The Great Commission
Dominguez, Enrique
For most of Central America, the 20-year period framed by the Cuban and Nicaraguan revolutions was a time of political turmoil, of powerful mass movements and guerrilla insurgencies. These...
...funding helped the organization to establish branches all over the region...
...During the peak years of evangelical growth, the Central American economies went through a series of changes that uprooted tens of thousands of peasants, swelled the cities and altered traditional social relations...
...These restrictions affected conservatives most heavily...
...Their response, at the height of right-wing terror in 1968, was to mount another Evangelism in Depth campaign...
...Though Pentecostals promoted their own doctrines and charismatic rituals, LAM's leaders felt that the Pentecostal approach could be applied universally, regardless of doctrinal differences...
...This awareness, however, was tempered by a distrust of liberal Protestantism and unswerving support for US...
...Only a lonely little magazine called Didlogo spoke out with condemnation of army human rights violations...
...Where there was confusion and despair -and above all where disaster struck-the evangelicals thrived...
...it had collaborated with many of the region's major denominations and missionary agencies in promoting ambitious crusades that hopped from one country to the next proclaiming the "Good News" to ecstatic crowds...
...Ironically, by demonstrating the scope for expansion, the campaigns fomented competition between and within denominations...
...The dash exposed growing Latin American dissatisfaction with U.S...
...Though this regressive tendency would in time provoke criticism from certain conservative pastors and theologians, its immediate effect was to draw the evangelical community closer to conservative political forces...
...In doctrinal terms, the results were paradoxical...
...2 0 CLADE I: Isolating the Progressives Where liberal tendencies did spring up in the evangelical churches, the conservative leadership moved to isolate them through both theological debate and more direct political pressure...
...With repression came a strident anti-communist campaign...
...Only a supernatural, evangelical faith can save Latin America...
...theological issues were at stake...
...In the early 1960s, in the wake of the Cuban revolution, they saw their chance...
...theological conservatism was aided by the churches' headlong rush into conversion as a primary goal, while minority liberal tendencies were deliberately isolated...
...They were the only Christians...
...More liberal denominations such as the Presbyterians exercised more autonomous local control over their financial and theological affairs...
...Another popular preacher, Jimmy Swaggart, has become a Sunday morning regular in perfectly dubbed Spanish for television viewers in most of Central America...
...Anxious to safeguard the theological purity of the movement, they broke the few existing ties with liberal Protestants, withdrawing from the Provisional Commission on Evangelical Unity (UNELAM...
...In long-neglected urban slums and remote rural areas, priests and nuns were actively involved in promoting cooperatives, unions and community organizations...
...Evangelical bookstores, correspondence courses and biblical institutes have experienced similar growth...
...Center, former Guatemalan president, Kjell Laugerud...
...Mt ChAUIt - I.N tA, 4 1"" __- .4 - M .,W Y. CtN~n...
...a vital counterweight to the progressive currents taking root in Catholicism...
...an increased role for local leaders in directing campaigns...
...Now, a strong current within the church took the side of the poor and became an advocate of social change...
...Third and most important was to mobilize the army of believers...
...Evangelicals, still a small, isolated minority in most Central American countries, were often fearful of ridicule or persecution, reluctant to talk about their faith except among their own kind...
...fifteen thousand converted...
...In 1968 they organized a series of pastoral meetings to discuss how Catholic groups should confront the phenomenon of violence and "social sin...
...foreign policy, and though World Vision execu- tives sincerelv desired an independent non-~olitical role, the agency often ended up working with rightist interests...
...Every believer is an evangelist," they declared...
...Once the visiting evangelist left, local enthusiasm dissipated...
...In recent years, it had endorsed political and economic reforms through its social teachings and its active support for Christian Democratic parties...
...The other was the chance to capitalize on criticisms that the Catholic Church was legitimizing injustice and lacking contemporary relevance: "The earthly religion of the reds cannot be fought with the hollow traps or dead traditions of Romanism...
...33 (1982), p. 75...
...2 LAM's search for the missing ingredient led them to study the experience of Pentecostal churches in South America, which had expanded dramatically with little outside help in countries regarded as bastions of Catholicism, such as Chile and Brazil...
...The heart of their bold new strategy was to mobilize the entire membership in a drive for new converts, promoting the faith as an ideological alternative to communism...
...Seemingly abstruse points of theological de- bate took on major political significance...
...Latin America, LAM articles warned, was seething with anger, ready to rebel against "the servitude and ignorance maintained for centuries under the feudal fist of Rome...
...with the Honduran army using accusations that the camps were harboring guerrillas as an excuse to send in troops to harass and even murder refugees...
