Would Jesus use guns? Pastor André Valadão has no doubt about that. "Well, guys, if Jesus went to war, and was in the middle of a battle, what do you think he would be holding? Bread?", he replied to a follower who, on a social network, asked him what were his thoughts on people who say that the Christian messiah would arm himself if he could. Opinions like have grown and multiplied among evangelical leaders like Valadão, who last week took over as leader of the Lagoinha Baptist Church, one of the most influential in Brazil. They are not the majority in the temples, but the warmer reception to arms rhetoric is a novelty that would have sounded out of place two decades ago.
Sympathy for the cause swelled with the ideological escalation driven by the government of Jair Bolsonaro (PL), as the pastors themselves admit. "Bolsonaro's agenda provoked this fact. It was a very subtle, subliminal discussion. When the president brought this to light, it was something innovative at first, but later it was found out that he was right", says Bishop Robson Rodovalho, from the neo-Pentecostal Sara Nossa Terra. He has a gun registered in his name on a ranch because, he says, "it's better to have it and use it as a precaution than not to have it and regret it later".
Translated by Cassy Dias