‘That is unacceptable.’ California megachurch faces local backlash for dismissing COVID-19
Shasta County Supervisor Les Baugh is a Christian pastor who has been the loudest voice among his colleagues pushing back against California’s COVID-19 restrictions on local businesses.
So it was remarkable Thursday to see him criticize one of the largest evangelical churches in Northern California for failing to take seriously its role in an outbreak that grew so large that Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration ordered restaurants and other “non-essential” businesses in Shasta County to stop serving customers indoors.
“That is unacceptable,” Baugh told his fellow board members at a public meeting.
The church is Bethel, a Redding megachurch whose members believe they can raise the dead and heal the sick. More than 300 students and staff at the church’s School of Supernatural Ministry have tested positive for the disease.
In official statements, the megachurch insists that it’s following the state’s COVID-19 guidelines by not hosting large gatherings and requiring members to wear masks. But Baugh and his fellow supervisors slammed the church’s leadership Thursday for appearing to do the opposite.
Beni Johnson, a senior leader at the church, posted a video on Instagram last week saying wearing masks was a waste of time.
And last weekend, Kris Vallotton, Bethel’s senior associate leader and cofounder of the School of Supernatural Ministry, officiated a wedding in Shasta County for his grandson, featuring dozens of people not wearing masks in defiance of local health orders prohibiting large gatherings.
“I’m not convinced they’re going to follow the rules,” Supervisor Leonard Moty said.
By that point, Johnson had taken the video down and apologized for making light of the disease in a statement on her Instagram account, though she continued to question wearing masks.
Vallotton was unapologetic in a video he posted this week in response to local media reports about the wedding. He said the guest list was cut down by a third to around 130 people and it was outside with families grouped together.
“We have to measure the risk to reward,” he said. “And I understood that there would be some risk, but this isn’t something we do every day. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime event.”
Local health authorities have been critical of Bethel church members for disregarding health orders for months. 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.
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. Feucht has gone on to host similar prayer protests across the state, and he’s planning on hosting another “worship protest” in Washington, D.C. this weekend at the National Mall.
Bethel is one of the north state’s largest institutions, representing 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.)
After the outbreak at the school, the church said it had begun aggressively testing students and it was canceling in-person instruction and services and events. There are now less than 12 active COVID-19 cases, Bethel spokesman Aaron Tesauro said Friday in an email.
But Baugh said the actions of Bethel’s leadership has him worried about another outbreak at the church in the months ahead.
“I cannot think of any larger entity in Shasta County that has the ability to affect an entire community more than that group,” Baugh said. “So if I’m being a little bit, maybe over-reactive, it’s because I believe there’s a real concern. And that could be repeated again.”
The rebuke from Shasta County’s top elected leaders was surprising, given the economic and political clout the church has in this Republican stronghold where many hold evangelical Christian views.
And for the past several weeks the board has been swarmed by people demanding the county disregard the state’s health orders and reopen the economy. Baugh called Thursday’s special meeting to discuss doing just that.
Ultimately, the supervisors decided not to resist the state. Board members said that with cases declining, top state health officials were willing to consider easing the restrictions that went into effect on Friday.
Bethel’s large footprint in the community
Bethel 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 also has become a prominent force in local politics, at times bailing out the struggling local government in Redding, Shasta County’s seat.
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.
Worldwide influence among evangelicals
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.
Church members often approach strangers in Redding asking if they can heal them.
The church insists that its community volunteer work and proselytizing have been postponed during the current outbreak, and when it resumes, members will be encouraged to social distance and wear masks.
Bethel has earned its fortune and an international following 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.
Bethel’s influence extends to thousands of other churches across the world, Donnell Ewert, the director of Shasta County’s Health and Human Services Agency, told the board on Thursday.
That international reach makes it important for its leaders to preach the importance of public health guidelines, Ewert said.
“When you see a video by one of their leaders on Instagram, that person is not talking only to the 11,000 people at Bethel, that person has a network that could be up to half a million people that that person is trying to talk to,” he said. “And those people are all over the place.”
This story was originally published October 23, 2020 at 1:25 PM with the headline "‘That is unacceptable.’ California megachurch faces local backlash for dismissing COVID-19."