Only in recent decades has Brazil’s cultural elite begun to acknowledge the growing presence of evangelicals in the national landscape. This visibility reached new heights during the presidency of Jair Bolsonaro (2019–2022). The evangelical electorate’s strong support for Bolsonaro, combined with the appointment of evangelical leaders to key government positions and even a Presbyterian pastor to Brazil’s Supreme Court, signaled a dramatic shift in the country’s dynamic between politics and religion.
Petra Costa, director of the recent documentary Apocalypse in the Tropics, offers a lens through which to view this transformation. Yet Costa herself affirms her unfamiliarity with religion. Her intellectual formation reflects the path of Brazil’s affluent cultural class: elite education, cosmopolitan worldview, and secular assumptions. She studied performing arts at the University of São Paulo before earning degrees in anthropology and theater from Barnard College at Columbia University. Later, she completed a master’s in community and development at the London School of Economics.
Costa’s distance from religion is not surprising, given her family’s background. Her parents left Roman Catholicism during their youth, driven by their involvement in Brazil’s Communist Party. As a result, Costa grew up with no religious formation. Her mother, Marília Andrade, was a political prisoner during Brazil’s military dictatorship (1964–1985) and even shared a cell with Dilma Rousseff, the woman who would later become Brazil’s president from 2011 to 2016.
Petra Costa first gained international recognition with The Edge of Democracy, her intimate, politically charged documentary that was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary in 2020. Filmed during Rousseff’s impeachment process, the film blended personal memory with national history, reflecting the polarized moment in Brazilian politics.
The earliest footage for Apocalypse in the Tropics was captured inside the Chamber of Deputies in Brasília. A member of Brazil’s Congress, Cabo Daciolo, approached the filmmaker, handed her a Bible, and invited her to give her life to Jesus. According to Costa, this unexpected encounter marked the first time evangelicals truly entered her radar.
Still, the full idea for Apocalypse in the Tropics would only take shape later, born from a growing curiosity about the rising political influence of evangelicals in Brazil and the religious language that increasingly shaped public discourse in the country.
During the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, she decided to produce the documentary because of a striking image of a group of evangelicals gathered in the heart of São Paulo, Brazil’s largest city, praying on their knees with heads bowed and hands raised to the heavens. They were responding to a call from Bolsonaro, who had urged the nation to fast and pray for deliverance from the virus.
Bolsonaro, who long denied sanitary measures for pandemic control and opposed vaccination, was convinced by Pentecostal pastor Silas Malafaia to call for a national fast to overcome the COVID-19 virus. This moment, symbolic of the merging of political and religious power, takes center stage in Apocalypse in the Tropics.
Malafaia serves as the film’s primary evangelical voice, offering his vision of a Brazil where faith and politics are no longer separate realms but deeply intertwined.
Costa’s distance from religious themes, coupled with her uninitiated perspective on the intricate world of Brazilian evangelicalism, forms both the documentary’s strengths and its weaknesses.
On the one hand, her outsider perspective allows her to ask honest, even vulnerable questions. She approaches the evangelical movement with curiosity rather than cynicism, and this gives the film a poetic, almost wondering tone. On the other hand, her distance from the reality of faith sometimes leads to oversimplification.
Without Costa’s sense of defamiliarization with the evangelical presence in Brazilian politics, there would be no documentary. In anthropology, defamiliarization is a methodological tool rooted in the encounter with the “other” that evokes surprise, confusion, and even discomfort but also invites understanding.
Costa leans into this tension with patience and care. She approaches the evangelical “other” not with judgment but with questions and attentive listening. The film is rich with scenes that capture this sense of wonder and disorientation, as if the one behind the camera is seeing something for the very first time.
But her lack of knowledge about evangelical churches and their beliefs leads her to rely too heavily on the voices most eager to explain the movement, especially those already prominent in media and politics.
A more seasoned approach might have helped her here. By focusing so much on figures like Malafaia—clearly an influential voice, but far from representative—Costa risks portraying evangelicalism as monolithic, missing its theological diversity and the quieter, more grounded expressions of faith lived out in communities across Brazil. It is through Malafaia that Costa arrives at dominion theology as a framework to explain the growing evangelical presence in Brazilian politics.
Apocalypse in the Tropics frames evangelical participation in Brazilian politics as an effort to dominate all spheres of social life. But this framing largely reflects Malafaia’s interpretation of the movement. The documentary misses the opportunity to show that evangelical engagement with politics—in Brazil or elsewhere—is far more complex and multifaceted than a single ideology or strategy can explain.
The documentary leaves little doubt about the involvement of some evangelicals in the antidemocratic events of January 8, 2023, which culminated in the invasion and depredation of the headquarters of Brazil’s three branches of government in Brasília. However, it stumbles in its interpretation by attempting to link evangelical support for such acts directly to dominion theology.
This theological framework is virtually unknown to many pastors and evangelical believers in Brazil. By treating dominion theology as a unifying force behind evangelical political action, the documentary projects a fringe ideology onto a diverse and often fragmented movement.
