In a shocking incident that has gone viral in Mexico, an American Baptist pastor destroyed statues of the Virgin of Guadalupe and Santa Muerte with an ax, sparking widespread controversy and debate across the country. The extreme act of iconoclasm was performed by Pastor Kevin Wynne of Iglesia Bautista Fundamental Monte Sion in Mexico City during a recent service at his church. The axing of two of the three giants of the Mexican religious landscape has led to a storm of protest from various sectors of the society, including religious leaders and civil society groups.
The pastor is a prominent figure in the Mexico City Baptist community. According to eyewitnesses, he publicly denounced the statues as “idolatrous” before proceeding to smash them with an ax. Evangelical Protestants view the myriad saints of Catholicism as idol worship and when Catholics convert to Evangelical (mostly Pentecostal) churches in Latin America they typically gather their statues of saints and burn or smash them. While the Catholic Church in Mexico does most of the ranting against Santa Muerte as satanic, Evangelicals share the sentiment and have recently become increasingly vocal and aggressive in their attacks on the fastest growing New Religious Movement on the planet. Pastor Wynne specifically targeted the two female giants of the Mexican religious landscape for maximum impact. Saint Jude Thaddeus, Patron of Lost Causes, is the third spiritual giant and most popular Catholic saint in Mexico who was interestingly spared from the pastor’s ax of iconoclasm.
Devotees of both Santa Muerte and the Virgin of Guadalupe have been quick to express outrage at the attack on their faiths on social media. One anonymous Santa Muerte devotee wrote “I was raised in the Baptist Church and while there always felt that some things were missing, that the faith was incomplete. I think one of those missing things came from the denial of the very human need to experience transcendence and commune with the divine by the creation of sacred spaces and altars. Its my view that spiritual artistic expression comes directly from the divine and its denial is a denial of the sacredness of the manifested existence. I didn’t stay long in the Baptist Church on reaching adulthood.” Another devotee who was raised Catholic wrote, “I get why he would smash the santa muerte statue. i get the sentiment of him not wanting people to “worship” vdg (Virgin of Guadalupe), but why smash the vdg statue? Isnt that like smashing the statue of any other saint, or even jesus for that matter?”
This is not the first time that an Evangelical pastor in Latin America has destroyed a statue of the Virgin Mary, but in my 15 years of research on Santa Muerte I don’t recall seeing an effigy of her smashed by a pastor or Catholic priest. The targeting of the Mexican folk saint of death reveals that Evangelicals in Mexico view the New Religious Movement of Santa Muerte as major competition for Mexican souls in the relatively free market of faith.
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