Northern California faith-healing megachurch leader apologizes, but still questions masks

A leader at a megachurch that dominates civic and religious life in Redding apologized Friday for “making light of this pandemic” at a time when nearly 300 people at her church’s school have contracted the virus and some are blaming the church for pending shutdowns.

Earlier this week, Bethel Church’s Beni Johnson posted a video on Instagram saying she was in line to buy food at “a cute little town over on the coast” when she was told she needed to wear a mask.

“Can I just say that there is way too much security in a freakin’ mask that doesn’t even work,” Johnson said in the video as she smiled and giggled with another woman. “If you’ll do the scientific research, these masks are worthless, and they’re people’s security blanket. It’s just really, really sad.”

Johnson took the video down after local health officials condemned her remarks.

“I would really encourage people not to pay attention to that misinformation,” county health officer Karen Ramstrom told reporters this week.

On Friday, Johnson apologized on Instagram.

“It has been my desire all along to make people laugh through this hard time,” she wrote. “We have all lost people we know and love. And by no means do I want to make light of that, so for that I do apologize. I still question the importance of a mask, but in spite of that I do wear a mask when the situation requires it.”

Johnson’s husband, Bill, founded the church. The Johnsons are both described as “Senior Leaders” on the church’s website.

It’s hardly the first controversy at Bethel Church, whose members believe they can heal the sick and raise the dead.

What’s different this time around is the role the megachurch’s School of Supernatural Ministry has played in a troubling surge of COVID-19 infections in Shasta County. On Friday, Shasta had the dubious distinction of having the most per capita COVID-19 infections of any county in California.

As of Friday, at least 274 students and staff at the church’s school had tested positive for the virus. The church-associated outbreak accounts for one in six of the 1,623 people infected with the coronavirus in Shasta County since the pandemic began this winter.

Next week, the county’s health department will order the closure of most “non-essential” indoor businesses and gatherings.

“We’re not pointing fingers, but we’re all pretty upset,” said Scott Wlodarczyk, co-owner of Woody’s Brewing Co., a Redding brewpub that’s now again facing weeks of seating customers outside and takeout orders.

Health officials caution, however, that the cases at the Bethel school aren’t solely to blame for the restrictions. There has been enough of a spike at local nursing homes and in the community that Shasta County would have been forced to close the businesses even if the church numbers weren’t included in the tally.

County health officials push back

Still, county health officials said at a media briefing this week that Johnson’s disparaging comments about masks were the very attitudes that would keep business closed for longer.

“There is only growing evidence around the benefits of face coverings and mask use to mitigate the spread of this virus,” Ramstrom said.

Other than asking people to wear masks and keep their distance from each other, there’s really no other tools health officials have to keep the virus from spreading, short of stay-at-home orders and business shutdowns.

“Basic things that shouldn’t be so oppressive we’ve politicized, and it’s infuriating for those of us working in the health care side of things ... dealing with the repercussions of people failing to do those things,” said Dean Germano, CEO of the Shasta Community Health Center, the largest outpatient healthcare provider in Shasta County.

In response to a list of emailed questions, Bethel spokesman Aaron Tesauro referred to a statement on the church’s website that said Johnson’s remarks reflect the church’s belief “in diversity of opinion and thought,” but “collective statements and actions” the church has taken during the pandemic are its official stance.

Since the pandemic began, the church has dialed back its in-person services and proselytizing, and it’s told its students to wear masks and practice social distancing.

“Despite what some of our leaders have been putting on Facebook ... the masks are the law, and we personally believe that it’s more than the law. It’s about love,” Kris Vallotton, Bethel’s senior associate leader and cofounder of the School of Supernatural Ministry, said in a video he posted online this week.

Not Bethel’s first COVID controversy

It’s not the first time during the pandemic someone associated with Bethel has earned a rebuke from local health authorities.

This summer, several hundred people gathered to sing and pray in tightly packed groups below the Sundial Bridge in Redding, one of Shasta County’s most popular tourist attractions. Few people were wearing masks.

Sean Feucht, a Christian musician, recent congressional candidate and member of Bethel Church, organized the “Let us Worship” event, and went on to hold a series of similar gatherings around the state.

Though some church members attended the prayer rally, Bethel leaders said the church had nothing to do with the event, which Feucht paid for and organized on his own.

In a statement condemning the event, county officials said they were misled into believing attendees would adhere to social distancing rules, and the event would only involve a “small battery-powered amplification for acoustic guitar and mic” instead of a concert.

Organizers never sought a permit.

Then in late September, with cases surging among students and staff at its School of Supernatural Ministry, the church hosted a conference called Open Heavens, a gathering of 325 people that lasted for three days.

“We’ve made a place for you to encounter His supernatural presence. Come experience our culture and be surrounded by world changers just like you!” reads the event’s Facebook page.

The church told The Record Searchlight newspaper that attendees were socially distanced at three locations separate from the school.

But Kerri Schuette, a county health department spokeswoman, said contact tracers have identified cases where students were in attendance.

Bethel’s relationship with Redding

Bethel is one of the north state’s largest institutions, and its members represent 6% of Shasta County’s 180,000 population.

The church says it has more than 11,500 members, including the more than 2,000 national and international students who typically enroll at the Redding church’s School of Supernatural Ministry each year. (This year, the school is at 70 percent capacity due to the pandemic.)

