Caracas Chronicles

Since 2022, the ruling Socialist Party of Venezuela has added an unexpected new instrument to its repertoire of popular control and subordination: a political-religious alliance project with Evangelical churches, through which it seeks to rebuild chavismo’s electoral base—undeniably in decline since Maduro’s authoritarian turn and the deepening of the economic-humanitarian crisis.

Rather than offer a stigmatizing reading of this controversial Christian sector in Venezuela, we can map the nuances of this association.

Evangelicalism 101

Evangelicalism is an umbrella term used to refer to a plurality of Christian denominations that do not answer to papal authority. That is, we must always speak of Evangelicals in the plural, since it would be unfair to identify Calvinists, Lutherans, Methodists, Adventists, Mennonites, Presbyterians, Pentecostals, or Baptists under a single label without recognizing the major differences among them.

In Catholicism, there is a clear hierarchy: the Pope, deemed infallible, is the supreme authority to whom the entire ecclesiastical structure answers. Theological or political dissent is handled discreetly within the Church, and major debates await historic events (such as Councils or Episcopal Conferences) to be addressed openly.

In Evangelicalism, by contrast, plurality reigns. There are no vertical structures. Relations among churches are entirely horizontal. Hence, some denominations may promote gender equality, women’s reproductive rights, or LGBTQ+ inclusion, while others maintain conservative, patriarchal, and fundamentalist positions.

A common mistake in public debate has been to confuse Evangelicalism with one specific denomination: the neo-Pentecostals—a variant of Pentecostalism dominant in Brazil and known for using mass media to spread their faith (remember the Pare de Sufrir program once aired by Venevisión), for their megachurches where pastors act as celebrities and TV hosts performing miracles, healings, and exorcisms live; for their political alliances with ultraconservative figures like Jair Bolsonaro; and, above all, for their prosperity theology.

This belief holds that personal security, well-being, and economic growth depend on God’s will, and therefore, these churches often demand large and continuous donations from their followers under the promise of divine multiplication. This partly explains their strong appeal among impoverished sectors of Latin America—especially since the 1990s, when neoliberal reforms severely hurt living conditions and, as traditional spaces for collective organization (parties, unions, social movements) disappeared, these churches managed to reorganize the lives of the poor.

Chávez and the CEV

As in the rest of the region, these churches experienced a modest rise during the 1990s, following the economic collapse after the Viernes Negro under Herrera Campins, Pérez’s austerity package, and the sociocultural impact of El Caracazo. They built incipient networks of grassroots organization in the slums of Caracas and other major cities—although, according to the 1995 Latinobarómetro, they barely reached 4.3% of the national population.

In the original political program of the Fifth Republic Movement (MVR), there was a clear interest in engaging them—alongside Catholics and other minority faiths—in an interreligious forum to debate a new model for the country, first to be endorsed in the 1998 presidential elections and then in the 1999 Constituent Assembly.

The commitment of Maduro’s son to this new policy has been remarkable. Nicolasito’s discourse even mirrors that of a preacher.

Responses to this call were plural. Political scientist David Smilde, in his 2004 book Reason to Believe, said that some Venezuelan churches, linked to neo-Pentecostal and fundamentalist denominations, saw in Chávez the executor of a divine plan for Venezuela and supported him explicitly. Nevertheless, the bond between chavismo and Evangelical churches remained marginal—virtually nonexistent—in Venezuela’s public sphere. Contacts may have continued but went unnoticed. Or, more likely, for political strategy, chavismo found it more useful to focus on the Catholic population, which made up around 90% of the country. The Evangelical relationship faded into the background as Chávez, after the 2002 coup attempt, focused on antagonizing the Venezuelan Episcopal Conference (CEV), which he accused of complicity in his ousting.

This antagonism was not directed against the Catholic population as a whole but against what Chávez called the “ecclesiastical hierarchy,” whom he accused of betraying Christian values. Within the religious sphere sought, chavista sought—perhaps unsuccessfully—to challenge the population’s loyalty to representatives of the Holy See in Venezuela. To do so, Chávez invoked notions of Christian Liberation Theology, such as the figure of the anti-imperialist Jesus Christ, and publicized internal Church dissidents who openly defended Bolivarian socialism, like Jesuit priest José Numa Molina.