...Obsessed with growth, fearful of being outdistanced by more dynamic sects or becoming isolated within an increasingly conservative milieu, local churches narrowed their concerns, moving away from the social involvement which LAM had urged...
...Samuel Escobar, "Responsabilidad social," in Accidn en Cristo para un continente en crisis, (San Josd, Costa Rica: CLADE Publications...
...Next came Costa Rica...
...Influenced in part by the nascent theology of liberation, but more by liberal Protestant theology, several writers affiliated with Church and Society in Latin America (ISAL), argued that "doing the will of God" in Latin America required an active commitment to social change 21 To fundamentalist leaders and their North American mentors, these views were outright heresy...
...Church leaders learned that it was more profitable to stress the appeal of evangelicalism than the errors of Catholicism...
...1 6 Evangelical doctrine, on the other hand, saw believers as a body apart from society...
...fundamentalist tradition, steeped in a long association with farmers' and poor people's movements in the U.S...
...On that day, 30,000 evangelicals streamed into the capital to celebrate Protestantism's 80th anniversary in Guatemala.' 2 Before their opening parade could begin, the quiet was disturbed by the roar of airplanes swooping over the National Palace, spraying nearby buildings with machine-gun fire...
...Christ's example must become incarnated in the critical Latin American situation of underdevelopment, injustice, hun- ger, violence and despair...
...To overcome these qualms, LAM explained its strategy in terms of biblical principles which for most churches outweighed the need for strict doctrinal purity...
...Exponents of the new theology, such as Orlando Costas, Roger Velhsquez or Plutarco Bonilla, who worked out of Costa Rica's Latin American Biblical Seminary or the new Latin American Evangelical Center for Pastoral Studies (CELEP), were soon typecast by fundamentalist U.S...
...6. Rubem Cisar Fernindez, "Fundamentalismo a la derecha y a la izquierda," Cristianismoy Sociedad (Buenos Aires), nos...
...The organizers attributed their success to the grace of the Holy Spirit, but a more immediate factor-and one that hinted at the conditions for evangelical growth in the decades that followed-was the country's climate of apprehension and political instability...
...Johnson, Battle for World Evangelism...
...To counter the devil's spell of Marxism, LAM sought an alternative with the power to effect social change, and found a partial answer in the aid and development programs of the new Kennedy Administration...
...5 Ironically, the fiercest resistance came from the traditional fundamentalist churches-LAM's main constituency-who recoiled from the notion of holding hands with Pentecostals, regarded as the "exhibitionists" of evangelicalism...
...Societies in Transition Religious loyalties do not shift easily, and evangelical leaders grasped that they would gain acceptance only if the population found answers in evangelicalism which traditional religions (whether Catholic or indigenous) could no longer provide...
...Greater availability of resources was one reason, but the political will of the U.S...
...5. Ibid., p. 117...
...But they could usually rely on local conservatives to take the necessary initiative...
...Outside of a small circle of theologians and seminary students, the new voices found themselves increasingly isolated, while the Pentecostals and fundamentalist churches, which refused to enter into theological debate and stuck to the "old truths," kept on growing...
...Much of the new initiative went into building new schools and a sophisticated media network...
...By the end of the day, Ydfgoras had crushed the rebellion...
...Charter...
...it was a neutralizing agent, a bulwark against social change...
...Between 1962 and 1977, the number of evangelical radio stations increased from four to twelve programs to over 200 a week.14 Radio stations broadcast secular as well as religious programs, relying on the Voice of America for regional news and analysis...
...THE GREAT COMMISSION 1. Missions Advanced Research and Communications Center (MARC), World Christianity (Monrovia, CA), Vol...
...0 ( Babies Killed in Threshing Machines s ._ .- h W . I. b - ~ 0 - -NERAU& O TIA.Tb MWh t c4I.JS - - td d - Tb...
...In 1977 its vice+president, Reverend Paul Rees, wrote a glowing prologue to Orlando Costa's The Church and its Mission: A Shattering CriNque from the Third World, and over the next few years, the organization placed greater emphasis on educational and community development programs...
...Out of these encounters came a decision to redouble work with Christian Comunidades de Base and to encourage greater political participation...
...Both mobilized the faithful in record numbers...
...it was the basic tenet of evangelism...
...To these sectors, also the product of social transformation, the notion of an intimate relationship with Christ and the emphasis on personal reformation held a powerful appeal...
...But LAM propounded it with new force, arguing that any church which allowed sectarianism to stand in its way was acting against the will of Christ...
