Swaggart swings through El Salvador
Lacefield, Patrick
SWAGGART SWINGS THROUGH EL SALVADOR SAVING SOULS & CASTING OUT DEMONS PATRICK LACEFIELD Till the day He tells me why. He loves me so I can feel His hand in mine That's all I need to know I...
...Like the master showman that he is, Swaggart had everyone — myself included, I ought to admit — awaiting anxiously his response...
...Of course, you couldn' t do that without killing the Indians themselves...
...He shook his head sadly...
...Jesus Christ was God...
...Then came ^^H the sound of forty thousand believers whipping ^^H out their Bibles in unison...
...When God made you, he made you to live forever," Swaggart continued, taking off his coat and loosening his tie...
...So too is the dangerous situation in some areas of the country...
...When a person has accepted Jesus Christ it's impossible for them to curse or hurt their fellow man...
...Jesus ha vencido la muerte...
...Jesus Christ said these words: 'The thief cometh not but to steal and to kill and to destroy but I have come so that they might have life.' (Continued on page 287) 280: Commonweal (Continued from page 280) "These are the greatest words ever uttered: 'I have come so that you might have life.' El Salvador, you can have life...
...All too often evangelical programs in health, agriculture, or education would seem to have no higher purpose than to woo poor people to their fold with promises of desperately needed assistance...
...Juan Bueno, a short, stout man with thick glasses taken to wearing dark suits even in the sweltering Salvadoran heat...
...The Reverend Swaggart has struck camp, moving on to bigger and better things just like those other master showmen on the Baptist revival circuit back when...
...Most of the world tonight believe in reincarnation...
...Before Jesus there was only one kind of love — earthly carnal love...
...Until you love God you cannot love your fellow man...
...No matter...
...If the evangelical presence is less in El Salvador than, say, in neighboring Guatemala, the Catholic church in El Salvador is concerned nonetheless by its own slippage in winning hearts and minds — and souls...
...There's something that makes you hate — it's dark, it's lonely, it's evil, it's wicked...
...It is not real...
...A priest cannot give it to you...
...One Salvadoran colonel, a 8 May 1987: 287 fervent evangelical, told me that he considered himself not only a military leader but also a spiritual leader of the area over which he held sway.'' We have to change people's hearts," he told me...
...I say unto you, Love your enemies...
...Children, oblivious to the message, were playing tag up and down the aisles...
...The reasons why there has been fighting in El Salvador is because there is hate...
...I am an ordinary man...
...You've torn your family all to pieces...
...Part of the reason is the lack of adequate basic education before entering the seminary...
...He paused as if expecting applause...
...Education cannot understand it...
...Not only had Swaggart managed to put himself matter-offactly in some pretty distinguished company...
...Not, that is, until I was working with the Catholic Archdiocese of San Salvador when evangelist Jimmy Swaggart hit town this January for three days of crusading in this smallest and most embattled of Central American nations...
...Now you might say, 'Now there's where I disagree with you, Swaggart...
...Soviet Union, you can have life...
...Society has tried to make us believe that it's the environment that does it...
...There are sixty-five thousand people here tonight...
...It was being bundled up by my parents in a scratchy brown-andwhite plaid suit, complete with clip-on bow tie...
...People jump up all around me and raise their Bibles and arms to the dry night sky...
...One day you will die physically but your soul will live forever, whether in heaven or in hell...
...Many times they don't even know why they hate...
...When Swaggart observed that the U.S...
...I can hear again a new variation on an old theme: "We had to destroy them in order to save them...
...Patience," they implored, "God loves you...
...Since at age eight I wasn't all that sure about anything, I found some comfort...
...It is often said that in times of crisis, sects of all sorts appear, proliferate, divide, and then subdivide...
...One flowed...
...Buddha was an ordinary man...
...Bueno forgot to brief him on President Duarte's dwindling middle-class support these days...
...Cristo...
...North America...
...On down the road, I drifted away from the Southern Baptists and that particular straight and narrow path...