This strategy continued under Nicolás Maduro until 2019. The CEV, whose president in 2014 accused the government of promoting “a totalitarian system of government that calls into question its democratic nature,” repeated this criticism in its January 13, 2016 exhortation and again before the 2017 regional elections. The PSUV’s leadership kept up its attacks on the CEV, resurrecting the ghost of the 2002 coup, accusing it of complicity with la oligarquía and of worshipping money over Christian values; seeking to delegitimize it by suggesting Pope Francis disapproved of its political stance; and with Maduro himself trying to take center stage in the canonization process of José Gregorio Hernández, in an effort to gain prestige within Catholic imagery.

Ultimately, Evangelicals were nowhere to be found in the political agenda of Maduro and Chávez. Until 2019.

Nicolasito takes the pulpit

The PSUV’s line toward the Catholic and Evangelical churches began to change substantially in 2019. Regarding the former, the antagonism continued but faded into the background, while toward the latter, an entirely new range of public policies was deployed, meant to materially, symbolically, and communicatively benefit this sector.

In 2019, the Misión Venezuela Bella began allocating funds for the renovation of Evangelical churches, considered “centers of peace.” The government later announced the creation of the Evangelical Theological University of Venezuela and declared January 15 as Good Shepherd Day.

In 2021, the National Assembly created a Commission for Dialogue, Peace, and National Reconciliation, including a special Subcommission of Evangelical Pastors that brought together 400 pastors and proposed the drafting of a Law on Religion and Worship, plus the creation of an Extraordinary Commission on Morality and Spirituality in the legislature. In 2023, the government launched the Good Shepherd Plan and then announced the Mi Iglesia Bien Equipada plan (“My Well-Equipped Church”) to provide infrastructural assistance to 2,500 churches.

The Evangelical Council has been emphatic in denouncing the “strong partisan-political component” behind chavista aid and infrastructural programs.

On January 19 of that same year, Maduro instructed CONATEL to facilitate Evangelical access to national broadcasting tools—crucial for neo-Pentecostals’ media strategies. Ahead of the July 28, 2024 presidential election, it was striking to see Maduro on television, among pastors, asking forgiveness and expressing repentance for his government’s “errors” and “corruption,” while praying for the “lifting of sanctions.”

This sharp political turn within chavismo coincided with an organizational change in the PSUV. On November 18, 2019, the party created its Vice Presidency for Religious Affairs, initially led by former Táchira governor José Gregorio Vielma Mora. However, since July 23, 2022, the position has been held by Nicolás Maduro Guerra, the president’s son. From that point onward, the shift deepened: Maduro Guerra began touring the country to weave a dense network of Evangelical support for the government.

The commitment of Maduro’s son to this new policy has been remarkable. His discourse even mirrors that of a preacher: he calls to “forge a Church-State, religion-practice link, to bring light where there is darkness, because what brings light where there is darkness? The Holy Bible. And where the Bible enters, no evil enters.” He was also responsible for bringing Brazilian bishop Julio Freites of the Universal Church (neo-Pentecostal) to Caracas for a “servants’ meeting” that filled the Poliedro on May 30 this year.

Yet, as in the 1990s, Evangelical responses to political outreach have been plural. Maduro has received backing from the Venezuelan Pentecostal Evangelical Union (founded in 1957) and from the Christian Evangelical Movement for Venezuela (MOCEV)—a little-known group with scarce online presence, reportedly including some chavista Evangelical lawmakers in the National Assembly. Whether this was a long-marginalized space that remained under the radar or an ad hoc structure created by the PSUV to organize Evangelical support remains uncertain.

Meanwhile, the Evangelical Alliance of Venezuela—which includes the Venezuelan Evangelical Council and the Pentecostal Evangelical Confederation of Venezuela—maintains a pluralist-liberal stance: reaffirming the separation of Church and state and rejecting any attempt to politicize faith. They stress that Evangelical and Protestant churches are defined “theologically, not politically; confessionally, not culturally,” and remind that the Evangelical people “are not a hierarchical ecclesiastical structure, but a horizontal one, enriched by diverse traditions with varied historical and spiritual roots,” as stated in an October 2014 declaration.

