Malafaia Brokers Evangelical Coalition — Bolsonaro Wins Brazilian Presidency; Post-Election Church Visit Seals Pastoral Debt

Jair Bolsonaro won the Brazilian presidential election on October 28, 2018, carrying approximately 55% of the vote against Fernando Haddad of the Workers’ Party (PT). The evangelical voting bloc — roughly 30 million voters, approximately 27% of the Brazilian electorate — was the decisive margin. Silas Malafaia was the primary broker of that coalition.

Malafaia deployed his television platform (Vitória em Cristo on RecordTV), his 4 million+ social media following, and his position as vice president of CIMEB (representing ~8,500 ministers across denominations) to authenticate Bolsonaro as a candidate aligned with evangelical values. The coalition was significant because Bolsonaro himself had a Catholic background and no documented charismatic religious credentials; Malafaia’s endorsement provided the pastoral legitimation that evangelical voters required.

Two days after his election victory, Bolsonaro visited Malafaia’s church in Rio de Janeiro — a public acknowledgment of the pastoral debt, and the beginning of what Malafaia would describe as ongoing direct advisory access. Senator Flávio Bolsonaro subsequently publicly identified Malafaia as one of his father’s main advisers. Filmmaker Petra Costa, in her documentary Apocalypse in the Tropics (Netflix, July 2025), characterized Malafaia as functioning like a “Rasputin figure” for Bolsonaro — gathering the evangelical vote, then exercising growing influence over the president throughout his term.

Structural parallel: Malafaia’s coalition-brokering function in 2018 mirrors Lance Wallnau’s prophetic endorsement of Trump in 2015-2016 and Paula White’s consecrating pastoral function at Trump Tower. The mechanism — a mass-media pastoral figure conferring evangelical legitimacy on a candidate with ambiguous personal religious credentials — is the same in both countries.

Cross-reference: malafaia-silas — full actor profile.