it. Buy Mexican. You will benefit the very people who have created the aesthetic,” she said. “The big box stores don’t need your money,” she said, but Mexican and Mexican American families do.

Many pagans, especially in the growing Latino pagan community, do honor multiple traditions like González, particularly around the time when the holidays align.

“I think it’s important to recognize where we come from and how we survive whatever challenges our ancestors had,” said González. Samhain, Day of the Dead and the Aztec traditions “are, after all, a celebration of life and their lives.”

Presidential standoff becomes a holy war in Brazil

The consequential presidential race in Latin America's largest country increasingly resembles religious culture-war tactics employed in US politics.

Catholics pray during a religious event in support of Brazil's President Jair Bolsonaro, who is running for re-election, in Brasilia, Brazil, Monday, Oct. 17, 2022. Bolsonaro will compete against former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva in a presidential runoff election on Oct. 30. (AP Photo/Eraldo Peres)

October 28, 2022

By 

Eduardo Campos Lima

SÃO PAULO (RNS) — In Brazil on Sunday, two titans of the country will face off in a presidential runoff election that observers within the country and around the world are calling the most consequential election in decades for Latin America’s largest country.

Former two-term president and beloved icon of the working class Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, commonly known as “Lula,” will face current incumbent president and right-wing firebrand Jair Bolsonaro after neither was able to claim a majority in the first round of the presidential elections on Oct. 2. Da Silva, who received 48% of the initial vote, has lost ground in the ensuing weeks as he works to overcome a corruption scandal that landed him in jail for more than a year. Bolsonaro, who claimed 43% of the first vote, is gaining on his opponent but faces frustration over his administration’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as the faltering economy.

While issues surrounding the economy, high poverty rates and protection of the Amazon rainforest have been central talking points during their campaigns, both candidates have pivoted to social issues in the weeks since the first election. And the holy war rhetoric has escalated as supporters on both sides work ever harder to demonize the other.

“The biggest lie (Bolsonaro) tells each day is to evoke God all the time. He is lying. He uses the name of Jesus in vain to try to deceive the good faith of men and women,” Lula said on Sept. 4 during a meeting with housemaids at the Metalworkers Union in São Bernardo do Campo.

For his part, Bolsonaro continues to pound in a message that da Silva is connected with anti-religious Communist regimes, especially focusing on Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua.

“That criminal (da Silva) in the debate last Sunday did not mention his friend Daniel Ortega. His friend shuts down churches, arrests priests, forbids processions, does not respect religion, the same things PT (da Silva’s party) wants for Brazil,” Bolsonaro said during a rally on Oct. 18 in São Gonçalo, a city in the Rio de Janeiro metropolitan area.

While both men are Catholic, trading in spiritual language is somewhat unfamiliar for da Silva, who has always prioritized social and economic themes in his campaigns. Even so, his Workers’ Party (known as PT in Brazil) has historical ties with progressive Catholicism. Founded in 1980 by union leaders, left-wing activists and members of Catholic groups like the base ecclesial communities (known as CEBs), their efforts were inspired by the Liberation Theology movement.

But with Bolsonaro’s religious outreach looking more effective, members of da Silva’s campaign have clearly embraced a tactical change.

Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro speaks during a ceremony at the Planalto presidential palace, in Brasilia, Brazil, Tuesday, July 13, 2021. (AP Photo/Eraldo Peres)

Bolsonaro has long courted both evangelicals and right-wing Catholics, with an emphasis on religious freedom, anti-abortion and anti-LGBTQ issues. His wife, Michelle Bolsonaro, who is a member of a Baptist church, has been playing a fundamental role this year, making speeches during evangelical church services around the country, portraying Lula and his left-wing allies as diabolical forces that can only be defeated by Bolsonaro.

The religious attacks have been playing a central role in recent polls, according to demography expert José Eustáquio Diniz.

