Immigrant pentecostalism in the emergence of the COVID-19 crisis: reactions and responses from the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God in Berlin

Abstract

This article seeks to analyze the reactions and responses of the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God (UCKG) in Berlin to the global COVID-19 crisis. Although the UCKG has been the subject of multiple international types of research regarding the spread of the COVID-19 virus, this article shows that the UCKG’s global network of local churches must be differentiated in their responses and reactions to the global pandemic. This article traces and analyzes how the local UCKG in Berlin responded to the pandemic in its respective conditions and differed from the global network in the emergence of a pandemic in its rhetoric and discourse, using the concept of the Third Space. For this purpose, the services and sermons of local pastors were recorded to analyze how the discourse toward the COVID-19 crisis changed during the period of occurrence and awareness of a global pandemic. The results show how the church has adapted to the local restriction and regulations and reflect the international literature on how the UCKG’s mother church in Brazil acted in comparison. The church and its pastors in Germany responded to the global pandemic in three primary ways: they assigned to authorities’ guidelines, provided sermons with undertones of spiritual warfare, and rejected the interpretation of interdependencies between demons and health issues.