...Red-vested Salvadoran youths with Swaggart emblems urged people not to push through the narrow entrances to the stadium...
...If you do not know God you will be resurrected to damnation, to burn in hell forever and ever...
...Yet I recall the words of a Protestant minister in Guatemala, lamenting the hatred some of his fellow evangelicals had for their Catholic brethren in Christ.'' I was sickened to hear some of the brethren saying that the Guatemala army was right to kill whole families of Indians suspected of guerrilla ties because it was better to pull out the roots to eradicate the bad spirits," said the pastor...
...John 10:10," Swaggart said...
...Call it a combination of spiritual uplifting and Chautauqua huckerstering...
...You want to quit drinking but you can't...
...And this crowd was almost entirely middle-class...
...He had managed to mention Karl Marx and Lenin in public, no small feat in the El Salvador of today...
...I didn't care all that much for the get-up on Sunday mornings, but I was suffering even more on that hot, humid northeast Arkansas Thursday night as my folks shepherded me and my younger sister up the steep stone steps, between the grand white pillars, and into the place where the Lord's work was dispatched...
...In a visit to Chile earlier in the month, Swaggart had made headlines for himself by meeting with Genera] Augusto Pinochet and calling the overthrow of Salvador Allende's democratically-elected government in 1973 one of the "greatest acts of this century...
...You may say, 'Jimmy Swaggart, how do you know it is a lie?' Because the Bible says it's a lie and the Bible is the truth...
...The evangelicals have a goal: that 50 percent of Central Americans will be evangelicals by the year 1990...
...Not only have hundreds on millions of dollars from U.S...
...If he were an ordinary man he could not do it...
...Also hampering Catholic church efforts to joust on even terms with the evangelicals is a critical shortage of priests, nuns, and lay workers...
...Mainland China, you can have life...
...PATRICK LACEFIELD served as administrative director for a medical team working with the Salvadoran Catholic church for twenty months and is co-author of El Salvador: Central America in the New Cold War (Grove Press: 1987...
...Abraham Lincoln was an ordinary man...
...Not only will he translate Swaggart's Southern English into Spanish, but will communicate his inflection, his fervor, even his frenetic gesturing...
...8 May 1987: 279 In El Salvador, the Jimmy Swaggart Association is headed by one Rev...
...Whether you are Catholic or Protestant, the Lord is here with you and he loves you," Swaggart exclaimed ecumenically...
...monies are being used to bomb villages and bolster the security forces and carry on the war," one archdiocesan leader put it...
...In some people there is a heart of hate...
...Then there are the constant efforts by some evangelical military officers in Guatemala and El Salvador to equate the Catholic church with subversion...
...It's all so pointless to 'convert' someone on that level...
...Amens all around...
...It's a thin green line," someone once observed, "given all the evangelization and social action that the situation demands...
...The United States loves El Salvador," he added...
...Hate...
...I want to tell you that the U.S...
...Religion cannot give it to you...
...Maybe you sit there watching me on television...
...If so, the good Reverend could be in deep trouble understanding what's coming down Judgment Day...
...Europe...
...One Catholic priest from a rural area in the embattled area of Chalatenango told me there are nine families of evangelicals in his village — and two separate churches...
...goes the chant...
...I have even heard it said that in heaven they speak Spanish...
...Since this was some years before air-conditioning was installed in the First Baptist Church of Jonesboro, Arkansas, everyone was vigorously waving the cardboard fans with the stick handles...
...Do you love the Lord tonight...
...This movement was exacerbated by the persecution of the Catholic church by the right-wing death squads and security forces...
...The problems of El Salvador, however, refuse to fade away so easily...
...Maybe you sit there with a bottle of alcohol in your hands...
...The church cannot give it to you...
...Swaggart has pumped about $6 million into El Salvador, mostly to establish twenty Christian schools in the western part of the country, the area least touched by the civil war which, now in its seventh year, has taken over sixty thousand lives...
