In this article, we aim to reflect on the emergence and manipulation of social feelings in the context of intense transformations, called cold periods in history by Durkheim. The event known in the mainstream media as the ‘gay kit’, and political and religious articulations surrounding its suppression in 2011, is the empirical basis for our analysis. As a counterpoint, we will identify narratives and conservative activism organized around Bill No. 6583/2013, also known as the Family Statute, which has been the subject of numerous public debates, especially in 2015. In both cases, we reflect on social fears, morally based panic and on the situated activation of the rhetoric of loss by politicians with religious conservative liberal profiles.

Sustento a hipótese de que nas últimas décadas consolidou-se o modus operandi político dos evangélicos que impulsiona uma inflexão no histórico estilo de operar na esfera política da Igreja Católica. Se tal guinada no catolicismo não é um efeito mecânico de espelhamento, no mínimo constitui-se numa forte referência para o ativismo político católico e as militâncias de seus religiosos políticos nas casas legislativas do Brasil. A argumentação apóia-se na análise dos dados trazidos por Erico Tavares de Carvalho Junior e Ari Pedro Oro, no texto “Eleições municipais 2016: religião e política nas capitais brasileiras”, na literatura especializada e em pesquisa empírica realizada junto às lideranças católicas carismáticas.

In Brazil, the Covid-19 pandemic is triggering tensions in health management that provoke, among others, a political crisis led by the federal government, characterized by negationist postures regarding the seriousness of the disease and lack of focus on public health policies. There is also an information crisis enabled by the political strategy of dissemination of disinformation that disqualifies scientific parameters and the role of the press. In this context, churches and Christian religious leaders who have risen to power in recent years play a fundamental role, which allows them to be analyzed from their performance as a public religion. By decreeing the closure of religious temples, as a preventive measure for the advance of the disease, evangelicalpentecostal churches insert into the public debate the defense of the essentiality of religious service as a fundamental dimension for society, conferring support and legitimacy to the action of the government. In this sense, this paper argues that the Brazilian scenario, when compared to other Latin American countries, is an outlier. Based on ethnographic research within online media and the religious media circuit, this paper maintains that, nationally, religion takes the lead in the political and information crisis. At the same time, this study affirms that, approaching other countries of the region, the churches reinvented mediatized religious practices, deriving from the social distancing and isolation, and offered new meanings and religious moralities around the health crisis.