This was, after all, the same Brian Tamaki whose Destiny Church followers wanted to reclaim Christchurch "for Jesus" in the immediate aftermath of the 2019 terrorist attacks. And who blamed the Christchurch earthquakes on "gays, sinners and murderers".

Those familiar with the branch of modern Christianity known as Pentecostalism would not have been surprised at all. Tamaki's Destiny Church is part of the fastest-growing religious movement in the world, with an estimated 500 million adherents.

Today the average Pentecostal is as likely to be Nigerian, Fijian, Korean or Brazilian as they are to be British, American, Australian or Kiwi.

Aotearoa New Zealand is just one of many places Pentecostalism is flourishing. As well as the more prominent churches such as Destiny, City Impact, the Assemblies of God (AOG) and Elim, a host of smaller congregations exist throughout the country.

Here and elsewhere, Pentecostals' steadfast assertion that the raw power of the Holy Spirit will prevail over the principalities of darkness has run up against the cultural and environmental realities of the modern world.

A record of resistance

Nowhere is this more obvious than in their responses to COVID-19. As nation-states have rolled out public health measures, Pentecostals have seemed unwilling and unable to accept epidemiological explanations and strategies.

Tamaki's actions are the tip of an iceberg of global resistance. Pentecostals have been at the forefront of legal pushbacks against gathering restrictions and insisted only the second coming of Christ would force churches to close their doors.

They have proclaimed COVID cannot survive in the bodies of the faithful, declared a link between the virus and 5G mobile technology, and maintained the pandemic is God's yardstick for distinguishing his loyal servants from pretenders.

While these claims and interpretations can appear outlandish and dangerous, they are not entirely incomprehensible. Rather than view them as nonsense, it is more helpful to see them as a different kind of sense altogether.

Miracles and wonder

Specifically, Pentecostal values are a religious response to the pandemic and a spiritualisation and demonisation of the virus. This goes directly to the Pentecostal obsession with the Holy Spirit.

Pentecostalism is defined, above all, by its intense experientialism. More than any other Christian variant, it is concerned with saturating human existence in otherworldly power.

The Pentecostal vocabulary is not one of ritual, liturgy or structure, but of ecstasy, surprise, miracles and wonder.

From this standpoint, any stricture, rule or earthly imposition that impedes a life in the Spirit is, by default, suspect and anathema. This sets up an overall opposition between the spiritual and the worldly that helps define the difference between good and evil or God and Satan.

Defining Pentecostalism

For the devoted Pentecostal, everything is either one or the other, and to be on the side of the world is to collaborate with the enemy. Several features of this theology directly shape Pentecostal responses to COVID-19.

Triumphalism: Pentecostals are fearless combatants in a spiritual war against Satan. The Holy Spirit is the ultimate weapon in this charge, providing absolute confidence in a Biblically preordained victory. With its long shadow of sickness and fear, COVID-19 bears the Devil's signature.

Framed as an active demonic force, the virus is something that should not - must not - be feared. The triumphalism determined by a total faith in the Spirit to conquer evil immediately establishes an ethos that spurns caution, regulation and withdrawal.

Deliverance and healing: The former expels demonic forces threatening well-being, while the latter cleanses a diseased body affected by those same powers. These religious tools are brought to bear against the pandemic, warding off the Satanic viral threat while healing the afflicted. Logically, vaccination becomes unnecessary, misguided and a betrayal of faith.

Tribulation: Pentecostals are deeply concerned with the end of human history as the precursor to Christ's return and the establishment of God's paradisical kingdom. The Tribulation is a seven-year nightmare of evil and suffering featuring the rise of a nefarious "new world order".

Within this end-times scenario, all humanity is branded with the mark of the beast, a process authorised by Satan. An apocalyptic plague and Satanic mandates for vaccination provide further prophetic justification for a pro-healing, anti-vaccination position.

The Kingdom: Pentecostals are not huge fans of worldly entities and human rules. They prefer divine authority, spiritual inspiration and Biblically sanctified morality. The Kingdom of God is juxtaposed with the debased platforms of government and capitalism (even if countless Pentecostals embrace a divinely sanctioned materialism).

Translated into the pandemic context, the continual legislative and policy directives of the government are, by virtue of their human origin, tainted with iniquity. As always, paramount trust must be placed in the Holy Spirit and the Bible.

Faith and science

It may be tempting to see Pentecostalism as its own worst enemy by denying the science and leaving its followers vulnerable to epidemiological catastrophe.

