Networks, Society, and Polis: Epistemological Approaches on Mediatization

Religions in the media polis: mediatization, Protestants and politics in Brazil 153 in the public space. We identified the following elements that contributed to this: 1. A new approach between evangelical politicians and the federal government. It had already been strong during the Constituent Congress, it was weakened in the 1990s, despite all the electoral support given by leaders of the different churches to Fernando Collor and Fernando Henrique Car- doso in their candidacies, but it was renewed with the election of Luís Inácio Lula da Silva to the presi- dency, in 2002. This situation was facilitated by the alliances made by PT with several parties, in which evangelical deputies were allocated, and the strategy of a campaign of approximation to evan- gelical leaders of the churches and political parties to overcome the demonization of Lula’s figure as a communist, an opponent of the churches, with the government opening up to various initiatives and different evangelical leaders; 2. Two evangelical churches turn visible their plans for occupying the country’s institutional politics: Assembleia de Deus (AD) and Igreja Universal do Reino de Deus (IURD). Both started to occupy, af- ter 2003, spaces full of power in parties (respec- tively the Christian Social Party/PSC and the Bra - zilian Republican Party/PRB) and public positions, such as the appointments of the ministers of State of Dilma Rousseff,’s government – Marcelo Criv- ella (PRB, Fishing, IURD) and George Hilton (PRB, Sports, IURD), and in Michel Temer’s government, Marcos Pereira (PRB, Industry, Foreign Trade, and Services, IURD) and Ronaldo Nogueira (PTB, La- bor, AD). The General Convention of Assembleia de Deus in Brazil has been working to register its party, the Christian Republican Party (PRC). In the last two elections, the ADs were able to launch two candidates for the Presidency of the Republic, Ma- rina Silva (2010 and 2014) and Minister Everaldo