Page 70 - Religion, Media, and the Public Sphere

from one of Rio’s newspapers, Jornal do Brasil, printed under the headline “A
Star Is Born”:

The scene was worthy of the last episode of a soap on the SBT channel, fully in
keeping with the style of its Mexican melodramas: the rich girl at the door of
the mansion, with a crowd to witness the happy ending. The heroine manages to
escape unhurt, declares that she forgives her kidnappers and blames their act on
an unjust and corrupt economic system, claims that her drama ended because of
divine intervention and rebukes her millionaire father for not having the faith of
God in his heart. It was phenomenal: in São Paulo alone, 37 million viewers fol-
lowed, mesmerized, yesterday afternoon’s TV broadcast of the happy ending to
the kidnapping of Patricia Abravanel, 23 years old, daughter of TV presenter
Silvio Santos. (Jornal do Brasil, August 29, 2001) 12

The article continues with the girl’s declaration: “My father needs God. He who
has God suffers not.”
The evangelical groups—which include the more populist Pentecostal churches
and others in which the middle classes predominates—have claimed to be the
builders of social well-being and peace in the midst of a society riddled by
con®ict and violence. Expanding images of testimony and the production of
political/religious events that enhance the evangelical presence as a social actor
in public spaces are held to offer new ways of enabling the moral and social
management of society. The testimony of faith reinforces the evangelicals’ claim
to represent the only social and political alternative capable of achieving the
moral reuni¤cation of the nation, together with the still possible and desirable
approximation of Brazil’s rich and poor. The evangelical groups appear in pub-
lic as the social actors most clearly quali¤ed to mediate through good and the
exorcism of evil in the zone of con®ict, violence, and poverty in which the ur-
ban areas of the major Brazilian cities have become submerged.

Chains of Faith and Transnationalization

The UCKG is one of the most impressive examples of the growth in re-
ligious media in Brazil. It has run its own TV channel since 1990, plus a weekly
newspaper, which imitates the formulas used by the national press with a print
run of 1.18 million copies, a website on the Internet, and a monthly magazine
13
of high journalistic quality. In addition, it has created a new style of presenting
itself, revealed in the behavior of its pastors as well as the events it produces.
As a part of this evangelical movement, the UCKG has been developing its
own concept of integration in society. Today it attracts followers by offering
them a vision of the world and a political religious practice presented both as
an individual solution to their problems and as a model of social integration.
The new evangelicals acquire the chance of frequenting a wider world with
fewer barriers and more paths to prosperity. Alternative scenes are shown, ac-
centuating the church’s links to other continents, with centers of power and
wealth in national and international contexts. 14

Future in the Mirror 59