“Six months ago, surveys showed that Lula and Bolsonaro had almost an equal share of the evangelical vote. Now, Bolsonaro has almost 70% among them,” he said. Among Catholics, da Silva has 57% of their support, while Bolsonaro has 37%.

Marcelo Vitorino, an expert in political marketing who has led the campaign of major politicians in Brazil, told Religion News Service that “Bolsonaro has built a solid reputation among conservative Christians,” so attacks against him may not harm his image much in Christian segments.

But, Vitorino also noted, when both candidates have such a high unfavorability rate among undecided voters, a warlike campaign may lead them to just stay home on election day. “That is a real risk.”

Much of this war is being fought online, by supporters, and they are not exactly following the rules of a fair fight.

Two days before the first round, on Oct. 2, a viral video, later said by its creator to have been taken out of context, was heavily promoted by Bolsonaro supporters ahead of the first round of elections. The clip showed digital influencer Vicky Vanilla, a satanist, declaring support for Lula and predicting his victory.

“That is a spiritual war,” declared Bolsonaro ally and Congresswoman Bia Kicis, along with a link to the video on her social media.

Brazil’s former president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, left, who is running for re-election, kisses a cross he received from Catholic nun Sister Rosa during a meeting with members of the Catholic Church, in Sao Paulo, Brazil, Monday, Oct. 17, 2022. Da Silva will face Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro in a presidential runoff on Oct. 30. (AP Photo/Andre Penner)

“Aimed at dispelling the fake news, the Lula campaign created an ad with the caption ‘Lula is a Christian, share the truth.’ The second of four bullet points states ‘Lula doesn’t have a pact with the Devil nor has he ever spoken with him.” The PT has also been widely publicizing photos of da Silva with Pope Francis.

The viral video was an attempt by Bolsonaro supporters at “Lula’s literal demonization in a country that is home to the largest Pentecostal and Catholic populations on the planet,” according to Andrew Chesnut, a professor and religious studies expert at Virginia Commonwealth University.

Two days later, in a counter-attack by da Silva’s supporters, social media was flooded with pictures and videos showing Bolsonaro in Masonic lodges. Soon the phrase “Bolsonaro is not a Christian,” began to trend, overtaking references to “Lula-Satanista.”

After that, a picture appeared with Bolsonaro side by side with freemasons in front of an image of Baphomet, a divinity supposedly associated with the Knights Templar and later incorporated by occultists. That picture was later proven to be a fraud, but posts connecting Bolsonaro with satanic rituals continued to be published over the next days.

“The Brazilian left wing was unprepared for these digital attacks, and without a strategy for countering fake news and moral panic,” said Magali Cunha, a PhD in communications and the general editor of fact-checking site Coletivo Bereia.

That left a vacuum for supporters to share misinformation. Cunha, who is also a collaborator with the World Council of Churches, said the posts about Bolsonaro and the Freemasonry came from digital influencers connected to the Left — not exactly from Lula’s entourage.

“In that digital war, it makes sense, especially when it comes to winning voters who still have not made a decision,” she said.

A demonstrator dressed in the colors of the Brazilian flag performs in front of a street vendor’s towels for sale featuring Brazilian presidential candidates, current President Jair Bolsonaro, center, and former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, in Brasilia, Brazil, Tuesday, Sept. 27, 2022. Nearly a dozen candidates are running in Brazil’s presidential election but only two stand a chance of reaching a runoff: former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and incumbent Jair Bolsonaro. (AP Photo/Eraldo Peres)

That’s not an excuse to stoop so low, argues theologian Leonardo Boff, a public intellectual with the Latin American Liberation Theology movement and a fierce critic of Bolsonaro.

Boff argues that progressives should not use the same logic of Bolsonaro’s campaign, with “demoralization, mockery, despise for the other and fake news.”

“One should respond to those attacks with facts and truth, maintaining a civil manner. We cannot play the same game they play. We have to be coherent,” he told Religion News Service.

