How Did This Dead US Christian Pastor's Sermons Reach a Brazilian Tribe Protected From Missionaries?
The Guardian has revealed that evangelistic devices donated by the late Charles Stanley’s In Touch Ministries have been found among Indigenous people in an area of the Brazilian rainforest that is legally off limits to missionaries.
According to the publication, these solar-powered audio devices, called Messengers, are used to “attract and evangelize isolated or recently contacted Indigenous people in the Amazon.”
The devices were donated to another sanctioned group by In Touch Ministries, but were recently discovered among the Korubo people in the Javari valley, which is near the Brazil-Peru border, according to a joint investigation by the Guardian and the country’s O Globo newspaper.
“It is now a curiosity in the possession of the Korubo community matriarch, Mayá,” according to the Guardian, which also notes that the audio is in Portuguese and Spanish.
Seth Grey, In Touch Ministries’ chief operating officer, told the publication that the nonprofit Christian organization’s devices — which also double as flashlights — are donated globally to people who have yet to hear the gospel.
Grey insisted that the In Touch Ministries staff does not “go anywhere we’re not allowed” and that the Messenger was not supposed to be present among the Korubo community. Grey confirmed that four dozen of In Touch Ministries’ flagship solar-powered audio devices were given to the Amazon’s Wai Wai people years ago.
However, the Guardian reports, Grey acknowledged that other missionaries outside of the Baptist ministry have taken the Messenger devices to places where they are not permitted.
The Messenger, available in more than 100 languages, is just one of seven tools used by In Touch Ministries to spread the gospel. The device, in use since 2007, is not only solar-powered and includes a built-in flashlight, but also has an FM receiver. It houses Scripture and messages from Stanley, who died in 2023. He founded In Touch Ministries in 1981.
“It’s a stealthy, concealed, under the radar conversion. The method has become sophisticated and difficult, almost impossible to combat,” Daniel Luís Dalberto, a federal prosecutor’s office agent who monitors such activities told the Guardian.
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