By ANDRÉ CASTRO*
Caetano seems to see that there is something deeper in the evangelical religious experience than the image of being “bridled” by domineering and evil pastors.
For some time now, Caetano Veloso has publicly attempted to get closer to some evangelical figures, especially progressive ones. Among them, the relationship with the singer Kleber Lucas stands out, especially in the re-recording of the song “Deus cuida de mim”, which is part of the setlist from his last tour, together with Maria Bethânia. Kleber Lucas is one of the biggest historical names in national gospel, and the song in question is one of the best known in his repertoire.[I]
After doing a version with the gospel singer, now singing the song on his tour, some comments have emerged that the praise at the show was received with “strangeness”.[ii] The Caetanistas, to speak like Luigi Mazza, seem not to have understood the action of their last defender of the “idyllic Brazil of delicate beauty”.[iii]
Caetanism would be this denial in the face of the rise of the extreme right that trampled on the popular democratic project. Thus, going to a Caetano Veloso concert becomes a reminder of the Brazil that should have been, a mirage that comforts the wealthy of the enlightened middle class, who watched the house of cards of the “democratic consensus” collapse, without being able to do anything. A certain devotion to Brazilian Brazil had formed around the old tropicalist, which found its moment of worship in the singer’s concerts.
The praise, of course, reminded them of what the show itself had the function of making them forget for a moment, since this jagunço Brazil[iv] was waiting for them when they left the arena, ready to take them home, mediated by transportation apps. The image of evangelicalism, thus, is marked as if it were the worst thing in the world. In the eyes of intelligentsia, “Bolsonarism is a historical mess, formed by unqualified people, truculent military personnel, and strident evangelicals. It is not the real Brazil. They are violent, repressed people who are resentful of the social ascension of the poorest.”[v] They therefore need to be criticized, ridiculed, and are condemned to the dustbin of history.
Of course, this image of evangelicalism is just that: an image that the right-thinking, out of a certain impudence of class or something similar, created to explain the “rude and ill-mannered people” who are setting their world on fire. But Caetano notices something else; the tropicalist explains: “The fact that the number of evangelicals in Brazil has been growing enormously is something that is of immense importance to me. That is why I will sing the beloved praise of Pastor Kleber Lucas.”[vi]
He also admits that he decided to include the song after finishing reading Kleber Lucas’ autobiography, which has the same title as the song. Apparently, he noticed, with the help of the gospel singer’s life, that there is something deeper in the evangelical religious experience than the image of being “bridled” by domineering and malicious pastors. He even points out a possible coexistence between “polarizations” that would be necessary to support. He mentions a group of young people who knew all the songs in his classic repertoire. Upon hearing the gospel song, one of them showed total repudiation. A few meters away, another young woman, without showing any discomfort, on the contrary, sang all the verses of the praise. There, he says, would be an “outline of coexistence” that Brazilians should be able to practice.
There would not be many reasons for part of the public to reject gospel music if its image were not linked to the new extreme right. At the same time, the tropicalist claims that what interests him is not the “evangelical bench”, but the faith experience of evangelicals who seek to be the national religious majority. In this imbalance between the public image of evangelicals and the spiritual experience of the more peripheral segments that adhere to evangelicalism, it seems that the praise at the tropicalist show profaned what Luigi Mazza called the “reciprocal affection” between audience and singer, which, according to him, masks the fact that neither one nor the other knows what is happening in Brazil.[vii] After all, the divinity that this praise invokes is another, proscribed as an enemy of the Caetanist cult, which thus left its faithful distraught. With the complete communion between audience and artist undone, the problem of evangelicalism was exposed in the air.
Evangelicals are a problem, whether in the sense of being enemies to be fought or as an issue to be solved. This problem appears everywhere, from the launch of books on the history of philosophy by academic professors to the daily news of enlightened journalism in São Paulo. It is a problem that, because it has no solution, continues to be debated. On the other hand, for another part of the population, especially those who live in the suburbs of large cities and in the countryside, evangelicals are present.
