Another day, another Evangelical Christian screaming “persecution” when arrested for breaking the law.
One day in March 2015, surveillance cameras at a thousand-year-old Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Tokyo captured a man wearing a hooded windbreaker, a white collared shirt and black shoes, dabbing at wooden pillars with oil on his fingertip.
Less than an hour later and 17 miles away, Japanese authorities said, a man with a similar build and clothing was caught on video anointing an offerings box at another site, a Shinto shrine founded in 643 B.C. during the reign of Japan’s first emperor.
The faiths predate Christianity by centuries, and the sites draw 12 million pilgrims and tourists each year. They venerate the Buddha and the Shinto kami, the spirits that the faithful believe animate natural forces and inhabit the land. The smears of oil, as the authorities saw them, despoiled Japan’s religious heritage.
The authorities found their suspect in New York, roughly 7,000 miles away, and issued arrest warrants for him on two counts of vandalism.
He is Masahide Kanayama, 63, a single, childless doctor who had devoted his life to helping women bear children; a man whose Christian faith was inseparable from his work. He has practiced in Manhattan for nearly three decades and is an expert in endometriosis, a condition in which cells similar to the uterine lining grow outside the uterus. His patients describe how his surgeries ended years of crippling pain and, in some cases, allowed them to have children.
“I believe the Holy Spirit works through me by giving me an ability to perform my unique surgical technique,” Dr. Kanayama said. “When guided by faith, medicine becomes a way to serve God by serving others. My goal is to let God’s love be reflected through my actions and services.”
Now, a decade after the hooded man was seen at the holy sites, that work may soon become impossible. The Japanese authorities say they found YouTube videos from 2012 in which Dr. Kanayama discussed anointing shrines with oil for religious purposes. They are seeking to bring him back to Japan for trial.
Dr. Kanayama’s lawyers said in a statement that he did not damage any sites, and added that “even if true, his actions damaged nothing.”
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The charges could bring five years of hard labor in a Japanese prison.
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One Sunday morning in mid-October, Dr. Kanayama entered the Times Square Church on West 51st Street near Broadway. The nondenominational church, a former theater, welcomes thousands of worshipers in person and online to services that draw on the Pentecostal tradition. There is a live band and gospel singing, and congregants approach the pulpit seeking healing. He closed his eyes as he prayed, sang and swayed to the music.
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Dr. Kanayama, whose ethnic Korean heritage already makes him an outlier in Japanese society, came to his faith at 17 when his mother took him to an evangelical missionary church in Tokyo. There, he had a spiritual awakening that he says led him to become a Christian and move to the United States.
“I will show my healing power through your hands,” he said God had told him.
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Throughout much of the two-hour service that day at the Times Square Church, Dr. Kanayama stood in the packed rows, his left hand gripping a Japanese-language Bible and his right arm raised in the air.
He often carries that Bible, with its dog-eared pages and underlined verses. “I underline everywhere,” he said.
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At the ancient Naritasan Shinsho-ji Temple in the city of Narita, the Japanese authorities said Dr. Kanayama had left oil on pillars that were part of the main gate used to enter the sanctuary.
The gate was built in a traditional Japanese architectural style and is itself an object of worship, a temple official said in a declaration filed with the court. The oil had left blackish stains, the official wrote.
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At the Katori Jingu Shrine in nearby Katori, oily liquid was left on wooden poles on both sides of the front stairs, on the stairs themselves and on the box where worshipers can make donations, a shrine official said in another declaration. The oil left stains, although over time they became almost invisible unless observed up close, the official said
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Dr. Kanayama said he had been targeted because he was a Christian in a country where members of the faith had suffered repression for hundreds of years and today represent only about 1 percent of the population.
“This is a religious persecution,” Mr. Kanayama’s lawyer, Jeffrey Lichtman, said. “Why else would they be so enthusiastic about destroying not only this man’s life, but ending his ability to help thousands of women who suffer from a very serious medical malady?”
Is Dr. Kanayama being persecuted for his faith? Of course not, Regardless of his intentions, Kanayama broke Japanese law. He damaged public property. Why? Cuz Gawd told him to. Do I think Kanayama should spend five years in prison for his crimes? No, but he should be punished harshly enough to deter delusional — and people who say Gawd talks to them are delusional — Evangelicals from breaking the law. If I “anointed” local Evangelical churches with atheist oil that caused physical harm to their buildings, should I be arrested for property crimes? Absolutely. The law applies to everyone, including Evangelicals who hear voices in their heads.
Stop with the claims of persecution. When Evangelicals turn every bit of pushback into cries of Satanic persecution, they diminish real persecution that is happening in places like Darfur and Nigeria. Dr. Kanayama is not being persecuted. He’s the latest person to learn the hard way that listening to the Holy Ghost talk to you in your heard and acting upon his direction may lead to prison. Kanayma is just another Evangelical who became convinced that rubbing “holy oil” on shit affects outcomes or brings supernatural intervention. In any other setting, such behavior would earn you a psych evaluation. In American Evangelical churches, however, you will be lauded as a hero, a defender of the one true faith.
Bruce Gerencser, 69, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 48 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
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