Members of Brazil’s growing evangelical movement are increasingly threatening to followers of Candomblé, as the churches compete for souls and space

This article is more than 5 years old

This article is more than 5 years old

Dressed in the traditional white robes of the Afro-Brazilian Candomblé religion, 11-year-old Kailane Campos, her grandmother and some friends were walking home from their temple in Rio de Janeiro, when they heard shouts from across the street.

“There were two guys holding Bibles, jumping up and down and shouting that we had abandoned God and that we were going to burn in hell,” she said. “Then one of them picked up a stone, threw it at us, and it hit me on the head.”

Bleeding heavily, Kailane passed out, while the two men jumped on a bus. The others in her group helped her back to their temple before taking her to the nearest hospital.

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The attack has highlighted fears of rising religious intolerance among the more militant members of Brazil’s rapidly growing evangelical movement. With new churches aggressively competing for souls and space in the country’s poorer urban peripheries, many Afro-Brazilian worshippers have felt threatened by the extreme hostility of some of their pastors.

“I hope that what happened to me can serve as some kind of warning,” Kailane said.

Followers of Candomblé, which blends ancestor worship, spiritualism and Catholic cosmology, have long faced discrimination from an officially secular state.



But over recent years, reports of abuse, beatings and forced evictions from Afro-Brazilian places of worship have increased, according to Ivanir dos Santos, the president of the Commission to Combat Religious Intolerance.

Dos Santos argues that certain evangelical pastors are attacking these religions and their followers, partly as a way of boosting their own congregations.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A Baiana woman performs the ritual dance in honor to Omolú, the Candomblé spirit syncretized with Saint Lazarus, inside the St Lazarus church in Salvador, Brazil. Photograph: Jan Sochor/CON/LatinContent/Getty Images

“They want to make people ashamed to practise Candomblé, so they feel they have to turn to the church,” he said. “But how can you be a Christian with such hate in your heart?”

The latest incident was covered widely in the Brazilian media. Kailane’s grandmother, Kátia Marinho, 53, a Candomblé priestess, launched a social media campaign with an image of herself holding a sign reading: “I dress in white. White of peace. I am Candomblé. And you?”



A few days after the attack, Kailane was abused again while giving an interview to a local TV station outside the police medical institute where she had gone to register the crime.

“The media only care about gays and witches,” a passerby shouted at her.

Speaking at her temple in the working-class district of Vila da Penha, Marinho said that it had become more difficult to be a Candomblé devotee over recent years.



“There are people who tell their followers that our faith is a way of worshipping the devil,” she said. “They insult our religion all the time and people with weak minds absorb these things.”



Marinho, whose daughter Karine – Kailane’s mother – is an evangelical Christian, was anxious to avoid blaming the church. “The people who did this are not Christian. They are crazy people and crazy people cannot be allowed to live in the midst of society.”



Silas Malafaia, a prominent evangelical pastor, warned against jumping to conclusions about the attack on Kailane. “Tell me what kind of evangelical is in favour of violence?” he said in a video posted on his website. “When have we ever tried to stop the freedom of religious expression of anyone?”



Although there is anecdotal evidence of attacks on Afro-Brazilian religions, few official statistics exist on the subject. Data compiled by the presidency’s human rights’ secretariat shows that there were 39 recorded acts of religious intolerance in Rio de Janeiro in 2013 and 2014, making it the state with highest number of incidents.

However, the figures are not broken down by attacks on particular faiths. Dos Santos is due to present a dossier of incidents involving Afro-Brazilian religions to the state assembly in August.



According to the 2010 census, Brazil’s evangelical population grew by 61.5% over the previous 10 years. Over 22% described themselves as evangelical, up from 9% in 1991. The number of Catholics fell in the same period, from 73.6% to 64.6%.

Yvonne Maggie, an anthropologist who has written extensively on Afro-Brazilian religions, said that Candomblé has long coexisted peacefully with Catholicism. Many of their worshippers venerate the same saints, with some actively practising both religions.

“Recent acts of aggression have happened as a result of the rise of non-traditional neo-Pentecostalist churches, some of which demonise Afro-Brazilian religions,” she said. “It’s not an organised persecution, but a rise in individual cases, many of which are mixed up with other issues.”