Erik Norinder
Brazil, the world’s largest Catholic nation, has witnessed a profound spiritual and political revolution. In recent decades, evangelical churches have exploded in popularity, particularly among the poorest segments of society. This demographic shift has reshaped Brazil’s political landscape, playing a pivotal role in the electoral success of powerful right-wing figures like Jair Bolsonaro. However, this religious ascendancy does not represent an endogenous spiritual revival, but a calculated geopolitical manoeuvre spearheaded by the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and allied government bodies to aggressively counter the influence of Liberation Theology.
The Threat to the Empire: Liberation Theology
The intense global ideological struggle of the Cold War profoundly affected Latin America in the 1970s. Within the Catholic Church, a radical movement known as Liberation Theology (LT) gained traction. LT blended traditional Catholic social justice teachings with a socialist analysis of widespread poverty and exploitation, asserting God’s “preferential option for the poor”.
To Washington policymakers, this was viewed as an ideological threat to American hegemony. By siding explicitly with the oppressed against the economic status quo, proponents of LT stood against the interests of the American empire. Concern reached the highest levels: a 1969 memorandum to President Richard Nixon from Vice-President Nelson Rockefeller explicitly warned that the Catholic Church in Latin America “has ceased to be an ally in whom the US can have confidence”. Nixon himself noted the deterioration of the attitude of the Catholic Church, claiming that approximately one-third of its clergy were Marxist. Washington concluded that LT was an “accomplice of Marxist revolution”, and a conspiracy to crush it began.
A Covert Crusade: Weaponising Evangelism
The chosen counter-strategy was the systematic introduction and financing of conservative evangelical groups. Protestant missionary groups, primarily stemming from the U.S. Deep South, were deliberately introduced to “reduce the influence of left-leaning Roman Catholic social movements”. This campaign aimed to popularise reactionary versions of the Christian faith to conquer hearts and minds.
Declassified information confirmed this covert involvement. The 1975 Church Committee report acknowledged that the CIA had established fourteen covert arrangements involving twenty-one individuals, including clergy or missionaries, who were used for covert action projects aimed at competing with communism in the Third World. Critics noted this number represented only those in “direct operational use,” overlooking others who worked through proxies or front operations like the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).
This intelligence strategy led to the founding of evangelical churches under the inspiration and sponsorship of the CIA, with the goal of displacing “Marxist” Catholicism as the dominant religion. These Latin-Americanized evangelical churches quickly wove a dense network of contacts as undercover agents of the CIA. Their mission included efforts to overthrow Progressive Presidents and support candidates loyal to the United States (in particular, in Bolivia and Brazil).
In Brazil, US agencies orchestrated an ecumenical coalition involving religious leaders—predominantly Evangelicals, but also conservative Catholics and Jews—to form an international religious front that was explicitly anti-communist and pro-capitalist. This plan, launched in 1954 as FRASCO (Fundação para Ação Política e Religiosa na Ordem Civil e Social/Foundation for Political and Religious Action in the Civil Order), sought to implant and defend governments loyal to the US market economy, many of which were military dictatorships, including the Brazilian military regime established in 1964. The Brazilian dictatorship favoured evangelical missionaries, seeing those influenced by LT as “troublemakers” who exacerbated Indigenous land claims. In contrast, evangelicals were seen as helping integrate Indigenous populations into “Brazilian capitalist society”.
A report prepared by a committee of Brazil’s Catholic Bishops Association specifically accused the CIA of infiltrating Protestant religious sects to further the interests of the U.S. and undercut the progressive Catholic Church of Brazil, noting the CIA had given support to groups that were fundamentalist and “violently anti-communist”.
The Gospel of Greed: Prosperity Theology
To structurally undermine LT, which emphasised collective social action and justice, US-backed evangelical groups promoted Prosperity Theology (PT). This doctrine promises individual salvation and material prosperity through faith, preaching the Gospel of individual enterprise. PT served as a Trojan horse for neoliberal ideas, asserting that poverty, addiction, and destitution are the result of personal or spiritual failings, thereby absolving the economic system of responsibility. Evangelicalism became popular among lower-income groups and the most marginalised sectors of society, who saw the churches’ ideas of economic growth through faith as an opportunity for social mobility. Sociologist Paul Freston noted that this system helps followers rise “from absolute destitution to dignified poverty”. By altering Latin American culture and political economy to be more subservient to US ideological hegemony, the operation successfully undermined the LT movement.
The Violent Legacy of Containment
The Cold War was a brutal struggle, especially for Latin America, characterised by violent, repressive terrorist activities. The CIA actively supported anti-communist death squads through Operation Condor, resulting in an estimated 60,000 civilian deaths. LT proponents were violently targeted: the Banzer Plan in Bolivia, drawn up with CIA input, sought to compile dossiers on liberation theologians and expel foreign clergy.
The violence escalated to murder, most notably in El Salvador, where fascistic religious paramilitaries circulated the call: haz patria, mata un cura (“be a patriot, kill a priest”). This culminated in the 1980 assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero, who had warned the U.S. government that military aid would sharpen injustice and repression. High-level conservative Vatican officials even reportedly deemed LT “a singular heresy”.
In Brazil, this conservative alignment culminated in the pivotal support for Jair Bolsonaro. The movement is generally characterised by a staunch cultural conservatism, supporting anti-communist, pro-free market positions. By strategically weaponising religion, the CIA successfully cultivated a massive religious force dedicated to conservative ideals, fundamentally shaping Brazil’s political destiny for generations.