Os evangélicos na Câmara dos Deputados: uma análise quantitativa dos seus discursos (2007 – 2021)

Abstract

This work analyses the heterogeneity of the Brazilian federal deputies’s speeches between 2007 and 2021, focusing on those who were identified as evangelicals. The deputies were subdivided among those non-evangelical, followers and clergy members of the Igreja Universal do Reino de Deus, Assembleia de Deus, other pentecostal churches and historical evangelical churches. More than 202 thousand speeches were analysed between the dates and, after that, it was possible to identify if, and wich, evangelical groups bring the religion theme on their speeches, if they talk more about meritocracy and if they are talk more about penal populism. Also, it was possible to find out if there was a movement toward the conservadorism on the Chamber during the mid-2010’s, a process that was supposedly led by evangelical deputies. Futhermore, the groups had their legislative speeches compared to political parties. The results shows that the clergy’s members uses religion words more frequently than the church’s followers and this group, by itself, uses more than nonevangelical deputies. Contrary to what the literature indicates, there was no evidence that evangelical deputies are more in favor of the meritocracy than non-evangelicals. The results shows that evangelical deputies are more inclined to defend penal populism. Also, it was found a parcial conservadorism wave lead by the deputies who are clergy members of their churches. It was also noted that the usage of Frente Parlamentar Evangélica as synonym to evangelical deputies is not accurated. Finally, the majority of the groups had their speeches close to center and “centrão” policial parties.