The Brazilian religious landscape is a rich tapestry woven out of “historical legacies, social transformations, and spatial reorganisations” (van der Hoek, 2025). Since 1891, Brazil has been a formally secular nation, however, the profound rise of Evangelicalism, the presidency of Jair Bolsonaro, and the election of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva have dramatically shifted the interplay between religion and politics, reconfiguring the Brazilian political and cultural terrain. Bolsonaro’s 2018 campaign slogan, ‘Brazil above everything, God above all’, is a profession of this shift, as Christian epistemologies begin to mould Brazilian cultural reality, reverting back to the colonial dominance of the Catholic Church (Folhapress, 2018). Bill No.1904/2024 serves as the pre-eminent manifestation of this new reality; approved for urgent consideration in June 2024, this bill seeks to limit abortions to 22 weeks after gestation, equating any procedure after this to homicide. In a similar realm, PEC 164/2012, advocated for in November 2024, attempts to decree the inviolability of life ‘from conception’ into Article 5 of the Brazilian Constitution, in essence, criminalising all abortions. Brazil is estimated to have the highest frequency of abortions across the globe, even though its laws, at current, are incredibly restrictive: abortion is only permitted in cases of rape, life-threatening risks to the mother, and foetal anencephaly (Malta, 2019). This article will analyse the interconnections between faith, politics, space, and social justice to contend that not only are these proposed legislative changes unconstitutional, but that they exist in a continuum of domination, exacerbating female, religious, and racial violence, operating as a container of coloniality. As the shadow of Cristo Redentor cascades across Brazil, the symbol of Catholicism pervades politically and epistemologically with it, transforming the socio-political dynamic, while racial order intersects with religion at a site of colonial power. Ultimately, Bill 1904/24, and PEC 164/2012 exist within a wider matrix of religious power that subjugates the marginalised in alignment with Brazil’s colonial legacy, and therefore, these proposed legislative changes should not be enacted.

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Damares Alves, Bolsonaro’s Minister of Human Rights, encapsulated the potency of religion in Brazilian state affairs when she stated, “the state is secular, but this Minister is extremely Christian” (dos Santos & Moddelmog, 2019). While Article 5 of the Brazilian Constitution (VI and VIII respectively) enshrines that the “freedom of conscience and of belief is inviolable, the free exercise of religious cults being ensured”, and that “no one shall be deprived of any rights by reason of religious belief”, the Catholic Church, nonetheless, remains deeply entangled in state influence, which has major unconstitutional effects on socio-cultural dynamics (Constitution of the Federative Republic of Brazil, 2010). 

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Catholicism entered Brazil upon its colonisation by the Portuguese empire, and was subsequently cemented as the only legitimate religion of the state, gaining a monopolistic status as it influenced both legal and public institutions; “mirror[ing] broader European patterns of religious and political hegemony” (van der Hoek, 2025). During the Portuguese empire it was a common claim that “to be Brazilian is to be Catholic [and] God is a Brazilian” (Bruneau, 1973).

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Irrespective of the Western imposed venture of Catholicism, much of Brazil’s indigenous population resisted this state-enforced religious identity, preserving their own syncretic religions of African-descent; the most prominent being the Afro-Brazilian religions of ‘Candomblé’ and ‘Umbanda’ (dos Santos & Moddemog, 2019). Indigenous resistance was symbiotic for the eventual rise in religious pluralisation that followed after the passing of the 1891 Constitution, which abolished the official status of the Catholic Church. Such abolition gradually evolved into the freedom of religion, that was first declared as a fundamental right in 1989. The convergence of pluralism was, also, particularly marked by the emergence of Pentecostals, who emphasised Evangelicalism; a branch of Protestantism (Burity, 2020). Pentecostalism quickly entrenched itself into the political sphere through its overt support for “political candidates committed to defend[ing] the churches’ interests” (Barreto, 2021). 

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Evangelical politicians aggrandise a project of Christian superiority, in turn “reinforcing religious prejudice against Afro-Brazilian religions” (Barreto, 2021). Bolsonaro’s 2018 campaign embodied this, blending “Catholic and Pentecostal imagery… reflecting a broader societal shift”, presenting the revival of Christianity’s role in shaping power structures, in turn forging a new cultural reality, entitled ‘onda conservadora’ (conservative wave) (van der Hoek, 2025). The resurrected conservative Christian wave has led to the marginalisation of many Brazilians predicated on the grounds of race and religious belief, discarding the prominence of pluralism, in alignment with Brazil’s historic Catholic values; both Bill 1904/24 and PEC 162/2012 are markers of onda conservadora. 