The far right’s strategic alliance with evangelicals in Brazil took shape as it embraced culture-war tactics in the political arena. Politicians like Bolsonaro began speaking in defense of Judeo-Christian civilization values while evangelical politicians positioned themselves as a moral barrier against what they described as the progressive left’s agenda, especially on issues such as gender equality, abortion, and same-sex marriage.
The “apocalypse” that unfolded on January 8 in Brasília owes far more to the long-standing demonization of the political left and to unfounded claims of election fraud than to any coordinated evangelical plan to establish a theocracy in the tropics. This reality does not lessen the seriousness of the attacks on Brazilian democracy in which some evangelical sectors participated. But it does challenge the notion of an organized evangelical conspiracy to seize political power in the country.
The documentary’s mistake in adopting dominion theology as the primary explanation for the evangelical advance in politics does not diminish its merits. Apocalypse in the Tropics remains a valuable starting point for reflection, especially for those who feel uneasy about the direction of the relationship between Christian churches and politics in democratic societies and about the ongoing tension between church and state.
Miroslav Volf, a Croatian theologian, reminds us that the solution to distorted forms of Christian political participation is not withdrawal from public life but a deeper biblical and theological reflection on how the church can serve the common good in democratic societies.
The central question raised by the documentary is “Will evangelical participation in politics remain aligned with the far right, becoming an instrument that fatally wounds Brazilian democracy from within, only to remake the country into an autocracy in the style of Hungary or Russia?”
I do not see this scenario as likely in the near future. Although the alliance between evangelical politicians and the far right will continue to put strain on Brazil’s democratic institutions, several key factors make the establishment of an autocracy disguised as a theocracy highly unlikely. The lack of support from the military high command for any authoritarian resolution, along with the Supreme Court’s trial of Bolsonaro for his role in the attempted coup following the 2022 elections, have made the establishment of an autocracy unfeasible.
Malafaia and other politicians will continue to quote, “Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord” (Ps. 33:12), arguing that Brazil’s Christian majority, Catholic and evangelical alike, should use democracy to pass laws that aim to restore a version of Christendom.
This type of biblical approach to politics causes polarization and feelings of hostility, and it works to elect legislative candidates such as representatives and senators, but it sets Christians against the rest of society, deepening division rather than promoting justice, peace, or the common good.
Following the path suggested by Miroslav Volf, I believe the way forward lies in a deep, biblical conversation about God’s will for the church in democratic societies. The New Testament nowhere advocates a project of a “Christian nation”—yet, in every nation, the Holy Spirit gathers followers of Jesus to form his church, a people set apart not by political dominance but by faithful witness.
This vision is powerfully affirmed in the book of Revelation: “You are worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals, because you were slain, and with your blood you purchased for God persons from every tribe and language and people and nation. You have made them to be a kingdom and priests to serve our God, and they will reign on the earth” (Rev. 5:9–10).
The Lamb did not purchase any one nation to become his church. Rather, he shed his blood to gather from every nation those who would become his people. The New Testament presents no vision for a Christian nation but rather a vision for a Christian church—sometimes more numerous, sometimes more marginalized—within each nation-state.
Throughout the New Testament, the role of the state is consistently presented as the promotion of justice, not the promotion of faith. In his first letter to Timothy, the apostle Paul urges that prayers be made for “all those in authority” so that “we may live peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness and holiness” (1 Tim. 2:2). In Romans 13, Paul affirms that governing authorities exist by God’s will and are charged with upholding justice.
Of course, I recognize that appealing to justice does not eliminate conflict. After all, the political right and left often disagree on what justice entails. But this biblical emphasis gives us a shared foundation for public debate. More importantly, it acts as a safeguard against the illusion that Christians are called to build a theocracy.
Another biblical theme that Apocalypse in the Tropics invites us to recover is the sovereignty of God. In today’s polarized climate, political participation has generated intense anxiety among Christians on both the right and the left. There is a growing fear that if the ideological sides we identify with lose the next election, everything will fall into chaos.
But this fear eclipses a central message of the risen Christ to the churches suffering under the power of the Roman Empire: “Do not be afraid” (Rev. 1:17). That word, spoken not from a throne of political power but from the victory of the Cross, reminds us that Christian hope is rooted not in winning elections but in trusting God’s sovereign rule over history.
Finally, it is important to remember, both for better and for worse, that no government fully controls contemporary societies or the global order. We live in an era of diminished control, a condition that sociologist Anthony Giddens described as a “runaway world.”
When Christians pursue control through political power, we fall into two traps. First is a sociological illusion, since no group can fully dominate the complex, autonomous systems that govern economy, culture, politics, and more. The second is a theological misstep, because we forfeit the opportunity to bear witness to the true source of Christian security: “I lift up my eyes to the mountains—where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth” (Ps. 121:1–2).
Valdinei Ferreira holds a PhD in sociology and is a pastor in the Independent Presbyterian Church of Brazil.
