Page 73 - Religion, Media, and the Public Sphere

More than 60,000 people ¤lled the stands, and, in the words of the local press, the
UCKG won the hearts of the Portuguese people.

Another set of rituals is developed through the creation of bene¤ts, which are
derived from transnational circuits. The members of the religious community
are constantly invited to take part in chains and campaigns to obtain access to
spiritual, social, and economic resources on a national and international level.
For many years the Universal Church promoted ceremonies and spectacles
projecting the image of a large-scale community linked to a world of well-being
and power. One of the objectives was to obtain miracles by means of a “Fire
of Israel” in Jerusalem. This ritual was realized through the progressive and
continuous uniting of permanent and occasional church followers in a chain.
The campaign theme and the encouragement to participate were announced in
the church over a period of months. To participate, a cash donation had to be
made in an envelope containing requests for miracles. These offerings and re-
quests were to be taken on a pilgrimage by the church’s bishops to the Holy
Land, there ¤nally to be “burned” in a ritual ceremony conducted by church
dignitaries. This immense bon¤re—the result of the efforts of thousands of fol-
lowers, and the everyday bricolage of biblical images registering different stages
of the journey—sent thousands of envelopes (containing money at the begin-
ning of the trip) and requests for miracles up into ®ames. Held by the church
in a world center of pilgrimage, the ceremony was made possible by the dona-
tions of its loyal followers. As a ritual, the Fire of Israel can be compared to a
kind of potlatch with its redistributive network of miracles. Images of the Fire
of Israel were subsequently broadcast on the church’s network (TV Record). 18
With the media’s help, an image was projected enabling all the participants
in the “chain” to be present anywhere the chain went, through the donations
they had made, accumulated, and displayed at the bon¤re held in the presence
of the bishops. By becoming the world focus of all biblical religions through its
followers’ petitions and the meeting of its bishops, the Universal Church once
more produced a spectacular and iconic event that uni¤ed followers around the
world. The spectacle demonstrates the grandiose scale of the offering—its opu-
lence and its transnational character. The total audience was much larger than
the number of people actually present. Presence was both real and virtual, in
the same way that the church worked to ensure that the bene¤ts would reach
all types of participant.
The Fire of Israel highlighted the link between the church and the Christian
Holy Land, as well as bringing together the church’s followers from a number
of different countries via the pilgrimages. Hence their TV network broadcast
an image of the Universal Church “occupying” the sacred center of the whole
Christian world. One headline describing these pilgrimages announced, “The
Universal Church occupies Israel.” According to Edlaine de Campos Gomes,
This report covered a pilgrimage of some 1,300 followers of the UCKG from vari-
ous countries (Brazil, Portugal, Argentina, Paraguay, Mexico, Belgium, France,
Africa and England) to the Holy Land, emphasizing that the dream of every Chris-

62 Patricia Birman