God Has A New Home: A $300 Million Mega Temple In Sao Paulo

[cbayer]

http://www.forbes.com/sites/andersonantunes/2014/07/30/god-has-a-new-home-a-300-million-mega-temple-in-sao-paulo/

Anderson Antunes
7/30/2014 @ 5:48PM 2,382 views

“If you were to meet God himself in his own house, what would you wear?” This question was asked by the bishop Renato Cardoso, from the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God from Brazil, in an official video released by the church and intended to instruct the guests and the faithful who tomorrow will be attending the inauguration of Solomon’s Temple, a 10,000-seat replica of the Bible’s most famous temple, built in the eleventh century BC in Jerusalem. The new temple occupies an area of over one million square feet in Sao Paulo and will serve as Universal’s new headquarters.

According to bishop Cardoso, the right way to meet God is by dressing for any formal meeting with someone really important, meaning no hats or sunglasses, sleeveless shirts or shorts and by no means sandals or clothing with commercial or political messages. Cardoso is the son-in-law of billionaire bishop Edir Macedo, the founder and leader of the Universal Church. It’s been a long road for Macedo since the days he founded the church in 1977, in a small space in a Rio de Janeiro suburb previously occupied by a funeral home. The church now counts about 1.8 million followers in Brazil.


A computer image of the new Solomon’s Temple in Sao Paulo, Brazil (PHOTO: UCKG Official Website)

The 69-year-old Macedo will be the star of Thursday’s inauguration, which will be attended by President Dilma Rousseff and her predecessor, Luis Inacio Lula da Silva, among many other influential political figures from Sao Paulo and throughout Brazil. It was his idea to build a replica of Solomon’s Temple as a way to showcase his church’s incredible presence in Brazil and its reshaping of the country’s religious scene over the last three decades.

Although Brazil remains as the world’s largest Catholic country, with about 60% of its population of nearly 200 million defining themselves as followers of the Vatican-based church, the latest census figures point to a strong decline among the ranks of Roman Catholics, who were the majority, or 92%, in 1970. At the same time, the number of Protestant evangelicals soared from 15.4% of Brazilians just a decade ago to about 22% today, or 42.3 million people. Recent studies have shown that the downward trend for Catholicism will continue and that by 2030 Catholics will represent less than 50% of Brazilian churchgoers.

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[hrmjustin]

1. Money not well spent.

They could have built a smaller church and used thd money for the community.

[sdfernando]

2. Why not as humans were supposedly created....

naked? Its not like the being wouldn't know what we looked like anyway.

[Warren Stupidity]

3. Seems like a fairly standard christian denomination to me.

Which is to say that it robs its adherents, basks in opulence, and preaches nonsense.

[AtheistCrusader]

4. I'll take an honest robber over a con artist any day.

Con artists will bleed you, a lot more, over a longer period of time.

Those folks right there? Con artists.

[Discover Brazil]

5. Some points to be cleared

I'm from Brazil. I'm a Brazilian citizen living in Brazil, so, I must to clarify some information:

First: Brazil is not a catholic country. Around 40 Million are evangelicals, most Brazilians have not religion and atheism is rampant among teenagers. Second: there are thousand smaller temples in my country and there's is enough money for both: chuches and poor, that are 36%. The rest (64%) are of middle class or upper class.

I really don't know what kind of information you have about my country but, I'm used to realize the total lack of information about Brazil and Brazilians among foreigners. Most still think that Brazil is poor, undeveloped, overpopulated, socialist, std infested and a hispanic country when, in the real world, Brazil is exactly the contrary.

Well, Brazil is world's 6th biggest GDP, 7th largest market and a industrialized country. We don't speak Spanish in Brazil, we are not hispanic and we don't have "latino" culture in Brazil. Actually, Brazil is a melting pot nation formed by immigrants all over the world. Most from more than 25 European countries. We have the world 3rd largest caucasian population, the largest Lebanese population (more than in Lebanon itself), the largest Japanese and black population outside Japan and Africa.

I have a channel called "Discover Brazil", plenty of lists full of vidoes showing some specific aspects of my country. So I invite you to know more about us. Look: https://www.youtube.com/user/WhatsLikeBrazil.
Read the channel's description (about) and check my list.

Thanks in advance!

[No Vested Interest]

6. Thank you for this information.

Indeed, North Americans, particularly US, is sadly deficient in info re Brazil, as well as most of the South American continent.

[cbayer]

7. Thanks for that and welcome to DU.

I agree that we in the US are pretty ignorant about most places, including South America.