God's Saving Plan
Huntington, Deborah
Santa Ana, El Salvador's second city, is home to the nation's ultraconservative coffee oligarchy; Pentecostalism thrives among the poor. In 1980 FMLN guerrilla forces surprised the oligarchy...
...9, 1983...
...Marxist organizations called the popular church" operate like maniacal "gangs organized by neighborhood Defense Committees . . and controlled by...
...NACLA interview with Campus Crusade Regional Director, Leonel Motta, Guatemala City, June 9, 1983...
...In its "country profile" designed to explain the organization's field work, Campus Crusade introduces El Salvador: "In the final analysis there is a struggle for the people's freedom with democracy installed versus the tyrannical rule of communism as in Cuba, the Soviet Union or in Eastern Europe...
...Actually, Bright has "plans that can change governAn arm of the church in the weapons business...
...churches promoted the new Guatemalan model in their publications and church bulletin inserts and through their prayers and sermons...
...20 CEPAD is a particularly important organization as it groups 37 denominations, including all the major Pentecostal churches...
...organization aims to show to "two to three billion people in this decade...
...Here's Life, World Santa Ana has played a key role in Campus Crusade's local "Here's Life" campaign...
...Their concluding document called for an end to class conflict and privilege, malnutrition and illiteracy...
...The use of religion as a political battleground is particularly acute in Nicaragua, where a sizeable sector of the evangelical community supports the revolution...
...1982, p. 13...
...Conservative evangelicals have registered their opposition to the FSLN in a number of ways: * A radio program by pro-Sandinista pastors entitled "Voice of the Gospel in the Revolution" was banned on the local evangelical station, which is owned by the Nicaraguan chapter of Campus Crusade for Christ, the Bible Society and several local denominations...
...To the delight of the evangelicals, the army named as head of a three-man junta Gen...
...1 5 Yet evangelical leaders failed to raise a word of protest, and all exempted Rios Montt from responsibility for his soldiers' excesses...
...Tijerino himself was a "Bible Smuggler" to Cuba in 1962 and today "smuggles" Bibles into Nicaragua-a curious activity in a country whose government freely distributed 300,000 copies of the New Testament as a follow-up to its literacy crusade...
...1 3 By 1982, the prospect of an imminent guerrilla victory frightened evangelical leaders...
...denominations...
...subsidies...
...Ignacio Hernindez, Sociedad Bfblica de Nicaragua, May 17, 1983...
...Those who reject the IRD's black-and-white view of the world are vilified as "apologists for repression," and they include, the IRD implies, many of America's church leaders.' 7 Conservative U.S...
...Some also become part of a network designed to "assist" their theological orientation through pamphlets and seminars...
...Most evangelical leaders decided that this was an appropriate moment to demonstrate their support for Rios Montt in public...
...Press On...
...The link is forged of ideology, history and worldview, NACLA ReportJan/Feb 1984 not of conspiracy...
...9 In March 1982 the CEPAD General Assembly sent a letter to U.S...
...SPRINGFIELD...
...Religion has become a political domain, which the Right views as a "battleground for political struggle...
...He has smuggled money and materials into Nicaragua to promote the image of a Sandinista government on the verge of "cracking down against Christianity...
...Central America reinforce black-and-white Reagan Administration perceptions among their U.S...
...And as in the halcyon days of Cyrus Scofield and Cameron Townsend, they enjoy close ties with some of the most conservative secular political interests in the United States, who act as donors and board members: * The Christian Voice National Advisory Board includes the former chief of Pentagon Intelligence, a former Under-Secretary of the Navy and an Army Brigadier General...
...In El Salvador, the denominational leadership meets regularly with the government authorities to pray for peace...
...NACLA interview with Ignacio HernAndez, May 17, 1983...
...We believe that the disturbing moral, economic, social and religious situation in which our country and the world live is precisely the fulfillment of the prophecy of humanity's last days, and prior to the second coming of our Lord Jesus Christ the Gospel must be preached to all nations," wrote the leaders of the Guatemala Campus Crusade office...
...One sponsor of the prayers of intercession, Florida preacher Hap Brooks, hailed, the coup as "the greatest miracle of the twentieth century, formed in heaven before it was formed on earth...
...They're abridge between faith and communism...
...At a November rally, over half a million people crowded into Guatemala City's Campo de Martt, in the greatest display of evangelical zeal ever witnessed in Latin America...
...Campus Crusade's theology is more rigid and conservative than that of most groups...
...In southern, rural Juigalpa, all local churches, including Assemblies of God, Jesus the Good Pastor and Apostolic Faith, issued a "Call to Defense" urging Christians to join the militias...
...Explained Leonel Motta, Campus Crusade's regional director for Central America, "the struggle in which we are engaged, not only in Central America but in the whole world, is an ideological one...
...The project is the Student Movement Alliance of Latin America (AME), formed at the initiative of Open Doors and Trans World Mission at a meeting in Cuernavaca, Mexico attended by U.S...
