Political News in the Brazilian Evangelical Media: O Mensageiro da Paz and Folha Universal from a Comparative Perspective

This article analyzes the editions published from May 2010 to January 2011 of Folha Universal, the weekly newspaper of the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God in Brazil, with a circulation of 2.7 million, and O Mensageiro da Paz, the Assembly of God's monthly publication. During Brazil's last elections, the Evangelicals' political force and their capacity to define the agenda of the Presidential campaign attracted constant news attention in the lay press. However, little was said about this world's internal diversity or the different ways these religious people think of politics. Wagering on a dialectic interweaving worldview and communication, we focused on the symbolic expressiveness of these publications as a window on the way politics was portrayed and experienced by the two main forces in the Brazilian Evangelical/Pentecostal community during the last electoral campaign.