Editor’s note: Bethel Church on Thursday announced it was canceling this weekend’s services and all domestic and international student missions and ministry trips until May. On Wednesday, California Gov. Gavin Newsom directed all organizations to cancel gatherings of more than 250 people as public health officials seek to slow the spread of COVID-19. The church said this weekend’s services will be held online.

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A prominent Northern California mega-church whose members believe their prayers heal the sick and raise the dead is advising the faithful to wash their hands, urging those who feel sick to stay home, canceling missionary trips and advising its faith healers to stay away from local hospitals.

Bethel Church leaders say they’re in close contact with local health officials, but they’re not yet canceling services for the 6,300 people who attend services each week in Redding, one of the largest regular gatherings in far Northern California.

“Through email communications, signage, and church announcements, we are actively encouraging health practices and precautions to our whole community,” Aaron Tesauro, a church spokesman, said in an email. “We believe that wisdom, modern medicine, and faith are meant to work together, and express the value for each in the pursuit of continued health and healing.”

Shasta County officials announced Saturday a 50-year-old man had tested positive for COVID-19. Two others — including one possibly exposed to the novel coronavirus on a cruise ship — tested negative last week, health officials said. Tesauro said no members of the church are believed to have caught the virus.

Bethel is one of the north state’s largest institutions. Some 2,400 students from around the globe are enrolled at the Redding church’s School of Supernatural Ministry. The church has around 9,100 other members in Redding, Tesauro said.

Bethel faithful are well known in Redding for approaching strangers and offering to touch them and to pray away their ailments including at local healthcare centers — a practice that is now at odds with public health officials’ campaign to limit the spread of the novel coronavirus.

Health officials advise practice “social distancing measures” such as keeping at least six feet of space between people in public settings.

One Redding woman told The Sacramento Bee on Saturday that on Jan. 31, she was approached by two Bethel students in the emergency room at Mercy Medical Center in Redding. The pair said “they would pray over the people there and put Jesus in their hearts and this would heal us all and we didn’t need to stay at the ER and could go home,” the woman said in a text message. She asked not to be identified to protect her family’s privacy.

She said she filed a complaint with the hospital after one of the students touched her 5-year-old daughter without permission. Mercy didn’t return a message seeking comment.

Tesauro said that while students sometimes visit hospitals to offer healing services, church leadership is now advising against it.

“Though we believe in a God who actively heals today, students are not being encouraged to visit healthcare settings at this time, and moreover, are taught that even under normal circumstances, they must receive permission from both the facility and the individual before engaging in prayer,” Tesauro said in the email.

He said the two students believed the mother gave them permission.

“We are surprised and saddened by the mother’s reaction and want to apologize for any unintended offense,” he said.

Kerri Schuette, a spokeswoman for Shasta County’s Health and Human Services Agency, responded cautiously when asked what someone should do if approached by a stranger seeking to faith heal them.

“I would say that having a healthy barrier between yourself and other people is a good way to protect yourself from any of the diseases that are circulating right now,” she said.

Religious skeptics respond

For skeptics of faith healing, Bethel probably would have been criticized no matter what it did in response to the virus.

As it was, there was no shortage of schadenfreude that a church known for claiming to have healed everything from brain tumors to deafness is now telling people to wash their hands to keep disease at bay.

“It’s clear that when it comes to something really serious like coronavirus, their actions speak louder than their words,” said Michael Shermer, the editor of Skeptic magazine and a professor at Chapman University in Southern California. “So, God is omniscient and omnipotent and can cure diseases if he wants, but just in case: wash your hands!”

Bill Johnson, the church’s founder, says on his website that not everyone who wants to be healed will be.

“Many visit Redding weekly, hoping that God will touch them. I am happy to report that many leave well and whole,” Johnson wrote. “But many others leave in the same condition in which they came. I refuse to blame God for this, as though He has a purpose in their disease. While Jesus did not heal everyone alive in His time, He did heal everyone who came to Him. His is the only standard worth following.”

Tesauro, the church spokesman, said the Bethel faithful believe in the healing power of prayer, but God also wants believers to practice common sense.

“Healing happens, but it’s foolish to take unnecessary risks with your health and the health of others,” he said.

Bethel is among a group of “charismatic” Pentecostal Christian churches whose beliefs are controversial among evangelicals. During religious functions at Bethel, church members reportedly speak in tongues and members claim gold dust and angel feathers appear out of the air.

Late last year, hundreds of church members gathered in an attempt to resurrect a 2-year-old named Olive Heiligenthal, hours after the toddler had stopped breathing and died on Dec. 14. Church members gathered to sing, “Come alive/ Come alive/ Come alive, dry bones/ Awake, arise/ Inhale the light.” Thousands of people posted on Instagram with the hashtag #WakeUpOlive.

In October 2008, a Bethel School of Supernatural Ministry student moved to Washington and started a “dead-raising team” that worked with members of the local fire department to pray over bodies found on emergency calls, according to the Redding Record Searchlight.

Johnson’s church produces a popular preaching subscription streaming service called Bethel.TV, and it sells products including apparel and books.

Bethel is perhaps best known internationally for its Christian music. Justin Bieber is a fan. The Bethel track “No Longer Slaves” was one the top three songs on his iPod playlist, according to a 2017 Buzzfeed News article. The song’s YouTube video has been played 115 million times.

Lawsuit over cliff fall

Bethel’s belief in the power of resurrection at one point factored into a local attempted murder investigation.

In 2010, a Redding man claimed in a lawsuit that he became paralyzed after he was either pushed or allowed to fall off a cliff above the Sacramento River by two members of the School of Supernatural Ministry after a night of drinking together, the Record Searchlight reported.

Rather than call authorities, the suit alleged the two students, who believed he had died, attempted to reach him so they could pray him back to life. After spending hours unsuccessfully trying to ford the river and push through blackberry bushes, they eventually notified authorities, who found the unconscious man and took him to a local hospital.

For a time, Redding police investigated the incident as a possible attempted murder, but no charges were filed.

Bethel Church has deeply ingrained itself into Redding’s political scene.

In 2011, the city was nearly forced to close its dilapidated Civic Center from a lack of funds. Bethel founded a nonprofit that now manages the facility. The building is still owned by the city, and the church says the nonprofit is an independent entity from the church.

The Civic Center receives $750,000 a year from the church, which uses it for its School of Supernatural Ministry. The building also is featured prominently on the church’s website.