...3 1 Six hundred pastors-about 40% of all the 1500 active in Nicaragua-participate in this "salary support program...
...In the spring of 1982, CEPAD launched a program to form defense committees at the congregational level, in coordination with the CDS...
...tive of a Dutch and U.S.-based agency called Open Doors With Brother Andrew, whose operations until recently were devoted to smuggling religious literature into the Eastern Bloc and China...
...I'd volunteer," saysJerry Falwell of the latter, "we're long overdue...
...A large portion of the worldwide Here's Life program was financed by a group of predominantly Southern businessmen who rank high on Campus Crusade's 200,000 name donors' list...
...2 While U.S...
...Since the Nicaraguan revolution, Tijerino's Christian Center has sponsored all-expense paid trips for Nicaraguan pastors to visit Costa Rica for Biblical "orientation...
...The Adolph Coors Foundation (the Coors Beer fortune), which funds the rightist think tank the Heritage Foundation, also contributes to Campus Crusade and the Moral Majority...
...Rios Montt promptly appointed church elders as senior government advisers...
...3 The convert must abandon all free will, for only God, not human beings, can change the world, and His actions may only be influenced through prayer...
...In March 1980, the General Assembly of the Evangelical Committee for Aid and Development (CEPAD) issued a pastoral letter stating that: "As pastors of God's people, conscious of the immense and serious implications which the curPrayer meeting and breakfast at the Pan-American hotel, Guatemala City, 1983...
...NACLA interview with Campus Crusade Central America Regional Director, Leonel Motta, Guatemala City, June 9, 1983...
...FEI.A DEMOCRAlCA MCARAENE Jan/Feb1984 29NACLAR epot and Evangelism to Communist Lands are raising funds for seminars to "come and teach us pastors so we can show our people from the Bible why communism is wrong...
...They called the Sandinista Defense Committees (CDS) "ears of Big Brother" and established social programs in rural areas to compete with Sandinista-run organizations...
...emergency if they chose not to bear arms: doctors, nurses, cooks, carpenters, access to vehicles, telephones and radios...
...Los Evang6licos en Nicaragua: Documento suscrito por 50 Evangelicos en el Campamento Monte de Los Olivos," November 24, 1976...
...Tijerino could not have hooked up with a better partner than Campus Crusade...
...We confess...
...26-30...
...5. Dallas Morning News, Nov...
...Campus Crusade for Christ, "El Salvador: Country Profile" (FP, 7/82), mimeo, p. 3. 12...
...This welcomed an active role from all churches willing to address social questions, but advised Christian groups concerned only with the "other-worldly" kingdom to limit their proselytization to private locations...
...NACLA interview with Tombr Gusaro, Deputy Mayor of La Pista (QuichM), June 1983...
...Washington Post, September 24, 1983...
...According to one participant, the themes dealt with in the seminars include Satan's work through the Nicaraguan government and liberation theology, and models of church persecution...
...Even the Director of Information for the Armed Forces became active in the leadership of the Washington Here's Life office...
...Peter Steinfels, "Neoconservative Theology," democracy, April 1982...
...John Conlan (R-Ariz...
...Nearly every U.S...
...The El Salvador component of this worldwide drive was launched in 1978...
...We must courageously defend those principles that are America.''12 This is not a new phenomenon...
...2 6 One foreign journalist counted 20 new sects in Esteli since 1979.27 Many in Nicaragua cried "CIA...
...Red-baiting tactics coupled with arrogant interpretations of "correct Christian beliefs" have been combined to encourage Christians that faith and empire march together...
...NACLA telephone interview, November 21, 1983...
...NACLA interview with Rev...
...By 1981 its Central American offices had 1,593 volunteer and paid staff...
...Ibid...
...Campus Crusade showed the film to more than 100,000 Central American viewers in the first half of 1983...
...Constituency mobilization was designed to occur through local prayer groups, Bible study meetings and Sunday school classes, using materials from a publishing house related to Campus Crusade...
...1, 1982...
...2 The Santa Ana campaign was paid for in part by the local Pepsi-Cola franchise, run by one of Salvador's "14 families," but could not have gotten off the ground without heavy U.S...
...Indeed, shortly before the uprising they had conducted a special "saturation campaign" under the direction of Campus Crusade, as part of what the organization calls "the Spiritual Battle for El Salvador...
...In the following two years, the organization claims, it mobilized 120,000 Christians in 120 towns for door-to-door "personal evangelism" and streetcorner "mass evangelism" of youth teams shouting about Jesus through bullhorns...
...Not all evangelical leaders were happy with the revolution, of course...
...Some of these efforts are grass-roots oriented...
...Boanerges Mendoza, Managua, June 21, 1983...
...NACLA interview with Rev...
...For details, see Donna Eberwine, "To Rfos Montt, With Love Lift," The Nation, February 26, 1983...
...Prayer explains why a friend was saved from drowning in a Nicaraguan town...
