Easter season after authorities closed down up to 80 evangelical congregations in what church officials see as a crack down against evangelical believers in the mainly Catholic Central American nation, reports said Wednesday, March 23.
Compass Direct, a news agency investigating the plight of persecuted Christians, quoted the Costa Rican Evangelical Alliance Federation (FAEC) as saying that the "massive closure" of evangelical churches amounted to "religious persecution", because no Roman Catholic churches apparently suffered the same fate.
But the government reportedly said it supported the closures because of "health reasons" a move apparently understood by the United States State Department. It said in its annual Country Reports on Human Rights Practices last month that the Consta Rica leadership "did not restrict" the establishment of churches.
"New churches, primarily evangelical Protestant churches that are located in residential neighborhoods, occasionally encountered problems with local municipalities due to neighbors’ complaints about noise and traffic." But it stressed that only "some" churches were closed as a result.
SANITARY FACILITIES
Officials claim 37 churches were closed down "because they do not provide adequate sanitary facilities (bathrooms), or the noise from their services exceeds certain legal limits," Compass Direct reported, although church officials say the real figure is near 80.
Christian leaders have also denied the sanitation charges and say it is "easier in Costa Rica to close an evangelical church than to close a bar, strip club or house of prostitution," Compass Direct said.
Last week an evangelical member of Costa Rica’s parliament staged a protest by climbing the country’s principal monument. Carlos Avendano spent several hours on the statue in one of San José’s main parks until government officials agreed to negotiate with him and evangelical church leaders, the news agency reported.
PALM SUNDAY
The protest of Avendano, a former Pentecostal pastor, followed the closing of an evangelical church just before Palm Sunday. “The church was not notified of the action,” he was quoted as saying. "The authorities did not wait until the service finished or the people left to close the church," he added.
Church officials in Costa Rica declined to identify the church or the specifics of this particular case. Avendano’s protest brought fast response from government which promised to reopen all closed churches if they agree to provide necessary facilities by a specific deadline.
In turn, evangelical officials agreed that their churches would lower the volume of their speaker systems to the government regulated guidelines, Compass Direct said. It is unlikely that all churches will be open during Easter.
HOLY SEED
One of those churches closed is the Holy Seed Church in San Isidro, Puntarenas province, which has held services for 22 years. The church has been closed since December following a complaint from a neighbor who alleged that the noise levels coming from the church exceeded legal limits, Compass Direct claimed.
"A neighbor, a foreigner, organized a local committee which forced the closing of the church, a retirees association and a medical clinic," Alvaro Porras, one of the pastors of the church, was quoted as saying.
Porras said that in spite of support from the town’s mayor who recommended to government authorities that the church be allowed to reopen because of their "excellent social-spiritual work," and their ministries with drug addicts, prostitutes and alcoholics, health officials refused to reconsider the case.
REMODELED BUILDINGS
The church is currently meeting in another location while their large church building sits empty. According to official statistics, 96 percent of evangelical churches in the country do not have sanitary facilities the government requires, Compass Direct reported.
However Evangelical churches reportedly said that many of them were "too small to have the resources to provide facilities common in large Catholic cathedrals" as many congregations meet "in store fronts, remodeled buildings or private homes." Evangelical Christians comprise almost 14 percent of Consta Rica’s nearly four million population, according to the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). (With: Compass Direct, Stefan J. Bos, BosNewsLife Research).