They are not a problem, in either of the two senses already mentioned. They are out there, whether in the form of a family member, a friend from school, college, work or even the hypothetical reader himself, who could be the infamous evangelical. It is true that this religious identity became a problem for the first time when it was reduced by the common sense of the mainstream media to economic interests in the 90s, with the famous “prosperity theology”, but it gained its current status from 2016 onwards, as a significant part of what was consolidated as Bolsonarism. Of course, as everyone knows, this situation culminated in the 2018 election. The image of evangelicals is that of conservatives, radicals, and vulgar Bolsonarists. At the same time, we have seen a dizzying growth in the evangelical community since the 1980s, which took on new tones in the 2000s.
The problem, therefore, is not evangelicalism per se, but how it participates in the reorganization of the right in Brazil. What leaves our well-thinking minds astonished, or should be, is that this religious identity is growing and has as its majority members working women, most of them black.[viii] The easiest answer, and therefore the most repeated, is to blame the leaders, seen as perverse manipulators of the unprotected, uneducated masses, of those who have not yet achieved their own enlightenment and, therefore, follow a master.
Contrary to this common sense is, to cite one among many examples, the recent case of the “anti-abortion bill” by the evangelical bench, which had a 66% rejection rate among evangelical women aged 16 and over.[ix] Not that evangelicals are advocates of decriminalizing abortion, quite the opposite; but since this issue did not originate within the evangelical camp, but rather from the assumption of a politician, its rejection shows that it is not about domination or instrumentalization, but rather about adherence and coherence of expectations. Reducing the debate to “domination” is a distortion of the problem that points to an easy answer, which says more about the person giving it than about the object in question.
Returning to Caetano Veloso's show: after all, what did the hymn say that caught his attention so much that he sang it, without further explanation, on his last tour? In the chorus, he sings:
God takes care of me, in the shadow of His wings
God takes care of me, I love His house
And I don't walk alone, I'm not alone
For I know: God takes care of me[X]
The feeling that God takes care of your life – and is therefore sovereign and defines the future – is linked to “loving your home”, loving the church. Feeling under the wings of the Almighty is mediated by living with others who also feel like children of God. While they are together, no one feels alone, because they are with those who call themselves brothers, a brotherhood forged since the foundation of time, with the Redeemer of the world, Jesus, as the eldest brother. Then it makes sense to believe that Jesus “takes care of me” – at the same time, an individual and communal experience. Still in the lyrics of the re-recorded song, we see:
If there is no direction in life
It is necessary to make a decision
I know there is someone who loves me
He wants to hold my hand[xi]
The “decision” is crucial to understanding the feeling that permeates the song itself and that gave it meaning. It is about conversion, a change of life, or, better yet, a reorganization of one’s disposition towards life based on this community called church; it is there that we find the dynamics of how to deal with one’s feelings and desires. Upon entering this community, the believer now knows that he lives by God’s designs, and therefore, everything that happens in his life is the result of the sovereign’s will.
There seems to be a certain pattern in the gospel singer's lyrics, which involve both a description and an imperative. The certainty that “God takes care of me” needs to be repeated in order to be believed. Other songs by the same author also have similar lyrics, and it is no coincidence that he was so successful, leaving his mark on gospel music in Brazil.
We are talking, therefore, about an artist who for a long time was actively related to an evangelical sentiment, a religious imagination that gave meaning to a community of faith that spread throughout every corner of the country. In Kleber Lucas' lyrics, this community solidified its own experience of prayer; the singer's lyrical subject is almost always the subject who prays. Faced with life's problems, the faithful find hope for misfortunes in the house of God, feel the presence of the Sovereign and place their lives at the disposal of what they imagine to be God's project for the world.
However, when the singer plays this in a show that had the exact function of worship, in an almost religious sense, of remembering the Brazil that had been destroyed by the avalanche of the extreme right. Whatever the real reason for Caetano Veloso's adherence to praise, it is certain that he dismantled the moment of worship for a while, bringing another religious song, but this one sung by another imagined community, which cries out to God for another nation.
What interests us here is that the gospel singer's songs made sense within an experience of faith that involved community dynamics, forming a field between Pentecostal and Reformed churches around the image of national redemption: revival. Revival has been central to the evangelical religious experience since its founding in 1734, with a revival led by Jonathan Edwards, because it is the historical demonstration of God's action, which redeems not only hearts, but the world itself.
Revival is sought, and past events are remembered to prove to the world the concrete reality of God’s sovereignty. The idea of a Brazil redeemed by and for Christ was the basis for the creation of a common space between groups that previously did not consider themselves “brothers.” Thus, since 1994, with the beginning of the Marches for Jesus in Brazil, evangelicals have proclaimed a new era for Brazil. Certainly a new image of Brazil that would be built through political struggle.