...He's a fiery radio evangelist in the Swaggart mold...
...You want to steal and kill and destroy, to strike out at your government or your neighbor...
...Mohammed was an ordinary man...
...He loves me so I can feel His hand in mine That's all I need to know I can feel His hand in mine That's all I need to know A "Crusading" Hymn T wenty-five years later I can still remember the heat...
...You're on drugs...
...As the Catholic church in Salvador — or rather portions of it — came to embrace liberation theology and engage in social action on the basis of the preferential option for the poor, many upper- and upper-middle-class Catholics jumped ship...
...Yet this same officer denies international medical teams access to his area, and troops under his direct command have killed civilians in cold blood as a warning to the rest not to collaborate with the guerrillas...
...You have encountered them...
...Now, as said before, I didn't care much for the heat...
...Jesus Christ was not an ordinary man...
...You hate your promiscuous sexuality, the lust that fills your heart...
...By now, the evening was winding down...
...HH f you have your Bibles tonight, I want you to turn ^^H to one of the greatest books in the Bible, the book ^^M of St...
...He paused for a moment, "I want you to listen very carefully...
...288: Commonweal...
...Above all else, Salvadorans eschew standing in line, even if they are imbued with the Holy Spirit...
...Obviously Rev...
...Is such an individualistic call to redemption adequate to the task of tackling the stark Salvadoran reality...
...A $3.2 million sound system was shipped from the U.S...
...You want to quit taking drugs but you can't...
...He's telling you, 'I love you.' "There is only one way to obtain this eternal life," Swaggart continues...
...South America...
...We're not in El Salvador to involve ourselves in political affairs, business, or anything outside of the spiritual aspects," Swaggart told reporters, foreign and Salvadoran, at an airport news conference...
...evangelicals been invested in "spreading the Gospel" throughout Central America, but some U.S...
...Jimmy Swaggart was talking, still talking about demon spirits...
...This is the reason for all the terrorist activity in the world today...
...We will tell the world that Chile is a free country," he told Pinochet, "and our president feels the same way...
...press had it in for Pinochet, the Chilean leader responded that this was because "the press is either bought and paid for by the Communists, the journalists themselves are Communists, or they are only interested in making money...
...You're sitting in a lonely hotel room and there are needle tracks up and down your arms...
...One thing you could say about us Baptists — we knew our Scriptures and we weren't shy about bellowing out those hymns...
...This morning I met with your president and your First Lady and prayed with them...
...This persecution cost the lives of Archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero, half a dozen other Salvadoran priests, the four American women missioners in December of 1980, and hundreds of catechists between 1979 and 1984...
...Buses were chartered to carry people from the principal bus terminals in the capital directly to the stadium...
...Without God that's the only kind of love there is...
...I observed that he counts crowds about like the Trotskyists did in the halcyon days of the mass and-Vietnam war demonstrations...
...Karl Marx was an ordinary man...
...Is El Salvador so wicked as to have deserved such divine retribution...
...We have to bring Christ into their lives...
...From Luke, these words were so great that people could not believe their ears...
...A preacher cannot give it to you...
...Girl Scouts, Bibles in hand, directed the traffic snarled around the area of the stadium...
...The Archdiocese of San Salvador, on the other hand, has refused to accept U.S...
...I know President Reagan personally and I can assure you that he respects you very much...
...Rice Christians," muttered one American Catholic priest with twenty years service in Guatemala...
...Lenin was an ordinary man...
...Give the Lord a hand of praise...
...for the extravaganza...
...government funds have, indirectly, done the very same thing...
...A prophet for our rrmes,'' proclaimed the slick radio and television spots...
...Swaggart shouted to the crowd that overflowed onto the playing field from the stadium seats...
...How can someone who lived two thousand years ago save me?'" A hush fell over the crowd...
...Asia...
...You're hurting inside...
...All are easy to spot — the Krishnas by their saffron robes and shaved heads, the Witnesses and Mormons by their coats and ties...