...Hap Brooks is speaking, John Carrette, former green beret turned businessman who now leads Guatemalan evangelicals, is on Brooks' right...
...NACLA interview with Rev...
...0 z Jan/Fb l1984 27NACLA Report rent historical process holds for our country, we share the happiness, hopes and labor of our people in their struggle against poverty, ignorance and exploitation...
...Guillermo Briseno, Como Caminar en el Espiritu (Mexico City: Cruzada Estudiantil y Profesional para Cristo, 1974), pp...
...9. NACLA interview with Manuel Tijerino, Director, Centro Cristiano de Guadelupe, San Jose, Costa Rica, May 29, 1983...
...Instead, they became a liability, evidence to Rios Montt's enemies of his fanaticism...
...Protestants feel threatened by Central American efforts to develop a local theology appropriate to their societies, because those efforts have an unerring habit of being on the "wrong side" politically...
...His Christian Centers-two in Mexico, one each in Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala, Costa Rica and Brazilorganize clandestine cells and maintain secret membership, using techniques taught by Tijerino himself: "We are ready...
...3 3 Since then, they have been joined by Campus Crusade for Christ and are receiving support and training from IINDEF in Costa Rica...
...Calculated from MARC, Mission Handbook: North American Protestant Ministries Overseas, 1979...
...9 Second, through their emphasis on Biblical prophecy and divine action, these groups minimize human responsibility for the region's violent political conflict, even while finding in sin the explanation for all horrors...
...For instance, five board members of the Bible Society-bulwark of fundamentalist Protestantism--took off for Miami, their large business and land holdings confiscated because of Somoza family connections...
...churches has emerged over the last decade, often led by Bill Bright...
...There, conservative evangelical leaders declared that the task of the Christian was to bring the nation closer to Christ...
...Paul Popov, mass fundraising letter, Evangelism to Communist Lands, July 1982...
...Bright had shown his ability to organize such mass rallies as Explo '72 in Dallas (where CAM and other missions have their headquarters), which assembled 85,000 people in 65 coordinated events...
...It is run by Nicaraguan-born evangelist Manuel Tijerino, a naturalized Costa Rican, and counts on 22 full-time staff and 300 student organizers...
...2 1 A number of members of the Central American Church's oldest Managua congregation were also jailed for war crimes as National Guardsmen...
...NACLA interview with Rev...
...For nearly two hours, the crowd heard Argentine evangelist Luis Palau lavish praise on Rios Montt's Guatemalan " miracle...
...In 1976 church membership leapt by 14...
...Cruzada Estudiantil para Cristo, Vision 80's (El Salvador), Afio III, No...
...Ecumenical organizations such as the Pope John XXIII Historical Institute and the Antonio Valdivieso Center, which have both attracted theologians from all over Latin America, provide "Christian-sounding excuses" for the government...
...GOD'S SAVING PLAN 1. "Staying on Course: An Interview with Bill Bright," Worldwide Challenge, January 1983, p. 6. 2. Campus Crusade for Christ, 1981Annual Report: The Latin American Ministry, p. 12...
...evangelicals-and by the White House-which set up a Spring 1982 meeting between Rios Montt's chief adviser, Francisco Bianchi, and Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson and James Watt-a number of U.S...
...A definitive commitment to social justice was voiced in 1976 by 50 evangelical pastors, lay members and seminarians who met to analyze the church's role in society and Christian ethics...
...Finally, these organizations have been mobilized, consciously or otherwise, into a campaign to discredit those Christians who oppose Reagan policies...
...They brought the survivors a message too: that the earthquake was a warning from God for Guatemala to repent its sins...
...constituency, thereby mobilizing constituency support for U.S...
...The IRD can reach no other conclusion, for, as Peter Steinfels has noted, it is trapped in the precise assumptions which frame the administration's foreign policy...
...The first of its "four spiritual laws" is that "God has a marvelous plan for your life...
...16, 1977...
...the Society's General Secretary--a National Guard general-wasjailed...
...The meeting had been called by Faith Whittlesey, then White House director of public liaison, to persuade the pastors of the importance of public support for administration policies in Central America...
...Holy War in Guatemala In Guatemala, evangelical churches swelled after the devastating 1976 earthquake...
...The Assemblies of God magazine pro- 50,000 people attended the Protestant centennial at the National Stadium in San Salvador, 1982...
...It is the largest denomination in Guatemala, with 748 churches and over 30,000 baptized members...
...Cruzada Estudiantil y Profesional, "Reporte Anual 1982," Sonido Continental (Mexico), Aiio 3, #1, JanuaryFebruary, 1983, p. 10...
...Others declared that the letters FSLN meant "666"-another sign of "the beast...
...foreign policy establishment has actively enlisted their cooperation...
...government policy...
...Liberanos del yugo i Danos la Libertad...
...Institute on Religion and Democracy, Christianity and Democracy: A Statement of the Institute on Religion and Democracy (Washington, D.C.: IRD, 1981), pp...
