Someday I'll try to write a coherent piece on the fundamentalists, pentecostalists and evangelicals. But not today. Today, as with most days, it's just too painful to turn the mental spotlight on them for any extended period of time.

But when I get around to it, you may be sure of this—I will continue to view evangelical leaders as a threat to human decency, compassion, sanity, safety and survival—and I'm sure I've left out a few other important issues.

Everybody now knows about Pat Robertson's go-ahead for assassinating Venezuelan President Chavez. In response,

Venezuela’s head of the Justice and Interior Ministry’s religious affairs unit, Carlos Gonzalez, announced yesterday that Venezuela would suspend the authorization of permits for foreign preachers while the government reviews and tightens existing regulations on preachers already in Venezuela.

According to Gonzalez, his department had been considering this move for a while, but Pat Robertson’s declarations “have made us speed things up.”

I suppose that's why Ted Haggard, pastor of Colorado Springs' New Life Church and president of the National Association of Evangelicals, wants a meeting with Chavez to apologize.

If I were Chavez I wouldn't let an evangelical within the city limits, since you never know which of them will be hearing voices from God or consider Robertson's remarks to be some sort of Christian fatwa authorizing murder. But Chavez will likely be more gracious.

But it's not the evangelicals vis-à-vis Venezuela that set me off today. It's the Brazilians.

In a piece called "The battle for Rio's soul," the Independent describes another front in the evangelical war on humanity.

... a series of recent bills put forwards to the state legislature - among them a bill to outlaw sex changes - by an influential evangelical politician have underlined a fierce tug-of-war between two dramatically opposed visions of Rio: the tolerant, liberal, beach paradise and the draconian, traditionalist city.

Some now believe that Rio's gay and transgender communities may be merely the first targets of a "cleansing mission" undertaken by ultra-conservative sections of the bancada evangelica (evangelical lobby).

Well, of course. This is just a warm-up.

.... Brazil's evangelical church has exploded in size in the past decade, growing from 13.5 million people (9.1 per cent) to 26.2 million (15.5 per cent), giving it unprecedented political power. Many parts within this church consider homosexuality a demonic act, while one church, the Igreja Universal, promotes televised exorcisms in which demons are expelled from desperate sinners: usually drug addicts, alcoholics and, of course, lesbians and gays.

This is the sort of thing you expect to find in Jonestown. Now they're drinking the Kool-aid in Rio.

Previous posts
Exorcism: "A growth industry for the pastoral care business" (2/18/05)
The Church of Secularism (2/22/05)
Nun tortured to death in convent (6/19/05)