Religion has once again moved to the center of political contestation in contemporary democracies. In the United States and Brazil (external link), the rise of Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro has highlighted something that extends beyond electoral polarization: the consolidation of alliances between political leaders and organized religious sectors—especially evangelicals—capable of shaping public debate, mobilizing collective identities, and redefining what counts as political legitimacy.
The phenomenon cannot be explained merely by the growth of churches or the religiosity of voters. The core issue runs deeper: the conversion of faith into a political resource and a public language of belonging, authority, and mobilization.
This does not mean that religion and democracy are incompatible. Religious traditions have taken part in struggles for civil rights, social justice, and resistance to authoritarian regimes. The problem arises when religion ceases to be one voice among others in the public sphere and begins to claim a privileged moral authority to define the common good and legitimize power.
In the US and Brazil, this process gained momentum with the advance of so-called culture wars (external link), disputes that turn values and identities into rigid political boundaries.
Culture Wars and the Moralization of Politics
Culture wars are struggles over values, identities, and worldviews. Family, sexuality, gender, education, religion, and national identity cease to be merely policy issues; they become symbolic markers of belonging and exclusion.
Rather than programmatic disagreements, these disputes organize perceptions of moral threat. Democratic conflict is no longer seen as legitimate competition between distinct projects, but is instead interpreted as a confrontation between values deemed incompatible.
In Brazil, research on religion and the public space shows that, even with the constitutional separation of Church and State, religious influence has never disappeared from political debate (external link). What has changed in recent decades is the intensity and institutionalization of this presence, through churches, parliamentary caucuses, and religious media networks.
In the United States, a similar process gained traction through the rapprochement between sectors of conservative white evangelicalism and the new Republican right (external link). In both countries, religion has come to operate as a political language capable of organizing collective emotions such as fear, resentment, hope, and protection.
This moralization of politics creates an environment in which adversaries cease to be legitimate opponents and come to be seen as forces hostile to the moral and cultural order.
Trump and the Religious Right in the United States
Donald Trump was never the traditional model of religious leadership. Even so, he became a central figure for broad sectors of American white evangelicalism. Research from the journal Politics and Religion (external link), published by Cambridge University Press, shows that white evangelical support for Donald Trump is primarily associated with identity-based and political factors, rather than strictly religious ones. These studies indicate that the former president's apparent irreligiosity did not diminish support among these groups: the bond was more cultural and strategic than theological.
Issues such as immigration, race, sex education, and LGBTQIA+ rights have become central to conservative mobilization. Politics has been framed as a moral struggle and, within this framing, democratic disagreement loses legitimacy.
This apparent contradiction reveals the nature of the phenomenon. Evangelical support for Trump did not stem from spiritual identification or moral exemplarity. It was a political alliance built on the perception of cultural threat and the promise of identity protection.
Bolsonaro and the Institutionalization of Faith in Brazil
If in the US the relationship between religion and politics intensified under Trump, in Brazil it became more institutionalized under the government of Jair Bolsonaro.
The country is constitutionally secular, but religious presence in the public sphere was never residual. Bolsonaro’s rise made this more visible. His political project found a decisive base in evangelical sectors. It was not merely ideological affinity: there was convergence around culture wars, moral conservatism, and criticism of traditional political elites.
Some studies on religious populism and the institutional relations between the Bolsonaro administration and evangelical leaders show how this rapprochement affected state secularism and democratic pluralism. Among them, I highlight: Religião e política no Brasil contemporâneo (external link), by Magali Cunha, which analyzes the articulation between churches, media, and politics in Bolsonarism; A onda conservadora (external link), by Ronaldo de Almeida, which examines the rise of religious conservatism and its relationship with the State; and the studies by Christina Vital and Paulo Victor Leite Lopes, Religião e política: atuação de parlamentares evangélicos (external link), which investigate the political activity of evangelical leaders and its effects on secularism.
All point out that the convergence between the government and organized religious sectors amplified tensions regarding state neutrality, political representation, and democratic pluralism.
Horrana Oliveira and I researched the culture war and moral battles in the Brazilian legislature (external link)] and showed that expressions such as “gender ideology”, defense of the “traditional family”, and claims of threats to Christian values became tools of electoral and identity mobilization through Dominion Theology (external link). Rather than just specific issues, they helped construct a narrative: politics was to be the arena for defending faith against anti-Christian or morally corrosive forces.
What Brings Brazil and the United States Together
Despite historical and institutional differences, Brazil and the US exhibit a convergent pattern. Trump and Bolsonaro are distinct versions of the same phenomenon: the mobilization of religious networks as sources of political legitimacy and social support in contexts of crisis and polarization.
In both cases, religion does not merely accompany political conflict; it helps reorganize its meanings. Faith becomes a language of belonging and a mechanism for producing authority. The symbolic power of religion mobilizes fear, hope, protection, and a sense of community.
For this reason, democratic recession cannot be explained solely by institutional attacks or electoral polarization. It is also a cultural and symbolic transformation.
What About the Future?
This discussion raises a question for 2026: will religion once again be mobilized as a decisive force in the Brazilian presidential elections?
Recent cycles suggest that religious and moral issues will remain strategic in public contestation. The question is not whether religion will be present—it is already part of the national political repertoire. The question is how it will be mobilized and what effects it will have on democratic pluralism and the quality of public debate.
The debate is not about excluding religion from public life. Religions legitimately participate in democracy and often advance agendas of solidarity and social justice. The question is different: what happens when religious authority moves beyond the space of deliberation and begins to claim a superior power to define who belongs to the political community and which values must prevail?
When religion, culture wars, and far-right projects converge to transform political differences into absolute moral antagonisms, democracy becomes vulnerable. The basic premise of democracy—recognizing adversaries as political equals and accepting that power must be limited, shared, and contestable—begins to crumble.
Defending democracy today requires more than strengthening formal institutions. It requires understanding how faith and politics together redefine the boundaries of pluralism, authority, and democratic coexistence itself.
This article, “A fé virou força política no Brasil e nos EUA: por que isso ameaça o pluralismo democrático”, by Helcimara Telles, was originally published in The Conversation (https://theconversation.com/a-fe-virou-forca-politica-no-brasil-e-nos-eua-por-que-isso-ameaca-pluralismo-democratico-288035 (external link)) and is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-ND 4.0).