...8. The Evangelist (Miami), January-February, 1964, cited in Fernindez, "Fundamentalismo...
...Their arguments were influential, for they allowed evangelicals who favored greater social responsibility to justify divorce from movements seeking revolutionary change...
...A powerful guerrilla movement had established bases (or focos) for armed action in the eastern and northern regions, strong enough to harass the army though fatally divorced from the mass movement...
...Against this exclusivist image, the new theologians offered the vision of a King- dom of God which could be made manifest & earth through the deeds of Christians, whose ef- forts were an important testimony to unbelievers of the nature of the Kin~dom.~~ " Yet the newer theologians stopped well short of endorsing liberation theology, which blossomed in the decade after CLADE I and supplanted talk of social responsibility with the more radical con- cept of direct political involvement...
...4 These maxims became the basis of a comprehensive new strategy called "Evangelism in Depth," which LAM hoped would "revolutionize" evangelical practices...
...radicalized important sectors of the Catholic Church...
...Of late, 'Presidential breakfasts' and Wrld Vision was given a key role in administering the camps...
...Are we not simply trying tocurry favor with the wealth and privilege of unrepen- tant hearts among the powerful, assuring them that the Gospel will produce workers who don't strike, students who chant hymns instead of painting walls with slogans of social struggle, guardians of peace at the price of inju~tice...
...policy-makers understood that although the churches would never be monolithic, evangelicalism was largely immune to the radicalism sweeping the region...
...His or her example showed that personal salvation not only related to the hereafter but brought bountiful blessings in the present...
...C .,h...
...Only after CEDEN's virtual collapse did World Vision fire Furnero and evaluate its conduct meetings with the authorities have become fash- ionable, but have evangelicals raised a prophetic voice in them...
...tutelage and spurred the emergence of 20 NACLA ReportWorldvision is one of the world's largest evangelical setvice organizations with branches in every Central American country except Nicaragua(where it ceased operatis in t979...
...4. Ibid., p. 21...
...1 0 Through meditation and prayer, the essential ritual of the campaign, believers would take the pledge to God en masse...
...Its annual expenditures in the region exceed $10 million...
...It found the answer in the Great Commission, the biblical injunction for Christians to spread the gospel: "Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost, teaching them to obPresbyterian missionary officiating at a wedding in Guatemala...
...Seminars and week-long retreats drew over 20,000 people, who were asked to imagine themselves as soldiers of Christ, imbued with spiritual charms and charged with the mission of making "believers of all nations...
...But these heavy-handed tactics and the book's distorted characterizations outraged many of the Latin American delegates, and the tensions created by the incident were never resolved during the conference...
...churches...
...A group of Baptist students in Nicaragua, for example, called themselves the Nicaraguan Confessional Church, after the famous German Confessional Church which had resisted Nazism...
...And of the six individuals hired as camp administrators, four were former soldiers, tvvo of whom had military int%llience links...
...The bornagain believer provided evidence of the gospel's redeeming power and gave substance to the notion of spiritual rebirth...
...One pastor, a Cuban exile, twice called Somoza's secret police to tell them that Confessional Church seminars were in fact secret meetings to plot "terrorist bombings...
...It was an apt climax to a bizarre sequence of events, a foretaste of the relationship that would develop between evangelicals and Guatemala's military rulers over the next 20 years...
...69-70 (1981...
...For radicalized Catholics, salvation referred not only to the hereafter but to life on earth...
...Matthew, 28:19, 20...
...CLADE was a shrewd and ambitious attempt by leading U.S...
...9. Ibid., January-February, 1959...
...denominations, missionaries sometimes took on this role of isolating "progressives...
...The only ones to comment on events were extreme rightists like the Reverend Antonio Sandoval, of Carl McIntire's Fundamentalist Presbyterian Church, who blessed the army's actions as a righteous blow against communism...
...Instead, he went on to play an important role in ousting CEDEN executives who had criticized the conduct of Wortd Vision camp employees...
...LAM's challenge was to shift the focus of evangelical concerns and impress upon church leaders a new concept of the church's mission...
...3 The secret of their growth-unequalled by any of the historic Protestant churches-was the Pentecostals' ability to involve all members in a constant public drive to evangelize...
...Outside lay the "iniquitous world," the "cesspool of sin," that regardless of human efforts could only grow worse until the day of Christ's glorious return...
...the pastor who could not draw new members to his congregation was soon told to seek another calling...
...Other churches now felt obliged to compete with the Pentecostals...
...Richards, Iglesia de los pobres...
...Like their counterparts in Christian Base Communities and catholic youth groups, they were active in the struggle against Somoza, organizing Bible study sessions to raise social consciousness among evangelicals...