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The 2023 presidential race between Bolsonaro and Lula da Silva was dubbed ‘a holy war’, denoting the refashioned-wave of politics in Brazil, that which is driven by religion (TRT World, 2025). Even with Lula da Silva in power, Catholic rhetoric remains intricately tied to Brazilian state affairs, as societal dynamics become increasingly influenced by religious-orientated policies; Lula assured conservatives his commitment to Catholicism pronouncing his opposition to abortion, representative of the shifted political and cultural landscape, whereby political ideology coheres with the Catholic Church (TRT World, 2025). As such, Brazil has become characterised by a paradoxical relationship between state and religion, despite the alleged limitations of religious influence over political parties, Catholicism sits atop the ecclesiastical hierarchy, controlling policies, an expression of Brazil’s profound colonial legacy. 

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The interaction between Christianity, particularly Catholicism, and Brazilian culture is far from a new phenomenon. David Sopher’s proclamation that “religious landscapes are not passive reflections of belief systems but active spatial constructs that influence socio-political dynamics” is evinced in Brazil (Sopher, 1967). Christian symbolism is central to Brazilian urban life, and has been since its colonisation, but this transcends simple architectural presence, “auditory and social practices influence urban securitisation” operating as a means of epistemic invasion. In the favelas of Rio de Janeiro, Christian worship music is beginning to function as a technique of “territorial control, shaping perceptions of safety and moral order … [creating] an auditory claim over space” (Oosterbaan, 2017). The amalgam between such psychological symbolism, alongside the tangible aspects of urban life, that which has been built around the physical, and dominant presence of Catholic churches, has structured a lasting legacy of “socio-religious hubs” in promotion of Christianity, unveiling the interconnections between faith, culture, and space in Brazil (van der Hoek, 2025). These sites, although subtle, are incredibly pervasive, embodying a kind of Christian nationalism that has crept into the political sphere, consequentially reviving the vestiges of colonial domination.

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Religious instruction in schools is a further modality of Catholic and Christian dominance. Since 1934, it has been a government mandate to offer some kind of religious class, however, Catholic instruction has essentially distorted the voluntary nature of this regulation, essentially becoming mandatory, simultaneously employing itself as a mechanism to “insulate authority and transmit [Catholic] influence from one generation to the next” (Cerqueira, 2019). Despite the intended voluntary nature, the majority of schools have reported that they either “do not inform parents that they can choose to exclude their children from participation”, with 37% of headmasters claiming that Catholic instruction is compulsory, or, that “[their] schools do not offer an alternative”, which has been reported by another 55% of headmasters (Cerqueira, 2019). Students from Afro-Brazilian religious backgrounds have reported instances whereby Catholic teachers have attempted to convert them (Cerqueira, 2019). Although instruction is intended to be nondenominational, and to be delivered without an attempt of proselytising, this is not the reality, rather, the constitutional right to the ‘free exercise of religious cult’ is often infringed upon through religious instruction in schools. Religious intolerance becomes a symptom of this epistemological production, as instruction, pursuant to a government mandate, is warped to mobilise the superiority of Catholicism. 

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On the surface, both the subtle and overt influence of the church, seemingly, illustrates that Brazil’s secular landscape is aligned with Ran Hirschl’s ‘De Facto Establishment’ model; “where longstanding patterns of politically systemised church hegemony and religion-centric morality continue to loom large over the constitutional arena”(Hirschl, 2010). Brazil has been separated from the church for over a century, yet Catholic influence over the realm of politics remains ubiquitous. However, the shifted political terrain of the 21st Century, that which is geared toward carving public life out of Christian practices, reveals a new model, namely, ‘Theocratic Ruling’(Hirschl, 2010). Alves’ proclamation that “it is time for the church to govern” is an example of this (dos Santos & Moddemog, 2019). While socio-political transformations, historic Catholic legacies, and spatial organisations perform in tandem to reveal the religious domination that has become symptomatic to Brazil’s alleged secular arrangement, the Brazilian religious landscape is haunted by its history of Christian colonialism. 

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Despite the alleged ‘freedom of conscience and belief’ granted by the Brazilian Constitution, life is dominated by Catholicism; discriminatory religious instruction, and the overwhelming presence of Christian spaces are not isolated incidents, rather, they exist in a wider narrative of expansion coinciding with the legacy of Catholic colonial domination, an expansion that breeds religious intolerance. Religious and racial violence is emblematic of the lasting effects of Brazilian colonialism, the increased intolerance toward members of Afro-Brazilian religions, particularly those of Candomblé faith, who have faced persecution since the Portuguese empire, demonstrates this.

