Christian evangelical voters boost 'Brazil's Trump' in presidential bid

(Worthy News) - If the polls hold true and Brazilians elect right-wing maverick Jair Bolsonaro as president Sunday, then they will have not only turned their country’s political order upside down, but they also will have clinched the clout of Christian evangelical voters as Brazil’s most critical electoral bloc, powerful enough to elect one of their own in South America’s most populous nation.

Born-again Christians, whose numbers have grown exponentially since the 1980s and who today account for roughly 1 in 4 Brazilians, have long wielded huge political clout. They propelled leftist labor leader Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva to power in 2003 and 13 years later helped topple his hand-picked successor, Dilma Rousseff.

Now estranged from their onetime Workers’ Party allies on the left, evangelical leaders have used their pulpits, church rolls and massive media outlets — the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God owns Brazil’s third-largest television station — to unabashedly push Mr. Bolsonaro’s upstart candidacy. [ Source: Washington Times (Read More...) ]