Sao Paulo, Brazil - Before a service at Reborn in Christ Church this week, a man hawked gospel CDs outside the front door. In the cavernous nave, volunteers placed envelopes soliciting cash donations on each of about 1,000 chairs, while cameramen working for the church's television network focused on the altar.
Everything was ready, except the church's founders and spiritual leaders.
Estevam Hernandes-Filho and his wife, Sonia -- who oversee more than 1,000 churches in Brazil and several in Florida -- were under house arrest in Miami, accused of carrying more than $56,000 in undeclared cash. Some of the money had been stuffed between the pages of their Bible, according to U.S. customs agents who detained the couple last month at the Miami airport.
The arrests and the accusations back home of systematic embezzlement have resonated loudly in Brazil, where tens of millions of people have joined evangelical Christian churches in recent years to create powerful new cultural and political movements. Some of those movements are now under increasing scrutiny from investigators, who say they are receiving testimony alleging similar scandals among other faith-based empires.
Arthur Pinto de Lemos, a state prosecutor who is heading the case against Reborn in Christ Church, pointed to several stacks of folders cluttering his desk this week.
"There are now a lot of other accusations coming in, all of which have started to surface after this case," he said, slapping a palm atop the files.
Defenders of the churches say the spotlight is little more than thinly disguised persecution -- religious prejudice in a country that until recently was overwhelmingly Catholic.
An attorney for the Hernandeses did not respond to repeated requests for an interview. But the church's Web site posted a video interview with lawyer Luiz Flavio D'Urso, who called the charges "absurd."
"I am absolutely sure that this is a mistake -- not only are the accusations false, but the arrest is also a mistake," he said. "God willing, this will be clarified, and their innocence will be proved."
Although Lemos said Catholic organizations are among the institutions accused of wrongdoing, most of the recent attention within Brazil has focused squarely on "evangelicals" -- a loosely used term here that can include Baptists, Pentecostals and many other Protestant denominations. Those movements have roots that stretch back to Pentecostal missions that arrived via the United States nearly 100 years ago, but their numbers have exploded only in the past two decades.
Between 1980 and 2000, the number of those who identified themselves as evangelicals in national census counts doubled, to more than 26 million people in this country of about 185 million. The growth has changed the religious complexion of Brazil, where about 90 percent of residents identified themselves as Catholics in 1980. If the spread of the evangelical denominations continued at the same rate -- an unlikely possibility, according to analysts -- Catholics would be a minority here within 20 years.
Reborn in Christ Church has been at the forefront of the evangelical surge since the Hernandeses formed the church in 1986. The charismatic couple -- known affectionately as "Apostle Estevam" and "Bishop Sonia" to their congregation -- oversee several radio stations, a gospel television network and a record company. Last year, their church helped lead an annual "March for Jesus" rally in downtown Sao Paulo that attracted a crowd that police estimated at about 3 million -- about twice as many people as it had drawn the year before. The Hernandeses have opened multiple churches in Florida, where they also own a home.
On Jan. 8, they were stopped by U.S. customs officials after Brazilian authorities had warned Interpol that the couple was suspected of smuggling money out of Brazil to pay for personal investments. The Hernandeses, who were traveling with their son, had declared on customs forms that they were carrying less than $10,000. Their arraignment in a Florida court is scheduled for Monday.
According to prosecutors, the $56,467 they carried was part of a personal fortune collected from church donations that has attracted the attention of state tax collectors since 2002. Lemos, the prosecutor, said the church owns a ranch where the family keeps a stable of horses, and Brazilian media outlets have reported that they own at least four houses, 14 cars and shares in a resort. Sao Paulo's state government alleges that they owe more than $3 million in back taxes.
"The church's goals are not spiritual at all but are purely entrepreneurial," Lemos said.
Brazilian authorities said they have been investigating the Hernandeses for several years, believing that they have embezzled funds from church contributors and evaded taxes. Prosecutors are preparing charges of tax evasion and money laundering against the couple.
Other churches in Brazil that allegedly practice what critics label "prosperity theology" -- or a connection between monetary donations and spiritual blessings -- have also been touched by scandal in recent years. For more than a decade, Edir Macedo, founder of Universal Church of the Kingdom of God, has been accused of crimes including embezzlement and tax evasion. But he successfully fought the charges, and his church has prospered, boasting more than 8 million members worldwide and holdings in Brazil that include thousands of churches, television and radio stations, newspapers, a soccer team and its own political party.
The evangelical movement's political connections grew last year to include one of the Brazilian legislature's most powerful caucuses, with 61 elected members. But the caucus's power within congress was diminished significantly by another scandal last year, in which more than half of the members of the caucus were accused of taking bribes to award contracts to overpriced ambulance services.
"These criminal acts and accusations have not damaged the evangelical movement, though," said Lisias Noguera Negrao, a sociology professor who studies religious movements at the University of Sao Paulo. "The accusations are viewed by their followers as persecution. That is what is happening now among the followers of the Hernandeses, and it is the same thing that happened with Edir Macedo. He overcame the scandal with his image intact."
Outside one of the Hernandeses' churches in Sao Paulo on Wednesday, Robson Franchini, 29, stood with a Bible cradled in his arms and ignored the pleas of church leaders who have urged members of Reborn in Christ Church not to talk to members of the news media.
"The charges are all false -- I believe 100 percent in the integrity of the apostle and the bishop," he said, before an angry congregant pointed him out to church officials for speaking without approval.