The controversial establishment of the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God in Portugal was the subject of many news reports during the s, in which accusations of serious crimes β from charlatanism to connections to drug trafficking and child abduction β filled the pages of newspapers G. Dias, ; R. Many of these news reports linked the Church with stereotypes about Brazil and Brazilians and referenced Brazilian soap operas, which were quite popular in the country at the time. In turn, the reference to soap operas manifests in the fabric of journalistic discourse, with a hybridisation formed between the melodramatic and informational genres.
DOI: That was not smooth and caused some conflicts, which were widely reported by the media. Two facts can be referred to as significant events of the arrival of the Church in the country: the purchase of the Coliseu concert hall in Porto, which caused numerous protests, and the aggressive attack on worshippers who were attending a meeting in a shopping centre in Matosinhos G.
Dias, Both events, which took place in , had wide repercussions in the media and marked the moment in which news media coverage of UCKG became recurrent. However, references to the Church in newspapers date back to According to the author, given the lack of studies and research centres in Portugal on new religious movements β a fitting designation for UCKG β in the early s, the press became the main opinion maker about the Church. During this period, reports on the UCKG 1 focused on two main aspects: their extravagant character and the hysteria in its meetings β which included exorcisms and miracles β as well as its in- come and prosperity, emphasising tithing requirements and the characterisation of its members as people with low literacy.
A focus is also placed on the temporal world, appealing to the worldly needs of worshipers. In this approach, poverty and wealth are the practical opposite of sin and grace, respectively. Dias, , p. Rafael Dias concludes that associations between the UCKG and something fanciful and unreal had become common in the press during this period. The other was more recent, relating to a feeling of a Brazilian cultural invasion in which soap operas emerged as a paradigmatic example.
Beyond the peculiarities of this experience in the Portuguese context, and the specific relationship between Portugal and Brazil during the colonial period, it is possible to understand the perpetuity of these images and their association with the UCKG phenomenon from a decolonial perspective Quijano, Farias, , para.