...Ibid., p. 71...
...But before they could make any headway, they were denounced by church leaders and denied the use of church facilities...
...8 Events in Guatemala during the late 1960s highlighted the differences in conduct arising from such contrasting perspectives...
...LAM's leaders felt, however, that their results had been spotty...
...blip 4a N.oBBB kIr , ,,t 4 lb...
...l . b -p- P...
...Ibid., p. 66...
...The dramatic social impact of postwar economic development gave them fertile soil in which to work...
...Pat Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network has offices in three countries of the region, and produces a Spanish version of its popular PTL Club, hosted by a well-known Mexican evangelist...
...In both cities and rural areas, Guatemalans flocked to LAM's evangelical crusades...
...The initiative was conceived and directed by Latin American Missions (LAM), a U.S.-supported interdenominational faith mission based in Costa Rica...
...7. Ibid...
...7 E S 0n 14Jan/Fob 1984 God Versus Marx LAM saw these desires as perfectly legitimate...
...The growth of any movement varies directly with that movement's ability to mobilize all of its members in a constant effort to spread their beliefs...
...For years, North American missionaries in the movement's leadership had sought ways to enhance their influence...
...Though their initial political impact was limited, the drive of the 1960s set in motion an era of aggressive proselytization that would swell the ranks of fundamentalists and make them a force to be reckoned with...
...LAM's own campaigns targeted key social groups such as workers and university students who were now recognized as catalysts of social change...
...If they refused, both pastor and congregation faced virtual excommunication...
...Many sects, such as the Moravians in Nicaragua and the Seventh Day Adventists in Panama, formed communities that had been Protestant for generations...
...The Boom Years LAM's Guatemala campaign acted like a shot of adrenalin to Central American evangelicalism...
...Officially sanctioned views from the United States predominate...
...Virgilio Zapata, Historia de la iglesia evangilica guatemalteca (Guatemala: Serviprensa, 1981...
...They avoided the moral dilemma posed by indifference to social justice, while providing a palatable alternative to liberation theology, and gave evangelicalism contemporary relevance while remaining theologically orthodox...
...These ventures were designed to become self-supporting, but the initial outlay and most of the management came from parent churches in the United States...
...Not surprisingly, the evangelical churches offered these groups emotional sustenance and a haven from life's harsh realities...
...Ironically, however, few of the new ideas stirring Latin American evangelicalism would filter down to the evangelical movement in Central America...
...In a time of social change and personal doubt, fundamentalism offered fixed values free of ambiguities and moral uncertainty...
...South and Midwest...
...Nor were those who kept their ties to the home community immune from the effects of economic modernization...
...Orlando Costas, El protestantismo en Am'rica Latina, (San Jos6, Costa Rica: IINDEF Publications, 1975), p. 24...
...missionaries for the narrow social outlook of evangelicals: "Any concern for social and po- litical issues came to be identified as an attempt to introduce a 'Social Gospel' and finally came to the wint where lack of compassion and obedience were excused by an attitude of 'defending the faith.'" Escobar's call for the assembly to root their reading of the Gospel in the social realities of Latin America had a resounding impact, and was embodied in CLADE's final declaration...
...No sector grew more rapidly in this environment than the Pentecostals.' 3 The campaigns amplified their presence and obliged others-albeit grudgingly-to recognize their leadership...
...Despite its conservative fundamentalist back- ground, rZ was among the first to offer support for the new Latin American theologians who urged greater social responsibility...
...In Guatemala, LAM organized more than 6,000 prayer cells in a community that numbered barely 100,000 members...
...They were particularly aghast at the "liberationists' " use of Marxist theory as a tool of social analysis...
...everybody else, unless saved, was doomed to eternal perdition...
...The Gospel had to be understood from the perspective of the poor...
...An ample collection of books on social and theological themes has been published by evangelical institutes in Costa Rica, but most titles that make it on to the bookstore shelves come from publishers in the United States or Mexican subsidiaries of U.S...
...Except for obeying constituted authority, they should have no role in politics...
...the "Good News" was the message of liberation from all sin, personal and social, and to proclaim the Gospel meant joining with the poor to achieve liberation, transforming the course of history in accordance with God's will...
...Disputes with Catholicism Evangelical attitudes were in marked contrast to developments in the Catholic Church, whose conception of its social responsibility had changed dramatically since Vatican Council II...
...Direct pressure from a conservative leadership in the United States and the inertial force of local church traditions both fostered this trend...
...This made them a valuable, if passive, prop for the existing social order...
