Para você, leitor, que andou se perguntando por onde andava, com medo que nossa relação tivesse esfriado: foi exatamente isso que aconteceu. Falo diretamente da terra do vórtice polar, onde a temperatura não vai muito além dos 5°C (nos dias bons).

Estou na invernal Nova York até maio, com uma bolsa de estudos na escola de relações internacionais da Universidade de Columbia.

E já que quem sai na neve é pra se gelar, entrei na fria de abraçar o máximo possível de projetos durante meus 109 dias na cidade (o que explica minha ausência por aqui).

Um deles é o curso de cobertura religiosa (covering religion) na escola de jornalismo de Columbia, uma das melhores do mundo.

Meu professor, Ari Goldman, tem 20 anos de “New York Times” nas costas, a maioria como repórter de religião do jornal.

Em suas aulas, aprendemos a dar banana para o senso comum. Por exemplo, abandonar a ideia de que falar de Jesus para muçulmanos é como pôr ketchup em pizza de paulista.

Na verdade, aquele que cristãos tomam como o filho de Deus é um dos profetas mais importantes do islamismo. Logo, ofender uma imagem de Jesus seria tão insultante quanto as caricaturas de uma publicação francesa que debocharam de Maomé –num dos quadrinhos, ele aparece de bruços, nu, perguntando: ‘E minha bunda, você gosta da minha bunda?’.

Outra ideia que vai pela descarga: o culto no hinduísmo a mais de 300 milhões de deuses. Há quem classifique a religião predominante na India como monoteísta: existe apenas um deus supremo, que pode assumir infinitas formas –daí a imagem divina da mulher de pele azul e quatro braços (Kali) ou do homem com cabeca de elefante (Ganesha).

Claro que há divergências sobre essas visões num país que reúne 1,2 bilhão de pessoas e mais de 300 formas diferentes de cozer uma batata.

Fora o curso, tenho certeza que ainda desfiarei muito pano pra manga nessa cidade onde só no primeira semana, em janeiro, cruzei com uma igreja de cientologia na rua dos teatros da Broadway (com direito a letreiro luminoso), um templo da Igreja Universal do Reino de Deus no Harlem e Mike, o hare krishna que tocava cavaquinho no metrô da Times Square.

Assunto não falta. Tempo é uma outra história. Mas de volta à programação normal: a partir de agora, tentarei escrever com mais assiduidade. Por ora, deixo vocês com um dos desafios propostos na escolinha do professor Ari: procurar um “teaching moment” (um momento de aprendizado) de uma religião e relatar como foi a experiência.

Acabei numa igreja evangélica em Manhattan. Eis, no inglês nativo, o que encontrei por lá:

 

What about the Thessalonians?

By Anna Virginia Balloussier

 

On West 56th Street in Manhattan, only a block away from Carnegie Hall, with a Hooters restaurant just around the corner, a show is about to start.

Soon the band will fill the place with screams of “Hallelujah!” and choruses like “Majestic in holiness, awesome in glory.”

Three of the four members of the Harvest Christian Fellowship band sing with palms up, making it appear as if they’re holding an imaginary basketball, eyes so tightly closed that their eyelids tremble as little earthquakes. Meanwhile, the blonde girl with a guitar on her hands sets the tune.

It’s Thursday night and we’re in a dance studio rented in the third floor of New York City Center. This is, as the website says, “Manhattan’s first performing arts center, dedicated by Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia in 1943 with a mission to make the best in music, theater and dance accessible to all audiences.”

Harvest’s mission for today’s audience is displayed on a big screen sandwiched by two potted plants, four feet tall each. It reads:

THE CHURCH IN CHRIST – STUDIES IN THESSALONIANS.

The letters are capital, in red and white, and the backdrop is unmistakably created in Power Point, alternating flashing images of rainbows and clouds illuminated by a ray of divine light.

Before Pastor Mike Finizio begins the Bible study, the band warms the public with seven Christian songs.