...Its general superintendent was on the steering committee of Washington forJesus and is on the advisory committee to the FaithAmerica Foundation rally this spring...
...Referring to the "strategic hamlet" program, it appealed for funds to buy "guerrilla-proof" aluminum houses which "cannot be torched...
...Carta Pastoral de la Asamblea General del CEPAD, Managua, Nicaragua, March 8, 1980...
...Growth was steady for the next five years and surged again in 1982 by 18...
...The aim of the army's Plan Victoria 82 was to break the guerrilla movement by destroying its base of support in the Indian highlands...
...We see signs of the Kingdom of God in the Nicaraguan people's efforts to construct a state of life which is dignified and human...
...Though the IRD has few organic links with evangelicals in Central America, the regional crisis heightens the institute's importance, for like Campus Crusade and the Assemblies of God it is attempting to define the parameters of "legitimate" Christian thought and behavior...
...Translated into practice, Bright's plan is an ambitious marketing scheme to sell Jesus Christ-and the American Way-to the entire world...
...When the persecution comes we are not going to lose our young Christians, they are trained in how to survive clandestinely.'' 3 2 His Managua chapter has gone "underground" to protect the "real church...
...the secret police...
...Above ground, he circulates to local churches Spanish translations of Miami's finest "Christian" testimonies and novels, with titles like IFound Christ in the Soviet Union and Guerrillas for God...
...The IRD sees the Central American revolutions as Soviet-inspired, the Salvadorean government as representing the "battered" center, and the FSLN leadership as "betraying" a revolution the IRD never supported in the first place...
...3 The Here's Life campaign first emerged as the grass-roots component of an ambitious political plan led a decade ago by Bill Bright and former Rep...
...There was even talk of a political party with an "evangelical agenda...
...As the revolution unfolded, examples of evangelical support were dearly visible: * In the southern town of Rivas, 25 local pastors formed a volunteer brigade for the sugar cane harvest in 1982...
...These committees made an inventory of skills and resources which Christians could offer in an...
...Ptacek spoke to the group on "communist corruption of our churches," a phenomenon that "is most critically evident in Nicaragua," where Marxist totalitarian demons masquerade as Christians...
...As well as securing more members for local Assemblies of God and Foursquare Gospel churches, it also builds its own mass base which responds to the objectives of the international organizations...
...all our concern must be focused on being close to Jesus Christ...
...1, #4, and Vol...
...They have rallied pastors and congregations to "pro-America" causes, including a larger nuclear defense budget, the commitment of U.S...
...representatives of Assemblies of God, certain Presbyterians, and other denominations...
...we must be prepared not to let the world, the flesh or the Devil dethrone Christ from the center of our lives...
...Falwell lobbies frequently for increased aid to the Salvadorean government and the overthrow of the Sandinistas...
...In the town of Yali inJinotega, there were four churches with 204 members before the revolution...
...3 4 Staffed by nationals, each office teaches Spanish translations of The Four Spiritual Laws and God's Magnificent Plan...
...preachers, hundreds of congregations "interceded with Christ" through prayers that the March elections would bring a miracle to save Guatemala from the devil's grasp...
...Jerry Falwell, "Old Time Gospel Hour," July 3, 1983...
...In one gruesome incident, helicopter-borne troops landed in the village of Tuchabuc and slaughtered 30 members of a Pentecostal congregation as they worshipped...
...4 0 As Robertson, Falwell, Zimmerman and Bright thump their Bibles and cite their verses, they weave a web which at the local level pulls together organized backing for Reagan's foreign policy and increased support for mission investment in Central America...
...John Gimenez, was chairman of the Washington for Jesus steering committee and is on the advisory committee to the Constitutional Liberties Rally...
...The Salvador office added that, "One mustn't be concerned with horoscopes or journalistic news...
...6, March 1981, p. 5. 11...
...In the United States, for instance, the Christian Anti-Communism Crusade Poster printed by the FDN contra organization and distributed throughout Nicaragua in the spring of 1983...
...Ptacek and the IRD accuse their opponents of mixing religion and politics, but while calling itself "non-political" the institute puts forward some exceedingly partisan views...
...to avoid more suffering, more desolation and destruction...
...3 6 Campus Crusade sees itself as recruiting shock troops to turn back liberation theology in the region and discredit liberal pastors as unChristian...
...32 NACLA ReportJan/Fi 198433 motes Reagan's Central America policy and was an especially fervent supporter of Rios Montt...
...First, they .finance organizations and missions that promote an ideology designed to demobilize the population by organizing them as an "apathetic bloc...
...IINDEF director, Jean Kessler, claims the support is available for any pastor in need, but one Nicaragua program administrator said it is only "for those pastors who are loyal to the Word, loyal to God," unlike "those who have gotten involved in Nicaraguan politics...
...Declaraci6n de los 500-11 Retiro Interdenominacional de Pastores Evanglicos de Nicaragua," Monte de los Olivos, October 5, 1979...
