#her house was destroyed by a flood once and she couldn't afford another place to live

[saerowojin]

Evangelicalism has become a dangerous force in South America. In Brazil they've become an actual political block, closely associated with big agricultural landowners and pro-gun people (known informally as the "bancada do boi, bala e Bíblia": "cattle, gun and Bible political block"). They control politics and media alike: Brazil's second biggest media conglomerate, Record TV, is owned by a big time Evangelical pastor, Edir Macedo, who has a whole Wikipedia page dedicated to his controversies. Both Edir and his TV network have been sued countless times for spreading right-wing misinformation and intolerant discourse.

Bolsonaro was/is the face of this conservative moviment, despite hilariously not even being Evangelical himself, because he encapsulates exactly those values that said Neopentecostal Evangelicalism stands for: religious intolerance; homophobia; misoginy; anti-choice/pro-"life"; anti-science; classism; meritocracy; and the particular mix of Neoliberalism and Calvinism they sell to the poor, promising financial prosperity through "hard work" (and donating money to church, obviously).

I don't want to take away from the very important and much more urgent point in that post about why Evangelical US missionaries go to countries like Brazil despite the very obvious prevalence of Christianity there (Cristo Redentor and all), that these white supremacist Evangelical missionaries are obsessed with converting Indigenous communities and Black communities that practice African or African-descent spirituality the most. Again, that's the truly urgent part of it and so I'm saying this here and not in the post itself, BUT...

They also target Catholics. Especially people who're Catholic and very poor or otherwise vulnerable.

In general South America is mainly Catholic as far as Christianity goes (at least the cultures that were colonized by Spain, France and Portugal are, which are the vast majority of us), and Evangelicals, Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses are very anti-Catholic.

I wouldn't give a damn about it because I don't exactly love Catholicism as either a faith or in a political sense. I think the church is a monster, the faith is misanthropic, etc etc. EXCEPT...

Like I mentioned, most of the Catholics in South America who're targeted by these missionaries are very poor ones, often luring them in with prosperity gospel bullshit promises as well as in general entangling them with their cult-like tactics (thought-terminating clichés, love-bombing then withdrawal/threats of withdrawal of community, etc).

I see it in urban Chile all the time; you will rarely, if ever, see a Protestant church of any sort in wealthy areas, and if you see one it'll be a "normal" one like Lutherans. However, in poor areas? Every-fucking-where.

The advancement of Evangelicalism in South America is tightly linked to the advancement of reactionary conservative politics. They're becoming a voting block like they are in the US; nowhere near YET as big as they are in the US thank GOD, but they're there and they're radicalizing vulnerable people continuously and that's something local leftists are worried about, especially because at least here we actually have a history of important communist developments FROM the Catholic church, especially with communist Catholic priests (and that is absolutely part of why local Evangelicals dislike local Catholics).