...though the doctrinal differences were still emphasized in lessons for confirmed believers, references to the Catholic Church during proselytization campaigns grew much less belligerent...
...This hermetic and fatalistic worldview, strongest among Pentecostals, was reinforced by the radio and television programs and books that arrived from the U.S...
...Their expansion was also rooted in changes within the evangelical churches themselves...
...Expansion offered missionary boards a way to retain their influence and counter the demands of national leaders who wanted independent control of local denominations...
...1962 was scarred by curfews, mass round-ups and arbitrary killings of political opponents, and the repeated imposition of martial law...
...Chapter 11...
...A postwar surge in coffee prices brought expanded cultivation and the exJan/Feb l1984 17NACLAAportp pulsion of peasant subsistence farmers, while increased foreign demand for cotton and sugar cane led agroexporters to invade large stretches of coastal lands...
...It placed the supernatural on the plane of practical experience and made it tangible for others...
...Clergy and lay activists, losing hope in the possibility of peaceful reforms, began to redefine their religious commitment in terms of social and political action...
...Estudios sociales centroamericanos (San Jos6, Costa Rica), Vol...
...Evangelicals' responsibility to society extended no further than to bring the message of salvation...
...The heart of community ef15 INACLAReport 4 Adventist pastor greets Guatemalan recipients of Church-built houses...
...The Gospel was a rock in the midst of a turbulent sea...
...At every turn, these initiatives met with opposition and repression from governments and local elites...
...The most enduring and successful was Campus Crusade for Christ, founded by conservative evangelist and early Reagan supporter, Bill Bright.* From the outset, Campus Crusade recognized the importance of local leadership...
...In 1969 they organized a separate Conference on Evangelization in Latin America (CLADE I...
...Johnson, Battle for World Evangelism, p. 256...
...And LAM's insistence that winning converts was the chief mission of the church reinforced the view that conversion should be the only concern of Christians...
...But the most impressive results came in Guatemala in 1962...
...This vision followed an old fundamentalist tradition of cloaking the evangelical mission in the images of patriotism...
...Fumero was not fired by World Vision...
...missionary Peter Wagner that assailed ISAL for betraying the Gospel to Marxism...
...LAM was ideally suited to the task...
...others had the outside world intrude on them in the form of increased commerce and-in the 1970s-state repression...
...on his return, he founded Alfa y Omega, Campus Crusade's first branch in Central America...
...Guatemalan president, General Miguel Ydfgoras Fuentes, had resorted to rule by repression, menaced by unrest within the army and the country's first guerrilla insurgency...
...From the stage, evangelical leaders hailed his victory as a sign of God's blessing...
...But this was not enough for LAM: the churches also had to grasp the political dimension of their mission...
...Their response to the new insistence on social responsibility was to co-opt certain of the liberal critics' arguments while attempting to discredit more serious theological criticisms...
...LAM picked up on the message of evangelical theologians from the Southern Cone who had warned of the political complexities of the continent and the changing nature of popular aspirations and urged U.S...
...Arthur Johnson, The Battle for World Evangelism, (Wheaton, IL: Tyndale Press, 1978), p. 255...
...Pentecostalism influenced ideology as well as campaign methods...
...In the late 1960s and 1970s, their outreach expanded with the consolidation of a sophisticated media network and a cluster of para-ecclesial agencies, most of them North American...
...The next step was to provide training for pastors and believers in the proper ambience...
...1 3 In the 1970s, several major U.S...
...forts was the local church, where members gathered to receive directions and share experiences, but the basic organizing unit was the prayer cell, from which members fanned out for street corner preaching and door-to-door crusades...
...Faced with the choice of disbanding or risking 16Jan/Feb 1984 17 a parade through a potential battleground, the march leaders decided to show their faith in Christ by proceeding as normal...
...2. Dayton Roberts, Los autinticos revolucionarios (Miami, FL: Editorial Caribe, 1969), p. 20...
...This was nothing new...
...This mass action would, they hoped, imbue believers with new courage and the conviction that, though spiritually apart from society, they still had a vital mission to it: to bring the gospel...
...The Catholic Church had a long history of social and political involvement, acting as moral guardian of the social order since the Spanish conquest...
...the problem was their manipulation by the false promises of materialism...
...In the nineteenth century, the theme had been manifest destiny, with missionaries as the bearers of enlightenment...
...Today, it was anti-communism, and evangelicals represented the last hope of freedom...
...evangelicals, including the editors of Christianity Today and executives of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, to reassert conservative hegemony over Latin America's burgeoning evangelical movement...
...Refugee testimony showed how these four had provided the army with regular information on new arrivals, denied entry to certain refugees and withheld food supplies to compel attendance at evangelical services...