...Army commanders in turn rewarded this cooperation by appointing evangelicals to posts of local authority...
...Some are missionaries of autonomous Central American churches which can track their history through a maze of splits and divisions back to U.S...
...2 5 Since the revolution there has been a tremendous influx of small new religious sects composed of evangelists (frequently Hispanics) from Mexico, Puerto Rico, Panama and the southern United States...
...Washington Post, August 22, 1983...
...It is an essentially political, rather than religious, alliance, although Bright insists that Campus Crusade has never "spent a dollar for political ends...
...Carlos Escorcia, Managua, May 19, 1983...
...He was describing the funeral processions for neighborhood youths returning home from the Honduran border in boxes...
...Obsessed with a ubiquitous Soviet threat, the IRD believes that the Christian ensign can fly only above societies formed in the image of America...
...but having acknowledged the state of sin we can discover the plan through prayer and Bible reading...
...Texas super-billionaire and John Birch Society council member Nelson Bunker Hunt is on the Board of Directors of the Religious Roundtable and Campus Crusade...
...I found it...
...Our business is armaEPHESIANS ment for those spiritual wars that 6-3-18 seem an inevitable part of service life...
...In Costa Rica, the Christian Center, a project financed by California-based Trans World Mission, also "educates" Nicaraguan pastors...
...This was where the evangelicals' tendency to collusion made them valuable allies of the military...
...Rus Walton, One Nation Under God, cited in Wallis and Michaelson, "The Plan to Save America...
...21-23...
...They have simply gone back to their traditional "apolitical" stance...
...7. Campus Crusade for Christ, 1981 Annual Report, p. 5. 8. Washington Post, November 18, 1977...
...Pastors instructed members not to sell their produce to the government at regulated prices...
...0 Early each month, the Executive Director of IINDEF in Costa Rica receives a $5000 personal check from a North American citizen on behalf of a U.S...
...Though the IRD is at pains to distinguish itself from the "political" Moral Majority, suggesting that Falwell occupies the religious Right while the IRD stands squarely in the center, their conclusions are the same...
...ThenSecretary of the Interior James Watt, an Assemblies of God member, expanded on this theme at his denomination's 40th General Convention in the summer of 1983: "We can no longer afford to surrender the political arena to the religious left...
...In the Central American context, the political resonance of this approach is inescapable...
...The Pro-America Lobby A generation of political activists among the fundamentalist and Pentecostal churches and conservative sectors of mainline U.S...
...They receive a monthly stipend of 500 cordobas, a 50% boost to their salaries...
...Polemics in Nicaragua If the leadership's emphasis on Rfos Montt's Guatemala was on seizing the moment to participate in politics, the opposite was true in Sandinista Nicaragua...
...In 1981, Tijerino was instrumental in initiating a $5 million program to "win 10 million [Latin American] youth for Christ" in 1984-85...
...agency which has never revealed its identity.* He told NACLA that at the request of "a North American Christian" in 1982, he launders the money through his Costa Rican bank account and smuggles it into Nicaragua...
...Penny Lernoux, Cry of the People (New York: Penguin Books, 1980), pp...
...You must be prepared for the spiritual battle," exhorts one booklet...
...Others, sometimes dressed in white uniforms and bearing names like Church of the Living Water, Divine Call and Midnight Messengers, have cropped up in small itinerant bands...
...In 1980 FMLN guerrilla forces surprised the oligarchy by briefly holding the city against the Salvadorean army...
...8 The crisis in Central America since 1979 has forced a sharper political definition of groups such as Campus Crusade, and the U.S...
...Unspecified witness before Senate Intelligence Committee, cited in Fred Landis, "CIA Media Operations in Chile, Jamaica, and Nicaragua," CovertAction Information Bulletin, March 1982, p. 41...
...Half the event's steering committee was made up of Pentecostal church representatives, including Assemblies of God, Church of God and other denominations strong in Central America...
...We're sword*-runnersl The most serious dangers of military life lie this side the *READ battlefield...
...While calling for Christian denunciation of human rights abuses "wherever they occur," the IRD and like-minded conservative U.S...
...Campus Crusade came to Guatemala in 1964 and rapidly spread to the rest of the Spanishspeaking region...
...as unrepentant sinners, we cannot know that plan...
...Conservative fears were not allayed by the new government's pronouncement in October 1980 guaranteeing religious freedom...
...But the conservative Protestant leadership was left somewhat depleted following the Sandinista victory...
...The Assemblies of God, the largest denomination in Nicaragua with 500 pastors, 350 churches and 60,000 members, launched an agricultural program in 1980 in the departments of Matagalpa, Jinotega and Nueva Segovia, where it claims to represent up to 60% of the population...
...The Salvador office, like others, has concentrated recently on the Campus Crusade film Jesus, the tool which the U.S...
...IRD, Christianity and Democracy, p. 11...
...Washington Post, August 10, 1983...
