With God on their side: the religious populism of Bolsonaro and Ventura

Abstract

This paper discusses the relationship between populism and religion by focusing on a comparative analysis of Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro and Portugal’s André Ventura. The article describes each respective leader’s individual path and personal relationship with religion, the ways that each expresses and performs religiosity, each claims a special mission bestowed by the divine, and the parallels between and differences in each leader’s use of religion for political causes. This comparative study emphasizes the role religion plays in each figure’s leadership as an identity and civilizational marker while both Bolsonaro and Ventura invoke religion in depicting their political activities as a combat against a variety of evil forces; however, this comparative study casts doubt on oversimplified assertions that exclude the power of actual religious belief in both cases under analysis.