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The reduction of the anthropophagic characteristic of the church in Madrid brings other consequences. I was lucky to be present in the last service (07/06/2016) when Pastor Alberto congregated with Muslims and Hindus. The service had the features of a restoration of wealth session, and people from other religions were present because food was going to be donated. After this specific service, the time for donations was moved to

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an earlier time of the day – when there were no services at all –, and in the following

week, there was no significant Muslim participation in the service.

When I arrived at the church, Pastor Alberto came in right behind me to start the service. While he was passing by me, I could see wheelbarrows and bags along the wall of the church, which I later realised had been brought by the Muslims to carry the donated food. The service had around fifty participants, and most of the Muslims and Hindus were women. There was one Muslim man with a few women, but he was not much involved in what followed. Pastor Alberto summoned everyone to come near the altar, asking everybody to hold hands: Pentecostals, Muslims, Hindus (of whom there were only two or three) and curious people who were in the service. After this preaching, when the pastor blessed everybody, Alberto started to talk about the church and how important and sacred it is, since it connects men and God directly, an argument which may have been an implicit criticism of Catholicism and the mediation of the saints.

Later, Alberto began to preach to the people there, talking about the prophet Isaiah, and asking a Muslim woman if she knew about him. The woman responded affirmatively with a nod of her head. Alberto then said that Isaiah was the only person – I do believe he was considering Jesus to be a non-human being – in the Bible capable of both curing people and casting out demons. The pastor is probably aware of the recognition of Isaiah as a prophet in Islam, since historians of the Islamic tradition often read a few passages of his book in the Bible as a prophesy of the coming of Muhammad (Isaiah, 42: 1-12) or a prediction of his migration from Mecca to Medina (Isaiah, 21: 11-17). Considering the history of friction between Islam and Spain since the Inquisition, when Muslims were

expelled from the country in massive numbers, especially at the beginning of the 17th

century (Kamen, 1979: 126), and also considering the framing of Islam as ‘other’ in the UCKG in Angola (Sampaio, 2014: 12), it was quite a new thing to preach directly to Muslims, particularly about Isaiah.

The sermon continued with Alberto even putting his hands on the head of a woman to bless her. The Muslims seemed not to know what would come next, often looking to each other as if trying to gain some sort of encouragement to engage in the practices. However, none of them looked uncomfortable about the pastor’s preaching and practices. This was confirmed when Alberto asked for monetary contributions from the congregation. At first, I thought that only regular members of the church would give money, which was what happened at the beginning. However, two Muslim women returned to the seats where their handbags were, grabbed a few coins and went back towards the altar to give an offering to God.

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Alberto ended the service with a prayer blessing every religion present in the service, even including atheists, so that everybody could receive the benefits of God. I started to talk with the assistant I. about other issues, and went back to chase the pastor to find out who the Muslims were. He told me that many people from other religions attend church to receive donations; the Muslims in particular came mostly from the Spanish cities of Ceuta and Melilla in the North of Africa, which border Morocco. Helping these people in need gives the church a social value. However, efforts like those made by Alberto to engage non-members in the services are rare in the UCKG.

The reciprocity of the interreligious service in Madrid is an indication that the anthropophagic characteristic of the church in Madrid is shrinking. Furthermore, it is also a way to counter accusations of Islamophobia, which is commonly observed in Spanish history and in the more orthodox kinds of Christianity. Nonetheless, if the church has a process of othering witchcraft and also, at some level, the non-believers of a decadent Europe, is there still room for another kind of othering? I do believe so. In the next chapter, I will argue that individual salvation in connection with the fluid and secularised demons of the church opens the possibility for self-othering, a process more related to the experiences of the individual and less to the attacking other groups. This process can widen the demonology of the UCKG in Madrid even further, making the presence of demonic forces an even more pervasive trait.

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