...The tone of the occasion was captured in a picture of Jesus weeping over the Liberty Bell...
...The Latin American Secretary in the United States financed this program, which competed directly with state-supported programs...
...Fred Schwarz, mass fundraising letter, Christian Anti-Communism Crusade, Nov...
...On the initiative of two U.S...
...Their own informants in Nicaragua may have included the head of the Nicaragua Bible Society who described a sight that made him shudder: "[The mobs] would throw their hands up and wail about imperialism.., they were clearly controlled by the devil...
...2 9 In the summer of 1982 over-zealous CDS groups occupied a number of Seventh Day Adventist, Jehovah's Witnesses and Mormon temples, which were returned after the intervention of CEPAD and other religious bodies...
...Hap Brooks, Guatemala City, May 1983...
...But the projection of a persecuted church is fundamental to Tijerino's scheme...
...In just one weekend they logged 800 Devotees sang evangelical songs for four hours at the Protestant centennial, San Salvador, 1982...
...Protestants also insist that "the requirements of national security and international order" be respected.' 9 Given the Reagan Administration's definition of the "strategic importance" of Central America, this can mean only one thing-that the religious Right will always oppose efforts by Central American Christians to see their faith as a mandate for liberation...
...Arch-conservative Texas commodities trader Nelson Bunker Hunt threw in $10 million for Here's Life in 1978-79, another $5 million to finance the film Jesus, and then secured $20 million during a weekend fundraiser with his friends...
...military weakness and economic disarray...
...By now, 22% of the population--1.5 million people-had converted...
...Heavenly Claims, Earthly Designs On a warm September day in 1983, a group of 75 Hispanic evangelical pastors made its way to a room in the Old Executive Office Building, next door to the White House...
...Military Ministries S1445 BOONVILLE...
...4 On his program Old Time Gospel Hour...
...6 Bright, a 61-year old Presbyterian layman, believes that his Campus Crusade is a vehicle through which God's plan can unfold...
...But as the clouds of right-wing hostility gathered around Rfos Montt, it became apparent that the same qualities that made evangelicals such docile subjects-sectarianism, passivity and "apoliticism" -made them reluctant allies in a political showdown...
...Marlise Simons, "Latin America's New Gospel," New York Times Magazine, November 7, 1982, p. 47...
...29-31, 1982, pp...
...others are headed by the media men like Falwell and Robertson, the providers of argument, the drawers of crowds...
...0 'a 0, 2324 new "decisions for Christ...
...Another Assemblies of God pastor, Rev...
...An Assemblies of God pastor who condemned the program as "destabilizing" found himself barred from preaching in Assemblies of God temples in the United States during a national speaking tour in 1983.23 * After the devastating spring floods in 1982, there were reports of pastors preaching that God was showing his disapproval at the "communist direction" of the government...
...7 Political Alliances The businessmen support the organization's work, with its talk of "national salvation" and "keeping America great," because they know it will keep the Bible from "being subverted...
...why a beloved desaparecido reappeared in Guatemala...
...CEPAD Director] GustavoParaj6n is introduced as a Conservative Baptist, but he's actually a Sandinista supporter," inveighed Ptacek...
...2, #1, Winter, 1980...
...evangelicals did not raise the $1 billion which Rios Montt said he expected from them, they did play an important public relations role for the general...
...Equally important are the grass-roots organizing forces...
...FaithAmerica is also sponsoring the Christian World Affairs Conference in 3132 NCAHpl Washington in February 1984, where select evangelicals will be briefed on "The Battle for Men's Minds...
...Four months after Somoza's overthrow in 1979, 500 evangelical pastors and leaders issued a declaration endorsing the FSLN government, and encouraging Christian participation in the CDS and the literacy crusade...
...Miguel Angel Casco et al, "Las Sectas en Nicaragua," paper delivered at Third Nicaraguan Congress of Social Sciences, Oct...
...Each year since then, Washington has played host to follow-up national prayer days led by Bright and Assemblies of God General Superintendent Zimmerman...
...As their occasion, they chose the celebration of Protestantism's centennial in Guatemala...
...4 3 For the religious pitch, Whittlesey turned to Kerry Ptacek, representative of the Institute for Religion and Democracy, the neoconservative "nonpartisan, non-political" Washington-based institute with whom the White House had worked a few months earlier on a conference on repression in Nicaragua...
...Instituto Hist6rico Centroamericano, Survey Research 1982, investigation in progress...
...Together with certain denominations, they have provoked a stronger expression of "other-worldly," pietistic spiritual28Jan/Feb 1984 29 ity since the revolution...
...three years later there were 27 with 1,027 members...
...iCristo es El Libertador...
...3. Group Research Report, June 25, 1980...
...Pentecostal Evangel, Oct...
...More than half the budget for Latin American operations is financed from the United States, and in countries such as El Salvador and Nicaragua the proportion is even higher...
...280-293...
