Religious Leaders in Politics: Rio de Janeiro Under the Mayor-Bishop in the Times of the Pandemic

Abstract

The authors discuss the phenomenon of religious and political leadership focusing on Bishop Marcelo Crivella from the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God (IURD), the current mayor of the city of Rio de Janeiro, in the context of the political involvement of his religious institution and the beginnings of the COVID-19 pandemic. In the article, selected concepts of leadership are applied in the background of the theories of a religious field, existential security, and the market theory of religion, to analyze the case of the IURD leadership political involvement and bishop/mayor Crivella’s city management before and during the pandemic, in order to show how his office constitutes an important part of the strategies of growth implemented by the IURD charismatic leader Edir Macedo, the founder and the head of this religious institution and, at the same time, Crivella’s uncle. The authors prove how Crivella’s policies mingle the religious and the political according to Macedo’s political alliances at the federal level, in order to strengthen the church and assure its political influence.

Pandemic Leadership: Is It Just a Matter of Good and Bad?

“…Some of the theories used by researchers are social identity theory and motivational language theory (Wilson, 2020 ), role congruity theory (Vroman & Danko, 2020 ), market theory and compensational theory (Siuda-Ambroziak & Bahia, 2020 ), conspiracy theory (Patel et al, 2020 ), hegemonic stability theory (Norrlöf, 2020 ), contingency theory (McMullin & Raggo, 2020 ), grounded theory (Tham et al, 2020 ), stakeholder theory (Centorrino, 2020 ) and leadership theory (Grint, 2020 ). Studies about the correlation of pandemic leadership and gender (women) are analyzed based on sense-making theory and feminist theory (Cherneski, 2020 ).…”

“…When lives are at stake, a good leader will provide a positive contribution for an organization or a country while a bad leader will cause a fatal outcome (Wilson, 2020 ). Several studies on leadership during a pandemic include Kleinhuber and Hermann ( 2020 ), Dirani et al ( 2020 ), Hatcher ( 2020 ), Cherneski ( 2020 ), Chuang et al ( 2020 ), Escotet ( 2020 ), Fitzgerald and Wong ( 2020 ), Grint ( 2020 ), Lee ( 2020 ), Jamieson ( 2020 ), Henrickson ( 2020 ), Siuda-Ambroziak and Bahia ( 2020 ), Thomson ( 2020 ), Vroman and Danko ( 2020 ), Spector ( 2020 ), Wilson ( 2020 ). This raises the question: Is it simply a matter of good and bad leaders (?…”

A incorporação da pandemia na retórica da Igreja Universal do Reino de Deus

“…", mais de 80% das respostas foram positivas [14] . Esse dado pode nos ajudar a explicar por que a maioria das igrejas evangélicas protestantes, pentecostais tradicionais e neopentecostais -incluindo aqui as dissidências da Igreja Universal, como a Igreja Internacional da Graça de Deus e a Igreja Mundial do Poder de Deus -suspenderam atividades previstas para o período bem como orientaram lideranças locais a ministrarem os serviços online (Oliveira et al 2020;Siuda-Ambroziak, Bahia, 2020).…”