Rishard Khan

rishard.khan@guardian.co.tt

As thou­sands seek to get re­lief from loss of earn­ings dur­ing the COVID-19 cri­sis, a lo­cal bish­op has told wor­ship­pers via so­cial me­dia that they will have to pay tithes to the church from grants and ham­pers giv­en to them by the State.

Prophet Rev. Dr De Van Nar­ine, founder of The Prophet­ic & Apos­tolic Min­istries In­ter­na­tion­al (PA­MI), post­ed a se­ries of mes­sages on his Face­book pro­file to wor­ship­pers yes­ter­day, say­ing they owe the church 10 per cent of any grants they re­ceived.

Grants are cur­rent­ly be­ing giv­en to the peo­ple who have lost their jobs or have suf­fered loss­es in rev­enue as a re­sult of clo­sures of busi­ness over the Stay-at-Home pe­ri­od.

Gov­ern­ment’s mul­ti-bil­lion-dol­lar in­ter­ven­tion al­so in­volves pay­ments to help the less for­tu­nate to pur­chase food. Sev­er­al pri­vate or­gan­i­sa­tions and re­li­gious bod­ies have al­so been dis­trib­ut­ing food ham­pers to the needy.

The se­ries of posts on the bish­op’s page ap­peared to have stemmed from a post on Sat­ur­day which read: “Re­mem­ber to pay your Tithes from your Grants and Ham­pers. 10 per cent be­longs to the Lord’s Church.”

Fol­low­ing the ini­tial post, Nar­ine made sev­er­al oth­er posts con­demn­ing those who dis­agreed with him.

“Those who ob­ject to be­liev­ers giv­ing tithes & of­fer­ings now are de­mon­ic! Our faith is not on lock­down!” he said.

“Church­es still have rents/stipends/help­ing oth­ers. Now is not the time to stop your tithes & of­fer­ings,” he al­so said in a sub­se­quent post.

In a tele­phone in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia, Bish­op Nar­ine said: “It wasn’t in­tend­ed to be harsh and all this kind of thing you know. It was ba­si­cal­ly to re­mind the brethren that the church, not be­cause we are on lock­down, our faith is on lock­down. It doesn’t mean the church is on lock­down. The church still has to func­tion and we still have to do cer­tain things.”

He added: “The role of the church, es­pe­cial­ly at this time has to con­tin­ue. How we sur­vive these things and how we op­er­ate as a church fam­i­ly is by pool­ing our re­sources and help­ing the less for­tu­nate,” he said.

He said de­spite how un­for­tu­nate peo­ple may think their sit­u­a­tion was, if they were lucky enough to re­ceive aid in this time there are those who were not as for­tu­nate and would ap­pre­ci­ate the ges­ture. He al­so said tithes were nec­es­sary to help with the up­keep of the church’s in­fra­struc­ture and bills such as rent.

Bish­op Nar­ine’s posts gath­ered wide­spread in­ter­est yes­ter­day with over 1,000 shares and screen­shots of the post be­ing cir­cu­lat­ed.

“What non­sense is this. Them church on­ly con­cern about their mon­ey,” one com­menter said.

An­oth­er re­ferred to Corinthi­ans 9:6-8 in the Bible say­ing: “Un­der the new tes­ta­ment you’re not re­quired to give 10 per cent of any­thing...In oth­er words it’s up to the per­son to put aside and give as they see fit.”

How­ev­er, one per­son came to the bish­op’s de­fence.

“Do not blame the pas­tors...Ac­cord­ing to the bible, they are en­ti­tled to it and you’re or wrong if you refuse to pay. Stop hat­ing the pas­tors who are just as brain­washed as you are. Start read­ing the full Bible and not on­ly the good parts and your eyes will be open.”

Asked about the com­ments be­ing made in re­sponse to his call, Nar­ine said: “The re­ac­tions would have been an­ti-church, an­ti-pas­tor. A lot of the com­ments used ob­scene lan­guage etcetera so I won’t imag­ine those per­sons have some sem­blance of dig­ni­ty of God in them. Some of the at­tacks were very per­son­al against my wife and so on. I don’t know if these per­sons un­der­stand. They prob­a­bly had a bad ex­pe­ri­ence with church or (are) ei­ther an­ti-re­li­gion or an­ti-God as the case may be.”

Guardian Me­dia spoke to the Pen­te­costal As­sem­bly of the West In­dies head Bish­op Don Hamil­ton who dis­agreed with Nar­ine’s stance and dis­tanced them­selves from him.

“De Van Nar­ine and his church is not a part of the Pen­te­costal As­sem­bly of the West In­dies so we are dis­tanc­ing our­selves from his com­ments or state­ments of such,” he said.

“We be­lieve and preach in tithes and of­fer­ings but tithes and of­fer­ings come as an ex­pres­sion from some­one’s earn­ings. Any oth­er source of in­come—it must be a free-will gift to not just the church but the work of the lord. To say to some­one, al­most like a com­mand, that you have to take the benev­o­lence of the gov­ern­ment and pay your tithes, we would not con­sid­er that.”

Bish­op Nar­ine’s de­mands come months af­ter an­oth­er re­li­gious of­fi­cial, Pas­tor Vin­worth Day­al came un­der pub­lic scruti­ny for at­tempt­ing to change $29 mil­lion in old $100 bills to new $100 bills in De­cem­ber which he said were col­lect­ed as tithes.

The mon­ey was seized pend­ing an in­ves­ti­ga­tion of the source of funds. Mil­lions more in cash was seized at his Third Ex­o­dus As­sem­bly Church in Long­denville.

That mat­ter re­mains un­der in­ves­ti­ga­tion.