In sacred dunes, critics see evangelical encroachment
SALVADOR, BRAZIL >> The vast blanket of white sand overlooking Salvador is a place to escape rumbling traffic, pinging phones and crying children. A space to find solitude and, increasingly, God.
Evangelicals have been converging on the massive Abaete dune system for some 25 years but especially lately, with thousands now coming each week to sing, pray and enter trancelike states. Some scrawl prayers on scraps of paper to be burned.
“I never tire of coming up here and glorifying,” said Deja Soares, 47, adding that she has seen the paralyzed walk and the blind see. “The things God does here are incredible.”
This year the dunes have become a flashpoint after City Hall began building a plaza and welcome center at one spot along their base, with a staircase up the sand soon to follow. A future phase would entail a platform atop the plateau. Defenders of the project say it’s necessary to protect the fragile dunes from the increasingly heavy foot traffic.
But it has come under fire from Afro Brazilian religious groups, who have been performing their own rituals in the dunes for generations, and protest what they see as elected officials abusing their power to coopt and Christianize yet another public space. They say their objections reflect evangelicals’ rising influence in the country’s halls of power and politics straining interreligious relations ahead of Oct. 2 general elections.
While Catholicism is still the largest religion in Brazil, in recent years it has
slipped below 50% of the population to lose its status as a majority faith, and is projected to be overtaken by evangelical churches in a decade.
This year there are nearly 500 evangelical pastors running for state and federal legislatures, more than
triple the number in 2014, according to data from political analyst Bruno Carazza. Sóstenes Cavalcante, leader of Congress’ evangelical caucus, told AP he believes they can win a third of the Lower House’s seats, matching their share of the population.
Increased political power has, at times, altered the dynamics of public space nationwide, including in Bahia state, whose capital is Salvador.
One mayor in Bahia recently symbolically bestowed the key to the city on God and subjugated all other spiritual entities to Christ. Another in Salvador’s metro region renamed a market “Jeová Jireh,” meaning “The Lord Will Provide,” and vendors selling specialized products to members of Afro Brazilian faiths were allegedly barred from obtaining stalls.
It was in that context that the dunes project was greenlit by an evangelical pastor who served as infrastructure secretary. Workers are toiling day and night to complete it this month.
On Sept. 18 roughly 200 evangelicals made a fourhour pilgrimage to the site, some barefoot as they traversed Salvador’s streets to arrive at the steep rise of sand they call the “Holy Mountain.”
Clad in flowy white garments, they faced the city and raised their hands as Bishop Wedson Tavares prayed for God to influence the election. With flags of Brazil and Israel in his shaking fists, he blessed elected officials from city councilors on up to President Jair Bolsonaro — a fervent supporter of evangelical interests — and pleaded for his reelection.
Spectacles like that have Jaciara Ribeiro, a priestess of the Afro Brazilian Candomble faith, which has historically faced repression in Salvador, convinced that the public works project is a ploy for evangelicals’ electoral support.
“It’s a political concession,” she said. “They are building as a function of partisan politics.