Bolsonaro’s campaign reacted to the freemason photos with more religious attacks. A few days later, neo-Pentecostal Pastor Damares Alves, Bolsonaro’s former minister of Women, Family and Human Rights who was elected to the Senate in the Oct. 2 election, released a video of her testimony during a church service. She graphically described a supposed network of pedophiles in Marajó Island, in the Amazon, which was trafficking Brazilian children to other countries.

In the clip, Alves said that 3- and 4-year-olds have their teeth taken out so “they won’t bite during oral sex” and that they only receive semi-solid food “so their bowels will be clear for anal sex.”

“Bolsonaro said: ‘We will get all of them.’ And hell rose against this man. The war against Bolsonaro waged by the press, waged by the Supreme Court, waged by the Congress, believe me, is not a political war. It is a spiritual war,” she continued.

Required by federal prosecutors, Alves failed to provide evidence of what she said. Analysts pointed out the similarities of her rhetoric with the U.S. Q’Anon conspiracy theory.

“In fact, it is part of the Brazilian evangelical tradition. It is based on the idea of a world dominated by evil and that only the spiritual community of the church can protect someone,” said Francisco Borba Ribeiro Neto, the director of the Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo’s Center of Faith and Culture.

The exploitation of such ideas for electoral results, however, was imported from the United States, he argued.

To great effect, according to Chesnut.

“In the country that is arguably the epicenter of global Christianity today, it comes as little surprise that presidential candidates are compelled to prove their Christian credentials while demonizing their opponents,” he declared. “The victor of the electoral holy war will very likely be elected Brazil’s next president in the upcoming second round of elections.”

Rock 'n' roll star Jerry Lee Lewis dies at 87, days after erroneous report of his death
Posted 2h ago

Musician Jerry Lee Lewis died at his home in Mississippi, with his wife by his side.

(Reuters: Karen Pulfer Focht)

American rock pioneer Jerry Lee Lewis, who was torn between his Bible-thumping upbringing and his desire to make hell-raising rock 'n' roll with hits such as Great Balls of Fire and Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On, has died at the age of 87.

Key points:

Lewis was one of the first performers inducted into the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame

He had a son and was on his second marriage before he turned 20
In 1976 Lewis accidentally shot his bass player

The news came two days after the publication of an erroneous report of his death, which was later retracted.

Lewis passed away at his home in Desoto County, Mississippi, with his wife, Judith, by his side, a statement from his publicist said. He had been ill in recent years and suffered a stroke in 2019.

Like Chuck Berry's guitar, Lewis's piano was essential in shaping rock 'n' roll in the mid-1950s.

He was part of the dazzling Sun Records talent pool in Memphis, Tennessee, that included Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins and Roy Orbison.

Lewis outlived them all.

He was one of the first performers inducted into the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame in 1986 and was so influential that when John Lennon met him backstage at a show in Los Angeles, the Beatle dropped to his knees and kissed Lewis' feet.

A life of music and scandal

Lewis filled his albums not only with ground-breaking rock but with gospel, country and rhythm and blues on tracks such as such as Me and Bobby McGee and To Make Love Sweeter for You as he endured a life often filled with alcohol, drugs and tragedy.

His music was sometimes overshadowed by scandals — including his marriage to his 13-year-old cousin Myra in 1957.

In his prime, he performed with daring, originality and a lewd wild-man stage demeanour that thrilled his young fans as much as it agitated their parents.

Typically, Lewis would kick away his piano bench and bang the keyboard with his foot while his long wavy blond hair flopped in his face.

According to legend, Lewis was once so upset that Chuck Berry had been chosen to close a show over him that he finished his set with a move that was hard to top — setting the piano on fire and walking off.

"I'm a rompin', stompin', piano-playing son of a bitch," Lewis once told Time magazine in his Louisiana drawl.

"A mean son of a bitch. But a great son of a bitch."