Those who believe in this Revived Brazil, unlike the Caetanistas who resent the direction the world is taking and lament the death of the Brazil of their ideals, live as if something new were knocking on the door, as if each second were a small door through which the Messiah could enter. An experience of time, therefore, marked by the expectation that everything will be redeemed in Christ. That same hope, born in the act of stripping oneself of oneself in surrender to what is understood as the sovereign God, also points to a redemption that is now being experienced on the national scene.
It is true that, between one Kleber Lucas song and another, evangelicals also listened to the group Diante do Trono, the most important producer in the gospel industry in Brazil, singing about the redemption of the country. In their songs, national redemption, through its revival, gained verses and choruses. Kleber Lucas, in his lyrics, presents a part of the evangelical feeling, the inner scene that shapes the individual's detachment before the power of his God. Other musical groups, such as the one mentioned above, gave voice to the expectation that arose from this surrender. All in all, life itself gained meaning.
Working, studying, waking up early and taking chaotic public transport, doing what is necessary to stay alive, found meaning in this image of Brazil as God's place, where the fullness of time has finally arrived. But, until Jesus returns, we must work to revive the nation, making his presence visible in history.
Perhaps it was something similar to this that Caetano Veloso saw in the biography of our gospel singer. Caetano's followers saw barbarity where their idol found an experience of hope. What is more important for us is to understand what goes on inside these people who found their own lives in the gospel singer's prayer-songs. This is something that organizes a certain evangelical sentiment in Brazil.
*André Castro He has a master's degree in religious sciences from the Methodist University of São Paulo (UMESP). Author, among other books, of Brief history of Protestant Liberation Theology (Machado Publishing House).
Notes
[I] Released in 1999, on the singer's third album, the song gives its title to the album itself.
[ii] Spyer, Juliano. Caetano explains to evangelicals why he came closer to religion. Folha de S.Paulo, São Paulo, September 22, 2024. Illustrious. Available at: https://www1.folha.uol.com.br/ilustrissima/2024/09/caetano-explica-a-evangelicos-por-que-se-reaproximou-da-religiao.shtml
[iii] MAZZA, Luigi. The caetan syndrome. Piaui issue 212, May 2024.
[iv] FELTRAN, Gabriel. Elementary forms of political life: on the totalitarian movement in Brazil (2013-). Available at: https://novosestudos.com.br/formas-elementares-da-vida-politica-sobre-o-movimento-totalitario-no-brasil-2022/#gsc.tab=2013.
[v] Ibid, P. 31
[vi] Spyer, Juliano. Caetano explains to evangelicals why he came closer to religion. Folha de S.Paulo, São Paulo, September 22, 2024. Illustrious. Available at: https://www1.folha.uol.com.br/ilustrissima/2024/09/caetano-explica-a-evangelicos-por-que-se-reaproximou-da-religiao.shtml.
[vii] MAZZA, Luigi. The caetan syndrome, Piaui issue 212, May 2024. p. 31
[viii] Balloussier, Anna Virginia. Black women are the majority in evangelical churches in São Paulo, according to a Datafolha survey. Folha de S.Paulo, São Paulo, July 15, 2024. Daily life. Available at: https://www1.folha.uol.com.br/cotidiano/2024/07/mulheres-negras-sao-maioria-nas-igrejas-evangelicas-paulistanas-aponta-pesquisa-datafolha.shtml.
[ix] Blum, Bárbara. “2 out of 3 Brazilians are against the anti-abortion bill due to rape, says Datafolha”. FSP, São Paulo, June 5, 2024. Balance and Health. Available at: https://www1.folha.uol.com.br/equilibrioesaude/2024/06/2-em-cada-3-brasileiros-sao-contra-o-pl-antiaborto-por-estupro-diz-datafolha.shtml.
[X] Lucas, Kleber. God takes care of me. In Lucas, Kleber God takes care of me. Rio de Janeiro: Mk Music, 1999. Track 12.
[xi] Lucas, Kleber. God takes care of me. In Lucas, Kleber God takes care of me. Rio de Janeiro: Mk Music, 1999. Track 12.
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