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The infamous photo of an eleven-year-old girl “bathed in blood while dressed in a white robe” is one atrocity that captures this intolerance (Barreto, 2021). In June 2015, a grandmother, Katia Marinho, and her eleven-year-old grand-daughter, Kaylane Campos, attending a Candomblé terreiro, dressed in their traditional white religious garments, were attacked by two white Evangelical men who were ‘holding Bibles, jumping up and down, and screaming that these women had abandoned God, and that they will burn in hell’ (Douglas, 2015). These men also assaulted Campos, throwing stones at her, hitting her in the head, causing her to faint. Unfortunately, this is just one instance of religious intolerance that has plagued Brazil in the 21st Century; in 2015, ‘32% of the cases of intolerance reported were against Muslims, followed by 30% against Candomblés, indigenous people made up 6% of these reports, agnostics at 5%, and both pagans and Kardecists each at 3%’ (Barreto, 2021). Moreover, the grossly disproportionate number of murdered Black Brazilians, accounting for 76% of all homicide victims in 2018, alludes to the racial inequalities in Brazil that are synonymous to its colonial past (Barreto, 2021). Thus, intolerance in Brazil undeniably intersects at a paradigm of race and religion, contradicting the supposed protections within Article 5, Section VIII of the Brazilian Constitution.

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The advocation for Bill No.1904/2024, and PEC 164/2012 does not exist in a vacuum, these proposed legislative changes are not simply monolithic examples of the female and racial violence that exists in Brazil, rather, they are capsules of racism and religious intolerance that has been manufactured by the colonial legacy of Catholic dominance. Between 2009 and 2021, over 323,000 rapes were reported in Brazil; 70% of these victims being aged under nineteen-years-old, 54% of them being committed against children who were under fourteen-years-old (seeing only 5% of this figure undergoing an abortion), and 89% of these victims were non-White females (Ornell, 2024). This figure dramatically increased in 2022 with almost 75,000 rapes reported in this year alone, 59% of these victims were black girls between the ages of eleven and fourteen, and of these, there were fourteen-thousand-two-hundred-and-ninety-three births from children under the age of fourteen (CLADEM, 2025). Even with the existing laws, abortion is hard to come by; in 2022, before the consideration of amending the constitution to include inviolability from conception, a judge in Santa Catarina tried to convince an eleven-year-old girl to refrain from getting an abortion after being raped, urging her to “hold on a little longer” (Carvalho, 2022). Only fifty-five of Brazil’s five-thousand-five-hundred-and-seventy municipalities provide access to safe abortions (Ornell, 2024). Furthermore, even with Brazil’s pre-existing strict legislation on abortions, one fifth of Brazilian women between the ages of eighteen and thirty-nine, underwent an unmedically-regulated abortion, with an estimate of at least 500,000 illegal abortions occurring every year in Brazil (Malta, 2019). An immediate consequence of these unregulated abortions is the death of over 200 of these women annually (Malta, 2019). 

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Seeing as the majority of rape victims who seek abortions belong to very vulnerable groups in Brazil, likely Black girls younger than fourteen, to criminalise abortion is to infringe upon Article 5 of the Brazilian Constitution, that grants ‘inviolability of the right to life, liberty, and equality of all people residing in the country without distinction whatsoever’ (Constitution of the Federative Republic of Brazil, 2010). Evidently, the nature of extreme sexual violence in Brazil poses significant human rights concerns, disproportionately affecting young, non-White women. Considering the inordinate murder of Black Brazilians, alongside the extreme volume of rape, a direct indicator of mass female violence, the codification of both Bill 1904/2024 and PEC 164/2012 are an accumulation of racial and female violence that will only exacerbate the existing misogyny and racism that plagues Brazil. Institutionally sanctioning gender-based, racial, and religious violence in this manner perpetuates the same logic of the Portuguese colonial empire, thus these legislative changes are simply instruments of colonial power. Bill 1904/2024 and PEC 164/2012 are contradictory to the very secular arrangement that is enshrined in the Brazilian Constitution, no matter the standing president in Brazil, laws should not be rooted in religious ideology and discard the diverse issues of the marginalised. 

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The rationale for Brazilian Catholics to oppose abortion is predicated on the belief that life begins at conception, asserting that to end a potential life is a ‘grave evil’, and this thought has clearly had significant influence over the current laws governing abortion in Brazil, as these are only legal in some very limited circumstances (Ogland & Verona, 2011). Christian politicians argue that “the inviolability of the right to life cannot exclude the moment when life begins, life does not begin with birth but with conception” (Sampaio, 2024). Catholic logic follows that all life should be protected, however, The Latin American and Caribbean Committee for the Defense of Women's Rights (CLADEM, 2024) highlight that forced pregnancy, particularly for those under the age of fourteen, “carries risks of maternal death, [and] continuing with forced pregnancy impacts mental health, resulting in depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress, and suicide”. Claims predicated on protecting life must be inclusive, held to a universal standard, thus, alleging the desire to preserve life while the disparities in the Brazilian mortality rate reflects the prevalence of racial and femicidal violence, reveals the illegitimacy of the commitment to protecting life. Seemingly, the sovereign value of autonomy is opposed by Catholicism, and abortion is a profound expression of this, asserting one’s freedom of conscience and right to liberty.   