...Although evangelical churches were growing at a respectable annual rate of 4%, this was still below the conversion rate registered by newcomer sects such as Jehovah's Witnesses...
...parent churches...
...Richard Millett, The Perils of Success: Post- World War II Protestantism in Latin America...
...The Pentagon and local military commanders, however, saw the movement as an ominous political threat, and though a "democratic" civilian president was elected in 1966, the counterinsurgency campaign was placed in the hands of the military...
...Both local rulers and U.S...
...Despite the scandal...
...These soon became a center of controversy...
...It would also call for greater interdenominational collaboration...
...How can we expect that a non-Christian will understand the gospel if it is preached in many different places, with different emphases and in contradictory contexts...
...4. 14...
...The Assemblies of God was the paradigm of those denominations that required local churches to depend on the parent church for all instruction...
...While traditional fundamentalists relied on a pastor or evangelist, Pentecostals organized believers to preach and sing in the streets, seizing every opportunity to offer public testimony of their spiritual rebirth...
...2 7 A small number of evangelicals close to the magazine's editors began to work on health and development projects in slum and peasant communities, but were soon "fingered" and ostracized by the evangelical leadership...
...The crucial element, however, was spiritual conversion, and only evangelicals could offer this...
...Under the leadership of North American missionaries, they developed new forms of evangelism and learned to mobilize their entire membership in the drive for new converts...
...The same fate awaited a further wave of peasants in the 1960s, when cattle ranchers razed corn and bean fields to make room for pasture...
...The exhortation swayed many evangelical leaders...
...Discreet gestures-an invitation to the presidential palace, an appearance at an evangelical gathering-were the signal of a political bond that would grow during the 1970s...
...Many church leaders felt that LAM's approach would debase cardinal tenets of faith or diminish the importance of correct biblical interpretation...
...There were practical reasons for this, too...
...Breaking out of the Shall At the end of the 1950s, the Protestants of Central America comprised less than 5% of the population.' Fundamentalists made up about half of these, split into a dizzying array of denominations, missions and their offshoots...
...political agitation would merely be a sign of the spiritual void afflicting them...
...nndt I402ABIQU f.ln...
...missionaries and local church leaders as "liberationists" or "ecumenical infiltrators...
...Most leaders' main concern was that they were losing ground to the spirited initiative of grass roots Catholic groups...
...evangelical producers established independent distribution outlets in Central America...
...One congregation in the Prince of Peace Church-Guatemala's fourth largest denomination and a thoroughly indigenous one-scarcely saw its district superintendent in ten years...
...leadership also counted...
...It created a formidable obstacle to collaboration with Catholic Jan/Feb i1984 19 520 groups or participation in popular movements...
...Yet LAM insisted on the role of social inequities in causing political unrest, and in supporting liberal initiatives of the Kennedy Administration it came into conflict with more rigid fundamentalists...
...To overcome this reticence, LAM encouraged evangelicals to take to the streets and proclaim their faith...
...The 1960s and 1970s also saw the proliferation of para-ecclesial evangelical organizations to complement this media outreach among select groups-children, women, prison inmates, businessmen and students...
...But their differences and rivalries, briefly submerged, resurfaced with greater force once the campaign was over...
...At the same time, LAM was convinced that each target country had to be saturated with the message of Christ's coming...
...serve all that I have commanded you...
...3. Emilio Willems, Followers oftheNew Faith (Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press, 1967), esp...
...NACLA interview with evangelical members of Comit6 Pro-Justicia y Paz, Guatemala, 1983...
...4~ ~ ~ ~ .CI ' AAAb..146~ IR - .4 -a Sntn1 .. btMt I Yf b 7 MCIAL COLINI - -5 -' iy 444a CI446417 fl N...
...Here, LAM perfected its methods...
...8 There were two further reasons for taking a liberal slant...
...Prior to opening its first Central America branch in Glraternaia in 1978, World Vision had been active pro- moting seminars and pastoral conferences such as CLADE...
...The clearest instance was its conduct in Honduras during the 1981 Salvadorean refugee crisis, when a new theological trend within evangelicalism...
...The methods of Evangelism in Depth (known locally as IINDEF) became the norm, adapted by individual denominations according to their own needs...
...Fundamentalist doctrines allowed believers to rationalize their situation in society and find comfort in the prospect of Christ's imminent millenial reign...
...The few groups which took an active stance against social injustice found themselves denounced and isolated within their denominations...
...Saving souls was not, after all, like selling insurance...
...Only in this way would the mass of wavering sympathizers take the decisive step of conversion...