...Dar al Senor un aplauso de alabanza...
...One day there will be a resurrection...
...Part of the explanation for the increase in evangelical strength has political overtones...
...Africa...
...Jesus Christ has defeated death...
...Money cannot buy it...
...Already a lot of the faithful had gathered...
...It would be a contradiction to accept this money while other U.S...
...Maybe that's why all the "amens" and "hallelujahs" came out sounding just a bit hollow...
...Jesus and the Twelve were in the middle of the Last Supper on the front...
...I have heard," he intoned, "that Spanish is the most beautiful language in the world...
...Some of those in attendance had already headed for the exits...
...Love turned into hate...
...Who lives...
...A number of seminaries were closed during the dark days of 1980-82 and even now only a small percentage of those who enter stay the course and become priests...
...Some, though certainly not all, evangelical leaders in Central America, have lashed out at Catholics for "doing the work of the devil...
...One didn't enter...
...Jesus Christ brought a new kind of love...
...Quien vive...
...Jimmy Swaggart cannot give it to you...
...I didn't understand a lot of what went on but these were big, bold, powerful men (always men, of course) who would pound the pulpit and wave their arms, and they were oh-so-sure about everything...
...I never did get back to those "good ol 'days" of crusades and revivals...
...Don't believe it.'' Within the last year, El Salvador has been staggered by more than it's share of "demons" — a severe drought, a devastating earthquake that killed 1000 and left 100,000 homeless, a worsening economic crisis and a brutal civil war grinding into its seventh year...
...He began by apologizing for not being able to speak Spanish...
...And if we kids didn't squirm too much on the bare, rock-hard, wooden pews, there'd be an ice cream cone afterwards at Stimson's...
...No, not the fires of eternal damnation that I heard so terribly much about...
...it does not exist...
...There is a giver of eternal life and his name is Jesus...
...Actually, "Protestant" is a word seldom heard in Salvador since all Protestants — save a tiny handful of Anglicans, Lutherans, Presbyterians, and mainstream Baptists — are, in fact, "evangelicals...
...You have contemplated suicide...
...It was revival week...
...loves your president...
...Swaggart's three-day crusade in the Flor Blanca soccer stadium in San Salvador was preceded by a publicity campaign that gave new meaning to the word''saturation," " Experience the difference ," said the print ads...
...Brazil, you can have life...
...A garish, brassy ad for the local funeral home could be found on the other side...
...In midFebruary, the Salvadoran bishops' conference issued a lengthy statement on "the threat of the sects," accusing them of "sowing confusion and division in the Salvadoran community...
...But through this TV screen, Jesus Christ is speaking to you...
...Or is it pie-in-the-sky for the faithful and a boost for the status quo in the here-and-now...
...When in doubt, divide by two or three...
...But if you know Jesus you will be resurrected to life, eternal life...
...In Salvador, funds for housing, food, and health care — particularly for displaced people — have been awarded to evangelically-minded groups like CESAD, World Vision, Project Hope, and Save the Children...
...Celibacy is a disincentive...
...So it is in El Salvador, where even the Hare Krishnas have a presence and Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses also ply their wares...
...While evangelical preachers and missionaries abound, the Salvadoran Catholic church must depend on foreigners to fill many of the gaps, as in Chalatenango where more than half those attending vicariate meetings are from abroad (the U.S., Italy, Spain, Ireland, and Scotland...
...Your life is a wreck...
...El Salvador is about 80 percent Catholic, but the number of Protestants has grown since the start of the civil war...
...I did enjoy the guest preachers who dropped by during the week to bring the Gospel...
...Is Jimmy Swaggart selling social change on the installment plan...
...A spattering of applause for "la patria...
...dollars for its social service programs...
...roars the multitude in response...
...Reincarnation is a doctrine from hell...
...Swaggart's translator, Stan Black, a Costa Rican, will by night's end steal the show...
Vol. 114 • May 1987 • No. 9