Lewis once set his piano on fire while sharing a bill with Chuck Berry.(AP: G. Paul Burnett)
Humble beginnings to rock 'n' roll royalty

Lewis was born September 29, 1935, in Ferriday, Louisiana, and grew up poor with two cousins also destined for fame — television evangelist Jimmy Swaggart and country singer Mickey Gilley.

He became interested in the piano at age four and by 10 was sneaking into roadhouses to hear blues performers.

He absorbed a variety of musical influences, especially the Jimmie Rodgers records that belonged to his father, a farmer who went to prison for bootlegging.

Lewis's family attended the Assembly of God church and his mother ensured he was thoroughly informed about the evils of liquor, honky-tonks and promiscuity.

But Lewis was intent on experiencing them firsthand and began playing piano in bars while still a teenager. His mother, upset by the idea of her son performing the devil's music, sent him to a Bible college in Texas.

It turned out to be a brief stay, with Lewis reportedly being dismissed from the school for playing a boogie-woogie version of My God Is Real during an assembly. The incident showed the dichotomy that Lewis had to live with.

"The man is tortured," Myra Lewis told People magazine. "Jerry Lee thinks that Jerry Lee is too wicked to be saved."

As Lewis himself once put it, "I'm dragging the audience to hell with me."

Lewis performs plays An Evening with Jerry Lee Lewis in Los Angeles in 2010.

(Reuters: Fred Prouser)
Marriage to cousin almost derailed career

Lewis had a son and was on his second marriage before he turned 20, even though he had not divorced his first wife. He was determined to be a musician and made his way to Memphis.

In 1957 he recorded two rollicking chart-topping hits for Sun — Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On and Great Balls of Fire, which he had been reluctant to record because he considered it blasphemous — that helped define early rock 'n' roll.

Lewis quickly followed with more hits — You Win Again, Breathless and High School Confidential.

His career came to a halt during a 1958 tour of Britain. Journalists discovered Lewis was now married to Myra, the daughter of his bass player, who not only was 13 years old but also was his cousin.

News coverage was so intensely negative that the tour was called off.

Back in the United States, Lewis's career was not revived until he shifted genres and recorded country hits such as Another Place, Another Time, What's Made Milwaukee Famous (Has Made a Loser Out of Me) and She Even Woke Me Up to Say Goodbye.

Lewis's string of hits was matched only by the tragedies in his life. His young son Steve Allen Lewis drowned in 1962 and another son, Jerry Lee Jr, died in a 1973 car accident at 19.

After a divorce from Myra in the early 1970s, he married Jaren Pate in 1971 but she drowned in 1982. They had been separated for eight years but not divorced.

After only a few months of marriage, his next wife, Shawn Michelle Stevens, was found dead of a drug overdose in their home in 1983.

Eight months later he started another stormy marriage with sixth wife Kerrie McCarver that lasted 20 years before they divorced and he married his seventh wife, Judith Brown, in 2012.
Living life on the edge

In 1976 Lewis accidentally shot his bass player and that same year was arrested drunk outside Presley's Graceland mansion in Memphis with a loaded pistol, demanding to see Presley.

Lewis, who lived much of his later life on a ranch in Nesbit, Mississippi, also endured costly battles with US tax officials, a nearly fatal perforated ulcer and a painkiller addiction that landed him in the Betty Ford Clinic.

In his later years he settled down but biographer Rick Bragg recalled interviewing Lewis for his 2014 book Jerry Lee Lewis: His Own Words.

Lewis showed Bragg the pistol he kept under his pillow in a bedroom pockmarked with bullet holes and a Bowie knife stuck in the door.

"I don't think Jerry Lee Lewis had to exaggerate his life one bit to make it interesting," Bragg told the Atlanta Constitution Journal.

"He really did make Elvis cry. He really did turn over more Cadillacs than most people purchased in the state of Mississippi."

Lewis's late recordings included featured guests such as Jimmy Page, Bruce Springsteen, Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Neil Young, John Fogerty, Ringo Starr and other rockers he had influenced.

Reuters

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