Bethel has become a major economic driver in Redding in the years since Bill Johnson took over what was then a small Redding “Assemblies of God” church in the 1990s.

The church employs more than 700 people, and attendees of its conferences, services and other events bring millions of dollars each year into this struggling region where one in six residents live below the poverty line and good-paying jobs are scarce.

“Bethel brings in resources outside of the area into our community, so in some ways that’s the definition of economic development,” said Jake Mangas, the CEO of the Redding Chamber of Commerce.

Bethel also has become a prominent force in local politics, and at times it has bailed out Redding’s struggling city government.

When Redding’s city-owned dilapidated convention center was about to close in 2011, Bethel took it over, keeping Redding’s largest venue for concerts, trade shows and gatherings open.

Bethel founded a nonprofit that now manages the facility, which is still owned by the city.

The Civic Center receives $750,000 a year from the church, which uses the auditorium for its School of Supernatural Ministry for part of the year. It’s open for non-church events the rest of the time.

According to its most recently posted tax form, the Bethel non-profit Advance Redding that manages the facility took in nearly $2 million in revenue in 2018, and it ended the year about $120,000 in the black.

The church also has funded local government directly.

In 2017, the city accepted Bethel’s $500,000 donation to fund the Redding Police Department’s neighborhood policing unit. The church also donated $450,000 to the city to secure United Airlines’ service from the city’s small airport to Los Angeles.

Redding City councilwoman Julie Winter is a Bethel elder. She didn’t return an emailed message from The Bee.

Bethel’s controversial beliefs

The church has made its fortune through a popular preaching subscription streaming service called Bethel.TV, and it sells products including apparel and books.

Bethel also has an internationally known record label that produces popular Christian music. Justin Bieber counts himself a fan of Bethel’s songs.

But Bethel’s core beliefs in miracles and faith healing make the church controversial even among evangelicals. During religious functions at Bethel, church members reportedly speak in tongues and members claim gold dust and angel feathers appear out of the air.

Late last year, hundreds of church members gathered in an attempt to resurrect a 2-year-old named Olive Heiligenthal, hours after the toddler had stopped breathing and died on Dec. 14. Church members gathered to sing, “Come alive/ Come alive/ Come alive, dry bones/ Awake, arise/ Inhale the light.” Thousands of people posted on Instagram with the hashtag #WakeUpOlive. Olive did not wake up.

In October 2008, a Bethel School of Supernatural Ministry student moved to Washington and started a “dead-raising team” that worked with members of the local fire department to pray over bodies found on emergency calls, according to the Redding Record Searchlight.

Bethel faithful are well known in Redding for approaching strangers and offering to touch them and to pray away their ailments including at local healthcare centers — a practice that is now at odds with public health officials’ campaign to limit the spread of the coronavirus.

(Church officials insist that when the outbreak is over, ministry students will be required to stay six feet from those they approach, and they’ll have to wear face coverings.)

Bethel’s belief in the power of resurrection at one point factored into a local attempted murder investigation.

In 2010, a Redding man claimed in a lawsuit that he became paralyzed after he was either pushed or allowed to fall off a cliff above the Sacramento River by two members of the School of Supernatural Ministry after a night of drinking together, the Record Searchlight reported.

Rather than call authorities, the suit alleged the two students, who believed he had died, attempted to reach him so they could pray him back to life.

After spending hours unsuccessfully trying to ford the river and push through blackberry bushes, they eventually notified authorities, who found the unconscious man and took him to a local hospital.

For a time, Redding police investigated the incident as a possible attempted murder, but no charges were filed.

Bethel’s support in Redding

For all its quirks and controversies, the church enjoys broad community support in large part thanks to its civic donations.

Bethel students and volunteers donate thousands of hours of their time each year on local land, trail and parks maintenance projects.

And after the Carr Fire burned through west Redding in 2018, Bethel opened up its campus to evacuees and gave gifts of $1,000 to 750 families. Restaurants owned by members of Bethel church fed fire victims free of charge for weeks.

“Things like that, it’s very impressive when you see it happen,” said Mangas, the local chamber of commerce CEO.

Beni Johnson’s remarks condemning mask wearing also aren’t all that different from the complaints local activists have made since the pandemic began as they pushed back against what many in this conservative community see as overly draconian restrictions from Sacramento killing local small businesses.

Anti-mask protests at businesses and local governments have popped up from time to time over the last few months. Recently, during an especially tense public comment session at the Shasta County Board of Supervisors chambers, an activist wearing a Grim Reaper mask walked up to the microphone and tried to light a mask on fire.

Charlie Hauser, the owner of the Shasta Athletic Club, said he understands the frustration some might have toward Bethel for the latest outbreak, but Shasta County residents overall haven’t exactly been following public health orders.

He said now that the virus is surging through the community and businesses like his are facing more closures, these former critics are starting to begrudgingly follow local public health officials’ recommendations.

“I know a lot of people who early on all thought this was a hoax,” he said. “I’ve seen a dramatic change in some of their personal behavior versus their political or religious beliefs.”

The Bee’s Dale Kasler contributed to this story.

This story was originally published October 16, 2020 at 2:57 PM with the headline "Northern California faith-healing megachurch leader apologizes, but still questions masks."