...Pablo Richards, La iglesia de los pobres en Amirica Central, (San Jos6, Costa Rica: DEI, 1982...
...This dynamic of growth bolstered conservative currents within evangelicalism...
...The time has come for us evangelicals to take seriously our social responsibility...
...which was quite different from the outcome expected by the conservative backers of the conference: "The process of Evangelization must occur in concrete human situations...
...Beaming with triumph, he put in a guest appearance at the evangelists' final rally...
...NACLA Interview with Reverend Miguel Suazo, President of Biblical Society of Guatemala, May 1983...
...Events which could not be ignored-fraudulent elections, or massive street protests-provoked only dark analogies between present chaos and biblical prophecies of doom...
...2 8 In local branches of U.S...
...and the formulation of unified plans of evangelism at the national level...
...This growth was spurred by the same conditions that drove others to political militancy and At the Protestant Centennial, San Salvador, 1982...
...A coup attempt was underway...
...While rewgnizing the contribution of social science to theo- NACLA Rport logical discourse, they made trenchant criticisms of the way in which liberation theologists had made biblical reflection captive to Marxist theory...
...Once committed to their task, members would learn how to evangelize effectively, combining sales techniques with personal testimony and thorough follow-up...
...advisers tore through the countryside, burning villages and massacring entire communities, while in the cities right-wing death squads assassinated politicians, labor and community leaders with absolute impunity...
...These were dramatic decades for the evangelicals too, even though they remained on the margin of these political developments...
...Troops trained by U.S...
...6 The Cuban revolution had put "poverty and social unrest" on the agenda...
...The passivity of evangelicals in the face of repression and popular mobilization made it clear that the movement offered more than just an alternative faith...
...it was an existential and collective concern, not an individual one...
...In a comprehensive outreach plan, in which media efforts, crusades and church programs were combined with individual evangelism among target groups, LAM introduced business planning and marketing techniques to a field which had previously depended on intuition and spontaneity...
...Pentecostals were among the most conservative and parochial in their approach to social concerns, and their anti-communist, millenarian tone gave an ever more conservative and fatalistic note to the popular discourse of evangelicals...
...One was the populist streak in LAM's U.S...
...Though the voice of the evangelist and the radio sermon could stir the uncommitted, it was the power of personal testimony which proved the most effective tool for conversion...
...Central America Excluded A huge gathering of evangelical leaders from all over the world in Lausanne, Switzerland in 1974, gave a platform for these theologians to make major presentations of their views...
...The other agencies working in the camps--Caritas and CEDEN (the chief evangelical grouping in Hondurasbraised vigorous objections, but World Vision remained silent...
...Over the next decade, U.S...
...Displacement usually meant the end of a way of life, tearing the peasant from a web of family and community relationships that nurtured longheld beliefs...
...One key critic, Samuel Escobar, condemned ear- ly U.S...
...Evangelicals and the army alike bewailed the imminent destruction of Guatemala by the devil, in the shape of communism...
...In a crude attempt to rally delegates in defense of traditional theology, conference organizers circulated copies of a book by U.S...
...The barrier grew as liberation theology took root...
...For traditionalists, and especially Pentecostals, the Kingdom was a "tknscendent utopia, that has nothing to do with human society...
...NACLA interview with JosE Miguel Torres, Nicaragua, 1983...
...Their crusades seemed to operate in a vacuum, with little buildup or continuity...
...k44 U.y ,n..NA fih .~t - TI Evangelism in Depth The first campaign was in Nicaragua in 1960...
...If Latin American students have turned to Marx," stressed LAM, "it is because he who knows the true Messiah did not care enough to offer them a genuine alternative...
...In the wake of joint campaigns, different denominations proved more willing to work together...
...Growth was emphasized to the exclusion of all else...
...While rebel troops and loyalists battled for control of the streets, evangelicals paraded along Guatemala City's main thoroughfare with apparent unconcern...
...Evangelicals carried this message into 250,000 homes and spoke to more than a million people...
...See also MARC, World Christianity, Vol...
...Why so ambitious...
...Matters were equally grim in Guatemala, where the fierce repression against Catholic base groups ruled out any talk in evangelical circles of prophetic witness or social change...
...The first hurdle was to persuade local churches Jan/Feb 1984 13NACLA Report of the need to set aside doctrinal disputes...
...In 1964 it brought a young *Campus Crusade is discussed more fully in the third article in this issue..lanF~b 98419 Physically handicapped at the Protestant centennial, San Salvador, 1982...
...tanks rolled through the streets and troops took up combat positions...
...4(1981...
