Well, absolutely. And that's sort of one of the things I'm interested in is how you compare

and show connections in your podcast between evangelicals in the US and the evangelicals of Brazil.

But I guess one thing that I'm interested in is why are they so open to Bolsonaro's particular brand of politics and his candidacy.

And maybe even underlying that because many people may have this view of Brazil as a, you know, Carnival and this traditional Catholic historically Catholic country that they're the religious complexion of Brazil has changed a lot in the last few decades.

And there's been so much missionizing outreach but conversion to these other forms of Christianity. And I think it does beg the question of what are the primary drivers of that. Why is evangelical Christianity of various kinds.

And you know, filling a gap that it seems a traditional church or Catholic traditions are incapable of doing so, I tend to think of some of these forms of evangelical religion as very compatible with the, you know, destructive forces of neoliberal capitalism.

And so I'm wondering, you know, if some of the attraction for these evangelicals goes to, you know, some of the same underlying conditions that are fueling this populist neo-fascistic far right sort of brand of politics.

And I'm wondering if you could kind of tell us a little bit more about how you see Brazil's religious and cultural situation changing and the impact that that's having on this constituency in Bolsonaro's kind of alliance.

Oh my god, this is great. I love this discussion, by the way, y'all, thank you so much. And but I, but this, but I wish we had like 10 hours.

So, yeah, I want to cover. Yes, first off, let me just say the question of evangelicals in Brazil, this is a really important thing to define this. So in Brazil evangelicals is any non Catholic Christian.

So it's very different when we talk about evangelicals in the United States, we're talking about largely pentacostles.

Now that said, roughly two thirds of evangelicals in Brazil are pentacostles.

And we're talking about important context. We're also talking about that to some methodists and whatever else.

The fact that pentacostles make up the lion's share in Brazil of kind of evangelicals means that they lead the way. And that's been what we've seen saying Congress in large part.

That's what we've seen in the evangelical caucus and whatever else.

And that goes back and we're talking back, you know, 100 years, 150 years to the rival missionaries, evangelical missionaries and whatnot. So that's important context, but it's also important to understand kind of Bolsonaro's base when we talk about them, evangelicals is kind of the pentacostles and the prosperity gospel, which is in so many of like the poorest communities.

Now, let's just real quick, real history, let's quick history lesson to understand why this is important now and how this that kind of the makeup of forces has got to this point vis a vis cat the Catholics because like you said, this is, I mean, Brazil is considered the largest Catholic country in the world and it still is, I mean, it's huge.

Catholics still make up a majority, even though many of those Catholics are not actually practicing Catholics, you know, they might go to church on Christmas or something, whatever else.

But evangelicals really started to grow and we're talking back, say in like the 1970s and 1980s in large part due to the backlash from the church in Rome to liberation theology, it was at that moment when in the poorest communities, the Catholic Catholic church pulled out of the pedifidi pulled out of the urban centers, those poorest communities and left this void that the evangelicals found a way to fill.

Now it's fascinating because there's a lot of kind of back and forth obviously going back a long way with evangelicals in Brazil looking north to the United States and saying, well, what are they doing while that's working and so as they saw kind of the rise of the evangelical movement, the far right Christian right movement in the United States back in the 1980s growing into the 1990s, you know, of course, Brazilians in a lot of ways were looking, how can we do kind of the same thing.

So the overall the growth of evangelicals was still pretty slow until they realized we have to move into the urban centers, which is different from the United States, you know, it's not like, you know, the growth of evangelicals happens more in rural, lower class communities, saying the south, whatever else in Brazil, it's been in the poorest communities in those in the favelas that were left behind when when the Catholic church moved out.

And those safe, they feel the really important niche and the very important role now there's an interesting dichotomy here, whereas in the United States, say, majority of evangelicals might be lower class working class whites in Brazil, we're talking about black Brazilian by large part and this is extremely important because that's also Lula's base in a lot of ways right the poorest communities that's what these are the people that are voting for.

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