When two Brazilian pop stars began chatting on live TV two weeks ago, few likely thought their conversation would start a debate concerning the end times.
On February 11, within the midst of Carnival, Baby do Brasil joined fellow veteran Ivete Sangalo in a trio elétrico, a truck equipped with a robust sound system that drives through the streets as partygoers follow. The two greeted one another in Salvador, a city of nearly three million in northeastern Brazil, and quickly exchanged compliments about their careers.
Then Baby do Brasil took the mic.
“Everyone, concentrate, because we have now entered the apocalypse,” she said. “The Rapture is predicted to occur in the subsequent five to 10 years. Seek the Lord while you could find him.”
Sangalo, who seemingly had not anticipated her cohost venturing into eschatology, made a crude joke.
“I won’t let it occur because we’ll bang the apocalypse,” she said, referencing her latest song “Macetando,” which roughly translates to “smashing” or “banging.”
Baby do Brasil followed up by asking Sangalo to sing “Minha Pequena Eva,” her hit from the ’90s, which tells of a pair isolated in a spaceship when an atomic war takes place on Earth.
“I’m going to sing ‘Macetando’ because God is telling me to,” Sangalo replied.
As Baby do Basil shouted, “Oh, glory,” Sangalo began to sing.
The awkward exchange soon went viral, generating plentiful commentary, quite a few memes, and one TV show anchor even signing off, “Let’s be comfortable before the apocalypse.” Scorned by many Brazilians (one tweet described the exchange as “clowneries of a believer”), the Rapture reference also divided evangelicals, who alternately found Baby’s words courageous and inappropriate.
“Maybe you think that that Carnival isn’t a spot for Christian believers, and I agree. But she is a music skilled, and within the midst of her work, her career, she obeys Jesus and is the salt of the earth and the sunshine of the world,” Pedro Barreto, senior pastor of Comunidade Batista do Rio, a Baptist church in Rio de Janeiro, wrote on Instagram.
In just a couple of minutes, he said, one of these communication could reach “more people than I touched in my 20 years of ministry.”
On the opposite hand, Christian YouTuber Zé Bruno wrote on X that “Baby from Brazil was unlucky in what she said and when she said it. This episode is an example of a scarcity of wisdom and customary sense.”
Probably, he added, Sangalo didn’t understand the entire speech as theological, but as “something bad, scary. This is the way it is in the favored imagination.”
As their surging number of churches indicates, evangelicals overall have been successful at sharing the gospel in Brazil. But as Barreto’s commentary suggests, some consider the church too often preaches to the choir, rarely venturing to achieve those beyond.
For instance, evangelicals generally eschew Carnival. While the streets are crowded with people dancing and playing, churches organize retreats and special services designed to maintain their members away from scenes they largely regard as immoral. As a result, whilst the evangelical movement has grown significantly in recent many years, its influence on the country’s most well-known time of 12 months has stayed negligible.
But is there an appropriate time to handle difficult theological questions in the general public square?
“It largely will depend on the hermeneutical lenses we use to interpret what the Lord expects from us,” said Marcos Amado, founding father of the Martureo Centro de Reflexão Missiológica, a ministry center that trains missionaries. “We should preach in season and out of season, as 2 Timothy 4:2 tells us. But what does it mean today?”
Some will say that the duty is to evangelise, so consequences and fruits are as much as God, says Amado. Others would balance this position with 1 Peter 3:15–16, which urges Christians to talk with gentleness and respect.
“In my opinion, there’s, biblically speaking, no inappropriate time to testify about Jesus,” he said. “But there are inappropriate forms and subjects depending on the moment and the circumstances.”
The widespread mockery and derision of Baby do Brasil’s comments suggests that Brazilian society—long the world’s largest population of Catholics—remains to be trying to grasp evangelicals, a bunch that registered as little as 6.5 percent of Brazilians as recently as 1980. Brazilian evangelicals can’t act like public officials within the United States, who can assume a level of public knowledge concerning the Bible and Christian theology due to the American people’s long Protestant history.
Today about one-third of Brazil’s population of 203 million is evangelical, and this numerical shift should prompt reflection on the increased public scrutiny they’re receiving, says Pentecostal theologian Gutierres Fernandes Siqueira. For instance, though the concept of the Rapture is probably going widely accepted by most Brazilian evangelicals, 60 percent of whom are Pentecostals, premillennialism theology is removed from mainstream.
“One of the issues with growth is that some people feel comfortable discussing topics in public that until recently were restricted to Bible study groups,” said Fernandes.
This doesn’t mean that God isn’t present in these initiatives. “In my faith journey, I actually have seen God using essentially the most unusual situations to the touch someone’s heart,” said Amado. “But under normal circumstances, problems with this sort ought to be addressed after other basic Christian concepts have already been presented, and at a time when one can interact, ask questions, and acquire responses.”
“There could be more appropriate biblical forms and themes for the moment [of Carnival] than the Rapture, which easily finally ends up being a laughingstock when it’s not the proper conditions to elucidate the topic appropriately,” he said.
Churches ought to be higher prepared and readier to seize these opportunities, says Fernandes. He urges churches to coach specialists on hot-button issues like the top times or evolution. Once Christians are equipped, they will not only reap the benefits of opportunities but pursue spaces to share their convictions.
“Take, for instance, the controversy about sexuality,” said Fernandes. “Brazilian evangelicals are willing to speak about this on social media, but you don’t see a lot of us at public health meetings where we could make a difference.”
Instead of experts more continuously presenting their thoughtful opinions to most people, Fernandes finds too many uninformed Christians sharing their hot takes on social media.
“The problem is that we currently just have these activists,” he said.
–