...Roberts, Los autlnticos revolucionarios...
...Finally, the spread of manufacturing and processing plants drew many people from small towns to the cities in search of work...
...Some were drawn into the same cycle through seasonal migration...
...2 5 Its resolution on Christian Social Responsibility was a powerful testimony to the impact of their views, containing unheard of references to "liberation," "oppression" and "alienation...
...The widespread fear and hostility to change, nourished by years of sectarian indoctrination, made further direct intervention superfluous...
...Eduardo Bonin ed., Espiritualidad y liberacidn en Amirica Latina (SanJos, Costa Rica: DEI, 1982...
...One vital polemic surrounded the interpretation ofthe "Kingdom of God...
...Worse, some of its camp administra- tors actually collaborated with the army, among them Mario Fumero, a Cuban exile Pentecostal preacher and notorious rightist given operational responsibility for national programs...
...Roberts, Los autinticos revolucionarias, p. 70...
...As evangelical numbers swelled and the politi12 EOJan/Fe 198413 cal situation in the region became more polarized, conservative currents within the churches renewed their dominance...
...Among the new Latin American leaders in LAM and groups of university and seminary students, disquiet had grown over the silent complicity of the churches with injustice and the inadequacy of traditional doctrines to deal with social problems...
...This experience would subsequently lead many Christian activists to join revolutionary organizations.19 Guatemalan evangelicals faced the same conditions, but raised no protest...
...Within their churches, where they found joy, comfort and encouragement to improve their lives, they could experience the "anticipation of the Kingdom of God...
...On November 25, political and religious events converged...
...After a heated debate with proponents of "church growth" their views were expressed in the historic Lausanne Covenant, evangelical equivalent of the U.N...
...The new faith also attracted converts from the emerging middle class and among former peasants who were now prospering as merchants and tradespeople...
...The experience of wage labor, poverty and physical exhaustion, in situations bereft of traditional mechanisms of support, often led to personal disintegration, reflected socially in the upsurge of alcoholism, family violence and parental desertion...
...The promise of greater outreach and new converts was not in itself sufficient incentive...
...9 For evangelical leaders both in Central America and the United States, the call was compelling...
...2 6 Eventually, the group would turn to a practically motivated ecumenism and work jointly with catholic communities...
...Local leaders feared any questioning of traditional views, any sign of social protest, as likely to push the movement into the arms of communism...
...all the missionary had to do was to back these conservatives with the resources they needed...
...With the support of major missionary boards, the cooperation of national denominations and an enthusiastic response from local churches, the stage was set for Evangelism in Depth...
...MARC, World Christianity...
...22 After CLADE, the new theologians like Esco- bar spoke scathingly of the narrow focus of tradi- tional evangelicals: "What does our message say to the exploiters of Indians, to abusive capitalists, to wrrupt and venal policemen, to dirty politi- cians...
...North American evangelical leaders were quick to grasp the significance of the new thinking...
...Internal Development With expansion came a greater attention to the internal development of the evangelical churches...
...The scale and complexity of LAM campaigns had necessarily brought them into contact with government authorities, and while campaign organizers saw the benefits of a harmonious relationship, government leaders were quick to note the dynamism of evangelicals and welcome their anti-communist inclinations...
...Worshipers were urged to stay ever more removed from the tide of events...
...evangelical leaders to take heed...
...Guatemalan pastor to its California headquarters for a year's instruction...
...In an eschatological Cold War vision, LAM's magazine hinted that the spread of communism in the region was a sign of impending doom and that evangelicals had a special role to play in countering the menace...
...This concern was strongest in South America, where conservative evangelicals and liberal Protestants were locked in caustic debate over the church's social responsibility...
...Save for intermittent warnings about the evils of communism, the sects displayed little interest in political issues...
...In other cases, denominational leaders would exclude local pastors with progressive leanings from regional councils or pressure church members to get rid of a pastor who proved troublesome...
...The patient labor of earlier missionaries paid off in a bountiful harvest of converts, and from being a tiny, insignificant minority, the evangelical churches became the fastest growing segment of Central American Christianity...
...The Inter-American Network (DIA) in SanJos6, Costa Rica, increased its distribution to over 2,000 programs a month, reaching more than 600 stations throughout Latin America...
...But their task did not prove an easy one...
...The scope and savagery of the campaign compelled the traditionally conservative Guatemalan Bishops' Conference to call for government restraints on the army, while clergy and lay leaders issued even stronger denunciations...
...There, the legacy of early missionaries, nourished by conservative leaders and fundamentalist mission boards, blunted any change...
Vol. 18 • January 1984 • No. 1
