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Bethel Church and Tarot Cards

Where do they really stand?

January 5, 2018, Bethel Church issued a press release talking about Christalignment, a ministry run by the parents of one of their missionaries, Ben Fitzgerald (with Awakening Europe). In that press release, Bethel accepted, as an authentic and valid ministry, something that is very obviously tarot cards.

Sometime between March 22, 2022 and September 18, 2023, they took that release down, and issued a strikingly similar press release. The previous release is nowhere to be found. 

Thankfully, I have copies of both.

What's clear is that they kept the same release, even the same release date, but purged all reference to Christalignment. This is overt revisionism.


Here is an outline for this page, to help you understand what's where and what to expect.

  • Header
  • This section
  • Meta data about when and from where I pulled their releases.
  • Original, unedited text of both releases in collapsed accordions. These should be side-by-side on the desktop version of the website, and above/below on a mobile browser.
  • Brief introduction to the marked up texts.
  • Marked up texts in collapsed accordions, highlighted and spaced to better see the changes.
  • Final summary about the nature of tarot cards.
  • Contact form for myself.

The formatting of these releases is the original formatting, copied and pasted directly. Any changes are a result of the copying process into my website editor; I didn't manually make any changes.

Original Press Release:

https://www.bethel.com/about/christalignment/
Note: this URL is no longer active.

Retrieved: 3/22/2022

Original Text:  

New Press Release:

https://www.bethel.com/news/bethel-statement-regarding-christian-tarot-cards 

Retrieved: 9/18/2023

Original Text: 

Having presented the original text, I took the time to mark up the few differences between them. The below blocks have color changes and line spacing edits to show just how similar/different these documents are.

Note:

"The cards we use are our own, and are not tarot nor remotely similar to tarot."

This paragraph is in both versions. 

I, David Wolcott, personally own several tarot decks and several books on how to do tarot spreads. I can speak from my own experience, and from looking at the pictures and videos that Christalignment has shared, that their products look EXTREMELY like tarot cards. That they use their own artwork is not enough of a difference, precisely because all four of the decks I own have different artwork on them. 

 

Additionally, as Holly Pivec has highlighted in her own work, Christalignment originally described their cards as tarot cards:

"We believe they are more predictive and higher than most tarot, and can address a current life question that you may have."

While this line has since been removed from their website, it has not been removed from Internet Archives.


If you'd like to add anything, or have corrections or recommendations, just reach out.