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CLADEM further argue that both Bill 1904/2024 and PEC 164/2012 sustain the institutional violence that exists in a dimension of racial intolerance. CLADEM (2024) affirm that the denial of abortion equates to the submission of ‘torture and degrading treatment’ that is protected under Article 5, Section III of the Brazilian Constitution. Moreover, these laws will dramatically increase socioeconomic disparities, specifically for young Black girls, who do not have access to “adequate information and the existence of health services in their localities”, which are seen to be incredibly sparce across Brazil’s municipalities (CLADEM, 2024). In addition, the restriction of abortions to 22 weeks disregards young girls “[lacking] knowledge about their bodies, which explains the late discovery of the pregnancy” (CLADEM, 2024). It is a constitutional responsibility of the state to protect its citizens from ‘inhumane treatment’ yet the pre-existing absence of access to health information, and access to safe abortion expands dimensions of gender violence. Criminalising abortions does not get rid of abortions; it only gets rid of safe ones.

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Furthermore, when the ‘Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women’ reviewed Brazilians women’s rights in 2024, their cardinal suggestion was to “decriminalise abortion and ensure access to safe services” (de Oliveira, 2024). The existing cultural stigma around abortion in any country incurs profound negative health implications, in Brazil, the disproportionate effects on vulnerable groups, particularly children and people of colour, who may not have the access to recognise their unwanted pregnancies, is indicative of multidimensional violence, and failures in social protection. 

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Milos Santos argues that the Brazilian religious landscape “is not just as a reflection of faith, but it is an arena of political, economic, and spatial negotiations” (van der Hoek, 2025). The opposition to abortion is an expression of how racial order has come to intersect with Catholicism in a re-masked colonial project. The categorisation of both race and religion were tools for hierarchisation that is inherent to colonialism, forging the “racialization of religion and its outcome, religious racism” (Barreto, 2021). Coloniality then casts a hierarchical difference “which makes certain kinds of knowledge and certain ways of being superior to others” (Barreto, 2021). Bill 1904/2024 and PEC 162/2012 manifest this order, proposing that Christian morality is the right morality, which is portent to the racial intolerance deriving from the Catholic colonial project in Brazil, submitting to the continuum of intolerance and violence against practices failing to align with Christian values. 

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Upon the consideration of the arguments for, and against these legislative changes, it is clear that Bill 1904/2024 and PEC 164/2012 are vessels to subjugate marginalised communities, in alignment with the colonial legacy of Brazil. Declaring the inviolability of life from conception is rendered a paradoxical argument, disregarding the sanctity, safety, and lives of those subjected to gender-based violence, predominantly affecting young Black Brazilian girls, typically under the age of fourteen. Given the opposition to these bills illuminating the extreme sexual violence in Brazil, neither of these legislative changes should be made, rather, abortion should be made more accessible, this would be a true expression of Article 5 of the Brazilian Constitution, protecting all Brazilians residing in the country of their right to life, and liberty, without submission to degrading or inhumane treatment. 

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Ultimately, Brazil is characterised by a unique, and complex relationship between religion and politics; the shifting of the political landscape in the 21st Century, as seen through the palpable rise of conservadora onda, highlights the reversion back to the dominance of the Catholic Church, as Brazil comes to resemble a theocracy, which has revived colonial dominance. Both Bill 1904/2024 and PEC 164/2012 encompass such coloniality, not only exacerbating female violence, but seeking to institutionally marginalise Black Brazilians and perpetuate existing socio-economic disparities. The advocation for such bills is unsurprising given the zeitgeist, they exist in a wider narrative of Catholic dominance, that has been culturally mobilised through institutions and geographical spaces, reflecting the religious identity of Brazil, that which is moulded by a belief in superior Christian epistemologies. Upon the analysis of the abortion debate, Bill 1904/2024 and PEC 164/2012 should not be passed, to do so would be unconstitutional; to refrain from perpetuating coloniality, access to abortion should be made accessible, not criminal, a provision that truly coheres to the right to life, liberty, and equality, that is being imposed upon by the current, unconstitutional arrangement between religion and politics.