Recent evolutionary approaches to understanding religious beliefs suggest that important differences in conceptualization and corollary behavioral outputs between the gods of world religions and those of local traditions. Some posit that the former are more likely to be associated with moralizing qualities and prosocial behavior toward anonymous strangers. However, there is a lack of targeted experimental studies regarding the latter. Moreover, the role of secular authorities in regulating moral behavior has been hypothesized to approximate the effect of supernatural entities. In the current research, we obtained data on religious beliefs in the moralizing aspects of a Christian god, local god (Ogum) and police in a sample from Northeastern Brazil (n = 193) and used the reported beliefs as predictors of behavior in the Dictator Game where participants were asked to distribute endowed money between various local and distant communities. Furthermore, we also used subtle reminders of Christian god, Ogum, and police to investigate their influence on game behavior. The correlational and priming results are mostly in agreement, revealing that: a) Christian god is ascribed with the predicted qualities but b) impacts behavior in the Dictator Game only to a small extent while c) adherence to the local god is associated with ingroup favoritism, as is d) priming with secular authority. These results suggest that belief in moralizing and local gods may have opposite tendencies regarding the universalistic nature of moral norms and warrants further research on the interactions between communities adhering to local gods.