...In a small house at a busy intersection in Managua, in the shadow of a billboard which dedares "There is only one God-the God of the poor," a Central American Church pastor divides up the 375,000 cordobas into 18 sealed envelopes, each destined to a denominational contact who will share out the "salary support" among a carefully screened list of pastors...
...Their activities include channeling undeclared funds to conservative Nicaraguan preachers and producing educational materials that spread anti-communist fears through ungrounded charges...
...The link between evangelical growth and the administration's political offensive is made vivid by the flow of money, the design of organizational strategy and the production and marketing of doctrinal materials...
...Two years into the campaign Campus Crusade was claiming 64,000 new converts nationwide...
...National newsletters from around the region are replete with examples of the power of prayer...
...Campus Crusade Campus Crusade for Christ-known in Cen30Jan/Feb 1904 tral America as the Student and Professional Crusade for Christ or the Movimiento Alfay Omega, is not a church or denomination but a "paraecclesial" agency designed to boost the organizing efforts of local churches...
...5 Ptacek's audience-made up of Assemblies of God, Church of God, and others accustomed to viewing the world as the battleground between God and Satan, raised no questions...
...troops to El Salvador, the CIA's war to overthrow the Sandinistas, and the invasion of Cuba...
...1 6 It was the biggest show of public support for Rios Montt in his seventeen months in power, suggesting that a mobilized evangelical community could become a lasting base of political 26Jan/Fe 198427 support...
...11-14...
...He is unconcerned about the source of the money...
...During a 40-week study course, the organization quietly introduces the new convert to its political orientation...
...Revista Centenario (Guatemala), December, 1982, p. 5. 17...
...In the newly established "strategic hamlets," they became the preferred liaison between the army and the local community, leading civil defense patrols and weeding out guerrilla sympathizers...
...The Guardian (London and Manchester), Aug...
...For the dffice director in Costa Rica, "the theology of liberation people are nothing more than masked communists...
...We need and appreciate your continued support...
...Instituto Hist6rico Centroamericano, "The Ideological Struggle in Nicaragua's Protestant Churches," Envio (15), Sept...
...They suggested that the revolution had brought the Devil to power-or at least his allies...
...denomination pulled out its missionaries-conservatively estimated to number 101 in 1979.22 Campus Crusade's director left for Honduras "for political reasons" and Evangelism in Depth (IINDEF) moved its offices to Costa Rica...
...Such pastoral education and orientation programs are a particularly strategic vehicle for political manipulation, given the pastor's pivotal role in the local community...
...3 9 In 1980 Bright was co-chair with Pat Robertson of the Christian Broadcasting Network of the two-day "Washington for Jesus" event, with prayer sessions to overcome U.S...
...The Central American crisis will be a key item on the agenda...
...After all, there is a history of policy recommendations for an offensive to be waged against Latin American liberation theology, including the 1969 Rockefeller Report on Latin America and the more recent Committee of Santa Fe document in 1980...
...Tijerino is also the Central American representa*IINDEF directorJean Kessler resigned from his fpost in July 1983...
...Here's Life grew out of Bright's "plan to turn our nation back to God" given "the very real possibility of a foreign power taking over our nation and the fact that our economy could collapse...
...Faced with the emergence of an evangelical sector in the region which is supportive of structural change, the Right has begun to promote its own conservative brand of Christianity as "neutral" or "pure...
...The late Representative Larry McDonald, also of theJohn Birch Society, was on the board of Wycliffe Bible Translators...
...A study in October 1982 of four small established Pentecostal denominations in the Matagalpa andJinotega regions showed growth from a combined total of 22 churches to 54, and an increase in membership from 1,072 to 3,157...
...But military strategists recognized that lasting gains depended on instituting permanent controls over the rural population...
...Pastoral letter of the General Assembly of CEPAD to the Christian Churches of the United States, the People of the United States, and all People of Good Will, March 16, 1982...
...That year, Campus Crusade boasted 43,400 new converts for Christ, organized into 233 "renewal groups...
...Their response in the United States has been to condemn those Christians as "communists" or their "allies" and to support increased mission and educational work among them, in line with traditional missionary models...
...Our Assemblies of God Military Ministries Is busy around the world preparing men and women to "withstand the evil day...
...Good against evil" translates easily into "communism versus American-style capitalism" to build a strategic consensus...
...CEPAD's twelve regional directors for this National Emergency Plan were subsequently targeted for killing by the contra...
...Smuggled Dollars, Smuggled Bibles Whatever the origin of their money and strategy, more than a few evangelical groups are aiding the destabilization of the Nicaraguan government...
...Meanwhile, Conlan's new organization, FaithAmerica Foundation, is organizing the American Constitutional Liberties Rally in April 1984, where Reagan and others are set to make the link between "national weakness" and "Christian mission...
...The charge is not a facile one...
...The appeal of evangelicals to the Right's political agenda in Central America takes many forms...
...Using Campus Crusade's organizing skills and Conlan's connections on the Republican Right, it sought to build on Bright's impressive existing network among pastors...
