Dressed in yellow and green and waving national flags of the same colours, thousands of Brazilian Christians listened to their president Jair Bolsonaro cast his re-election bid in biblical tones.
“It is a fight between good and evil,” Bolsonaro said last month at a “March for Jesus” event in Vitória, the capital of coastal state Espírito Santo. “I believe in God and I believe in you. And this victory will be ours.”
Behind in opinion polls to his leftist rival, ex-president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the far-right populist is on a mission to whip up enthusiasm among a group that was key to his rise: Brazil’s growing community of evangelical Christians, now estimated to make up almost one-third of the country’s 215mn population.