Like every Sunday, Brazilian Pastor Silas Malafaia took the stage of his Pentecostal temple in a middle-class Rio de Janeiro neighborhood.
However, this week, he wore a T-shirt instead of a blazer and, behind the three cameras broadcasting to his legion of YouTube followers, were thousands of empty seats.
Brazil’s churches have landed on the front lines of a battle between state governors, who have introduced quarantine measures designed to contain the spread of the new coronavirus, and Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, who is actively undermining them and says a broad lockdown will ultimately destroy the nation’s economy.
Photo: AP
Brazil’s politically powerful evangelicals helped bring the far-right president to power in the 2018 election and Bolsonaro is letting them know they are not forgotten, political analysts said.
The most influential pastors are backing the president’s radical coronavirus stance while begrudgingly respecting governors’ orders, and either canceling services or moving them online. There are signs some churches are disobeying.
“I’m asking, which is worse: coronavirus or social chaos?” said Malafaia, one of Brazil’s most prominent pastors, who leads the Assembly of God Victory in Christ Church. “I can guarantee you that social convulsion is worse.”
Photo: Bloomberg
It mirrors the argument of Bolsonaro, who has urged governors to abandon lockdown and likened COVID-19 to a “little flu” that mainly threatens the elderly and those with pre-existing health problems.
On Sunday, he hit the streets wearing no gloves or mask and joined multiple gatherings, in defiance of recommendations from his own Ministry of Health.
Bolsonaro, a conservative Catholic who married an evangelical in a service Malafaia administered, has zeroed in on the need to reopen the churches.
“God is Brazilian,” he told people on Sunday, O Globo reported.
Some religious organizations, such as the National Conference of Brazilian Bishops, have welcomed measures in Rio and Sao Paulo, where all non-essential businesses shut down.
Pope Francis warned in a letter, parts of which were published on Monday, of “viral genocide” if countries that prioritize economies over people.
In contrast, Malafaia and other evangelical leaders across Brazil have voiced outrage at governors’ decisions, warning they would only cooperate under court order.
“The media say thousands and thousands of people are going to die,” Malafaia said in the interview. “All these catastrophic predictions, I want to reject them.”
Malafaia said European-style measures cannot be replicated in Brazil, where millions survive in the informal sector and a day without work can mean a day without food.
On social media, some pastors downplayed health risks posed by COVID-19, claiming one cannot catch the virus inside a house of God, but could be infected at home if failing to attend services.
From March 16 to Wednesday last week, Rio state prosecutors received dozens of complaints from citizens who said they had seen churches welcome parishioners even after the state imposed quarantine measures.
They are looking into the complaints and could file civil suits.
“My mother is 74 and has hypertension and goes almost every day to the church that encourages even at-risk people,” read one of the complaints reviewed by reporters.
The virus is real indeed, and not sparing religious communities.
In France, local media reported a large evangelical gathering in Mulhouse transformed the surrounding area into the country’s largest concentration of cases.
In Washington state, a Presbyterian choir rehearsal attended by 60 people, all seemingly without symptoms, apparently produced 45 infections and two deaths, the Los Angeles Times reported on Sunday.
Brazil had 4,661 confirmed cases and 165 deaths as of yesterday.
On Thursday, Bolsonaro passed a decree that added religious activities to the list of “essential services,” even though citizens were asked to stay home.
However, the decree was overruled by a federal court on Friday.
On the streets on Sunday, he again defended people getting back to work.
“Open the churches, please, we need them,” one woman begged repeatedly in one of the videos he posted to social media. He replied with reassuring words.
Analysts say Bolsonaro is addressing his electoral base. Brazil is home to the world’s largest number of Catholics — about 123 million, according to the 2010 census, but evangelicals are a growing force, with 42 million believers, about 20 percent of the total population.
“No political party in Brazil manages to bring together as many people, in as many places, as many times a week as churches do,” said Carlos Melo, a political science professor at Insper University in Sao Paulo. “And people tend to follow the pastors’ directions.”
Pastors “say that coronavirus is just a test sent by Satan and that we all just need to gather together and pray and we’ll be able to repel it,” said Andrew Chesnut, a professor of religious studies at Virginia Commonwealth University. “It’s specifically evangelicals that are anti-science and it’s the same thing in the US. They always have been. It goes back to having a literal, fundamentalistic interpretation of the Bible.”
OPTIMISTIC: A Philippine Air Force spokeswoman said the military believed the crew were safe and were hopeful that they and the jet would be recovered A Philippine Air Force FA-50 jet and its two-person crew are missing after flying in support of ground forces fighting communist rebels in the southern Mindanao region, a military official said yesterday. Philippine Air Force spokeswoman Colonel Consuelo Castillo said the jet was flying “over land” on the way to its target area when it went missing during a “tactical night operation in support of our ground troops.” While she declined to provide mission specifics, Philippine Army spokesman Colonel Louie Dema-ala confirmed that the missing FA-50 was part of a squadron sent “to provide air support” to troops fighting communist rebels in
PROBE: Last week, Romanian prosecutors launched a criminal investigation against presidential candidate Calin Georgescu accusing him of supporting fascist groups Tens of thousands of protesters gathered in Romania’s capital on Saturday in the latest anti-government demonstration by far-right groups after a top court canceled a presidential election in the EU country last year. Protesters converged in front of the government building in Bucharest, waving Romania’s tricolor flags and chanting slogans such as “down with the government” and “thieves.” Many expressed support for Calin Georgescu, who emerged as the frontrunner in December’s canceled election, and demanded they be resumed from the second round. George Simion, the leader of the far-right Alliance for the Unity of Romanians (AUR), which organized the protest,
ECONOMIC DISTORTION? The US commerce secretary’s remarks echoed Elon Musk’s arguments that spending by the government does not create value for the economy US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick on Sunday said that government spending could be separated from GDP reports, in response to questions about whether the spending cuts pushed by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency could possibly cause an economic downturn. “You know that governments historically have messed with GDP,” Lutnick said on Fox News Channel’s Sunday Morning Futures. “They count government spending as part of GDP. So I’m going to separate those two and make it transparent.” Doing so could potentially complicate or distort a fundamental measure of the US economy’s health. Government spending is traditionally included in the GDP because
Hundreds of people in rainbow colors gathered on Saturday in South Africa’s tourist magnet Cape Town to honor the world’s first openly gay imam, who was killed last month. Muhsin Hendricks, who ran a mosque for marginalized Muslims, was shot dead last month near the southern city of Gqeberha. “I was heartbroken. I think it’s sad especially how far we’ve come, considering how progressive South Africa has been,” attendee Keisha Jensen said. Led by motorcycle riders, the mostly young crowd walked through the streets of the coastal city, some waving placards emblazoned with Hendricks’s image and reading: “#JUSTICEFORMUHSIN.” No arrest
RSS