The Evangelical Council has been emphatic in denouncing the “strong partisan-political component” behind chavista aid and infrastructural programs, demanding plurality and transparency in access to such benefits for all faiths, as stated in a January 2023 statement.

Analyzing chavismo’s turn

Maintaining power through repression and widespread detachment is politically costly for chavismo, which once ruled through the constant mobilization of the country’s lower and vulnerable strata, both urban and rural. Thus, there is a dual rationale behind the outreach to Evangelicals: on one hand, to rebuild an ideology that legitimizes Maduro’s rule—regardless of how far it drifts from original chavista doctrine—and on the other, to remake an electoral base that might mitigate the domestic and international costs of electoral fraud.

But why the Evangelicals? First, for demographic reasons: between 1995 and 2020 (with 2019 as the turning point), the Catholic population in Venezuela fell from 88% to 63.3%, while the Evangelical population—including unspecified Evangelicals, Baptists, and Pentecostals—rose from 4.3% to 21.8%. This is based on surveys, not a census, and the mass exodus may distort the data by overrepresenting Evangelicals. Nonetheless, the figures reveal a significant Evangelical presence inside the country.

An opposition-turned-government could find allies among the pluralist sectors of Evangelicalism, with which it hasn’t built bridges so far.

Given neo-Pentecostalism’s notable media power and conversion capacity, coupled with the appeal of prosperity theology among vulnerable groups—which abound in a nation enduring a humanitarian crisis—it is not irrational for chavismo to forge this new alliance.

We must also recall the singular case of Javier Bertucci, who rose to fame as a pastor, entered politics in 2018, ran for president, and garnered a million votes on his first attempt. That event likely revealed to chavismo the existence of a mobilizable Evangelical electorate. Today, Bertucci has a seat in the National Assembly, keeps his distance from PSUV, but remains in dialogue with the Evangelical bloc. His electorate has not grown, raising the question of whether the PSUV has managed to absorb the voting base he once captured.

Questions for tomorrow’s democracy

There is a real possibility that, in a post-chavista democracy, many mid-level party leaders could escape the PSUV’s potential collapse by refounding some of its local structures into neo-Pentecostal-based political organizations.

If we look at Brazil—where this religious sector was a crucial base for Jair Bolsonaro’s failed coup attempt on January 8, 2023, with the assault on the Planalto Palace—it should raise alarms about the risks of a neo-conservative religious radicalization through the survivors of madurismo.

Two alternatives have begun to surface among political and intellectual circles concerned about Evangelical growth in Venezuela. On one hand, the secular leftist option, which seeks to reinforce Church-state separation by expelling religion from public debate. On the other, the conservative Catholic alternative, which aims to reassert the Church’s preeminent role in national life. Both, however, have shortcomings. The first ignores the central role of faith in a historically Christian nation, which cannot simply be removed from public discourse.

The second risks replacing one ultra-conservatism with another—albeit Catholic, taking in consideration the role that Catholicism has played in Maria Corina Machado’s recent mission, turning the canonization of José Gregorio Hernández and Mother Carmen Rendiles into a symbol of hope for peace and democracy in Venezuela. A future democratic government so strongly inclined toward Catholicism will surely end up self-sabotaging its ability to build substantial alliances with Evangelical churches and to politically connect with this population, just as Evangelical believers will, in exchange, maintain an apathetic or even antagonistic distance from this government.

A third, more democratic alternative would recognize that allowing religion a place in public debate does not automatically break the Church-state divide, and that a democratic policy should aim to amplify other currently ignored voices. Specifically, in the face of neo-Pentecostal expansion, an opposition-turned-government could find allies among the pluralist sectors of Evangelicalism, with which it hasn’t built bridges so far. This would let the intra-religious debate, in an open and plural fashion, set the limits to neo-Pentecostal advance in the country.