None of the musicians, three women and one man, appear to be more than 30-year-old.  The man is a skinny guy from Colombia that has his shirt tucked in his pants, and three girls are a short-haired blonde from Russia, with long-sleeved red blouse and a guitar in her hands; a small brunette from Philippines, wearing a black sweater with embroidered white hearts; and a chubby member from Puerto Rico, in a navy blue dress that wouldn’t look bad in a high school prom.

“We actually do have some Americans,”  jokes the associate pastor, Jose Rivera, himself a Puerto Rican born in New York, “a New Rican.”

Before the service begins at 7:30 p.m., Rivera eagerly shows me around their improvised church in City Center’s third floor. It consists of a bookstore, an office, a kid’s space and a little coffee shop.

The reception’s wall highlights posters of good-looking Christian bands, such as Group1Crew (“imagine a Black Eyed Peas that loves Jesus”) and Downhere (“their lead singer actually won a contest to be Freddie Mercury in a Queen tribute tour”).

Back to the main room, the rhapsody that takes place is not bohemian in the slightest, unless you consider the Milky Way spinning on the screen around the word “God” your idea of happy hour.

The images seem to enrapture 19 people that gather together to hear Finizio’s lesson about the Thessalonians. They sure are a global audience, with people from Colombia, Puerto Rico, Russia, Japan, Malaysia, Italy, Australia, Brazil (that’d be me) and actually some Americans, as pastor Rivera joked earlier.

The Harvest Christian Fellowship is a small evangelical church that attracts up to 200 people in a good day (“you’ve gotta come to Sunday’s services, they’re totally the best,” people keep
telling me).

The singing has stopped. Two members of the Harvest team wander around the space with green velvet bags to collect tithes.

T WHO?

At precisely 7:56 p.m., Finizio starts his study group on the Bible.

Finizio is one of these men lanky as spaghetti, with the tan of a heart of palm. He appears to be about 60 and he wears his hair grizzly short and combed backwards. His plaid shirt is buttoned up to the neck, with a beige sweater over, blue jeans and shiny brown leather shoes. He never stops smiling. Finizio looks like one of those parents who make pancakes for breakfast and drink coffee with two spoons of sugar in the mug “Best Dad Ever.”

The preacher puts his glasses. “Now, what about the Thessalonians?”

What about them? To be quite honest, I had no idea what he was talking about. Truth to be told, there was this vague notion that it concerned some biblical passage –like someone who is asked about Tolstoy’s “War and Peace” and is only able to say: it’s about Russia.

At some juncture, my ignorance must have been obvious, because a guy with a Harvest t-shirt promptly offers me his Bible. I was the only person without my own copy. As someone who never had familiarity with the most sacred book for nearly two billion people in the world, I have a hard time finding chapters and verses.

Here we are: 1 Thessalonians 5:3.

The First Epistle to the Thessalonians comes from the New Testament of the Christian Bible. It’s believed to be the first of Paul’s letters, written by the end of AD 52.

Paul visited Thessalonica, today the second largest city in Greece and the main town of the Greek region of Macedonia, on his second missionary journey.

The apostle preached in their synagogue and later dedicated two of his epistles to the Thessalonians –gentile Christians of the congregation he had founded. The animosity against Paul by the local Jews led him to flee from there. The city that was once part of the Roman, Byzantine and Ottoman empires is, on current days, a place with “beautiful squares and many bars,” tourism websites tell us.

Finizio prefers to focus on the biblical passage that wonders what’s going to happen with Thessalonians who’ll face the “sudden return” of the Lord. The Bible compares the arrival of Jesus with “a thief in the night.”

“But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, but My Father only,” he quotes, adding afterwards: “The idea of the Savior coming without warning is intended to teach us that this is an event that will catch many unaware”.

A few of the audience look blankly at Finizio. He winks back, taking his glasses off for a moment.

“What happens when a thief comes to your house? He calls you first and says, ‘hey, I’ve this plan of robbing you at 9:15 pm but I don’t wanna bother, would you be kind enough to leave all your most precious belongings on the front door?’ Not really, huh? Paul would tell this church —  and us — don’t prepare for Christ’s coming by date fixing, but rather by putting ourselves on alert.”

The message, Finizio seems to be saying, is as urgent today as it was 2,000 years ago when Paul preached to the Thessalonians.