...The electoral fraud brought no miracle, but a military coup sixteen days later did...
...By late October 1982, the army had driven the insurgents out of much of the highlands and on to the defensive...
...65802 Ad from the Assemblies of God weekly magazine, Pentecostal Evangel, 1982...
...Rios Montt's overthrow on August 8, 1983, has not lessened the pervasive ideological influence of Guatemala's evangelicals, nor their usefulness to ruling groups...
...Campus Crusade now spends $90 million a year around the globe-twice the amount of six years ago-to fulfill its evangelism mission...
...Pat Robertson was a strong supporter of Rios Montt, lobbying for "mercy helicopters" to Guatemala during the congressional ban on arms transfers...
...ment, can change education, can change the entire world," he explained when launching his campaign in the mid-1970s...
...2 4 * When sugar rationing began, certain groups told members not to accept ration cards because they were a sign of the "apocalyptic beast...
...6. Jim Wallis, Wes Michaelson, "The Plan to Save America," Sojourners Magazine, April 1976...
...But it has dispelled the notion that they could become an active political force...
...14 The frenzied counterinsurgency campaign Dan Wasserman/Los Angeles Times that followed Rios Montt's takeover did not spare Protestants...
...Executive Director of the Moral Majority, Ron Goodwin, is one of twelve board members of the Citizens' Committee on the Crisis in the Americas, whose platform includes "a clear cut policy of victory in Central America" over the Salvadorean rebels and the Sandinista government...
...4. Deborah Huntington and Ruth Kaplan, "Whose Gold Is Behind the Altar...
...Speech delivered by Kerry Ptacek, September 14, 1983...
...5 These sectors find in Bill Bright and Campus Crusade an instrument to promote their political interests...
...another is the Assemblies of God, which 20 years ago shed its traditionally pacifist stance...
...some groups actively crusade against "the idea that the church should be used for the liberation of people rather than the salvation of souls...
...Christians urging them to intercede against the "intolerant and arrogant attitudes of the government of the United States towards Nicaragua...
...why a bomb in a San Salvador church failed to explode...
...To Tijerino, Costa Rica is Nicaragua's "Hong Kong"-a place to produce cassettes, training manuals, audiovisuals and other resources used in "survival techniques" against a "communist" government...
...In Latin America this will "eventually mean the transformation of Latin American values...
...With Christian firmness," they declared, "we condemn all counter-revolutionary intent...
...15, 1983...
...The CIA had used missionaries not only as informers but as operatives in Chile, Bolivia and Brazil in the 1950s and 1960s.28 In fact, an entire CIA campaign in Cuba promoted the imminent second coming of Christ, with dire consequences predicted for Fidel Castro...
...NACLA interview with Manuel Tijerino, May 29, 1983...
...A "Prayer Target" list handed out at a Presbyterian Church in North Carolina, for example, urged members to pray for the Guatemalan government and its counterinsurgency campaign...
...The religious response to national situations as diverse as Guatemala and Nicaragua reveals a remarkable flexibility of doctrine...
...The White House has recently courted evangelical support for its Central America policy, to offset liberal Protestant dissent...
...4 Early in the campaign in 1977, one fundraiser noted that, "Pledges have been received from presidents of some international companies who said that they will contribute to the campaign as long as the money is targeted for specific countries...
...These promoted the notion that, "The American system is the expression of Christian ideas," and that the formation of the United States was the "single most important" event since the birth of Christ...
...NACLA interview with Campus Crusade Office Director for Costa Rica, Monolo Madrigal, San Josi, Costa Rica, June 3, 1983...
...Efrafn Rios Montt, a devout born-again Christian and member of the Church of the Word, a mission of the Californiabased Gospel Outreach...
...o Third, Campus Crusade, Assemblies of God and other U.S.-based organizations active in...
...Believers were urged to give what they could afford at the Protestant centennial, San Salvador, 1982...
...a, 25NACLA Report How then is this "neoconservative offensive" manifested in the religious community in the United States and in Central America...
...Courted both by the Guatemalan government-which hosted numerous visits by U.S...
...A National Security Council adviser "cautioned the evangelicals against Leftist appeals for the church in Latin America to promote revolution...
...Evidence of the depth of support which the opposition had built during years of quiet organizing shocked the evangelical community as much as private business...
...Campus Crusade is one...
...his only worry is that needy Nicaraguan pastors can continue the work of evangelism in readiness for Christ's return...
...3 Other support includes four- to five-digit donations from the founder of Holiday Inns, the past president of McDonnell Douglas Aircraft, and corporate contributions from Mobil, Coca-Cola, Adolph Coors and Pepsico...
...At one point the city was a sea of 21,000 multicolor posters bearing the campaign catch phrase, "Ya lo encontr6...
...40...
...Evangelical organizations and faith missions responded with millions of dollars in aid and a legion of missionaries to dispense it...
Vol. 18 • January 1984 • No. 1