But it is also a relatively young branch of Christianity and not necessarily uniform in its beliefs. As has been observed elsewhere, "medical science and divine healing […] have never been considered mutually exclusive by the entire movement".

The question therefore becomes, can Pentecostalism reach a détente with the world, as mainstream Protestant, Anglican and Catholic churches have done?

It would seem the tide can be turned, even if compelled by tragedy. For example, after the death of one of its congregants, the Pentecostal church at the centre of the largest sub-cluster of Auckland's current Delta outbreak embraced vaccination, having initially denied its validity.

This is a pattern now being repeated across many pockets of the Pentecostal world, albeit within a church still fixated on spiritual dynamism and miraculous cures. For now, however, it may take more than faith in worldly reason to persuade Brian Tamaki and his flock that vaccines and lockdowns are a blessing and not a curse.

• Fraser Macdonald is a Senior Lecturer in Anthropology, University of Waikato
• First published in The Conversation

He describes the resistance to following the Government's COVID-19 rules by Murray Watkinson, the leader of Wainoni's revivalist Celebration Centre and other Christian leaders as "extremely sad".

Richie says Watkinson's posts - which pit faith against science, and religious leadership against civic leadership - present a false dichotomy.

"God has given us brains; God puts leadership in place, so we're following the words of people who, one could argue, God has gifted with the ability to guide us through these sorts of situations," he said.

"Jesus encouraged us to love our neighbour. We've been given very clear instructions here on how to love our neighbour by experts."

"By following the rules, we're looking after the vulnerable; we're looking out for people who are susceptible to having their lives ripped apart by the virus."

Watkins took to social media earlier this month to question whether world powers "have our best interests at heart."

In a post, Watkinson told church members: "We are being told we must listen to science. By implication, this means don't listen to God."

"If God's people and the prophets present an opinion that opposes the worldly narrative we are conspiracy theorists," he wrote.

"Satan is real; he is constantly inspiring people to do unlawful and harmful things; his plan is to deceive the world, separating humanity for eternity from God."

A former attendee who alerted Newshub to the posts said he was worried by the "dangerous" messages Watkinson sent to church members in his post.

The failure to comply with alert level restrictions has initiated discourse regarding religion amid the pandemic, with many highlighting that those of faith are more likely to show scepticism towards science-based evidence.

Murray and Nancy Watkinson started Celebration Centre Church in 1990.

A movement of churches has been established meeting annually in New Zealand and the Philippines.

Source

• newshub.co.nz
• newshub.co.nz
• facebook
• celebrationcentre.com
• Image: facebook

When not acting as head of Pamiers Seminary in southern France, he explored the geology and paleontology of the Late Cretaceous rock preserved in the foothills of the Pyrenees Mountains Read more

Fr. Robert Spitzer, SJ, Ph.D., 62, is president of the Magis Center (www.magiscenter.com), headquartered in the new chancery office of the Diocese of Orange, California.

The center's goal is to demonstrate that faith and reason and science are compatible, and to combat the increasing secularization of society, particularly among young people.

Fr. Spitzer was born and reared in Honolulu, Hawaii.

His father was an attorney and businessman; he was one of five children.

His father was Lutheran; his mother a Catholic and daily communicant.

He attended college at Jesuit-run Gonzaga University in Spokane, Washington, initially pursuing a career in public accounting and finance.

He went on a retreat led by Fr. Gerard Steckler, a former chaplain for Thomas Aquinas College, and "he got me very interested in theology and the Church."

He began attending daily Mass and taking classes in theology and Scripture.

He bought a copy of St. Thomas Aquinas' Summa Theologica from a used book store and began reading it. "I saw the solidity of faith in the light of reason," he said, "and once that happened, I was ready to go."

He joined the Society of Jesus in 1974, and was ordained a priest in 1983.

Fr. Spitzer is the author of several books, including Healing the Culture (Ignatius Press, 2000), Five Pillars of the Spiritual Life (Ignatius Press, 2008), New Proofs for the Existence of God (Eerdmans, 2010), and Ten Universal Principles (Ignatius Press, 2010), as well as numerous articles for scholarly journals, and has delivered hundreds of lectures.

He is a teacher, and served as president of Gonzaga University from 1998 to 2009.

He continues to produce an enormous volume of work despite suffering from poor eyesight throughout his adult life (he has not, for example, been able to drive a car for 30 years), which has gotten worse in recent years.

Fr. Spitzer recently spoke with CWR. Continue reading

Sources

• The Catholic World Report
• Image: Two Handed Warriors