The bulk of the Spanish evangelical community stands out from the performance of the Pentecostal pastor Yadira Maestre, founder of the Cristo Viene Church in Usera (Madrid) and who participated in a pre-election act together with several PP leaders.
Maestre participated in the event of the European People’s Party, under the slogan ‘Europe is Hispanic’. This shepherdess was in charge of blessing the day. “Lord, we pray for the rulers of Spain, we pray for the rulers of the community and also for our mayor”, she began her speech, referring to Isabel Díaz Ayuso and José Luis Martínez-Almeida, respectively. Ayuso would speak after a government that “sells the greatest immoralities as if they were advances”, and that supposedly benefits people who have committed “the most serious crimes”.
After the controversy unleashed by Maestre’s statements, the Permanent Commission of the Federation of Evangelical Religious Entities of Spain (FEREDE) has made clear in a note its “policy of neutrality” against any political initiative, as stated in its code of ethics .
Said code points out that the representatives of this body (not church leaders such as Yadira Maestre) “should not carry out public political activity or carry out political propaganda, so that there is no confusion between the work carried out in FEREDE and the aforementioned political activity”.
“These criteria will also apply to the positions of the Evangelical Councils and federated churches are expected and encouraged to act in accordance with these principles”, indicates the Permanent Commission of FEREDE, which adds that “this criterion is the one that best represents the historical tradition and daily practice of the vast majority of our evangelical churches in Spain, whose faithful are plural in their particular political preferences, which is why we recommend that ministers of worship avoid using their pastoral influence to condition the vote of believers.” .
Sémper distances itself from the evangelical slogans
The spokesman for the Management Committee of the PP, Borja Sémper, tried on Monday to distance himself from the event organized last Saturday by the PP in Madrid and subsidized by the European PP. Sémper has appealed this Monday to the Latin American “social, cultural and religious realities” to justify the presence of Maestre. He has also defended that “nobody asked this woman or other people what she was going to say”, and has unmarked the national leadership of the act.
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