Information about Israeli government involvement with the antimissionary organization Yad Le’achim, reported in the August 17 issue, page 47, was not derived from Alhamishmar as indicated, but from Zerokor, another Jerusalem newspaper.
The late J. Barton Payne’s son Philip was incorrectly identified as a TEAM missionary in the August 17 issue, page 51. He serves in Japan with the Evangelical Free Church.
Joseph Bayly has been appointed general director of the Christian Medical Society. Bayly, who will continue as vice-president of David C. Cook Publishing Company, replaces Haddon Robinson, who resigned to become president of Conservative Baptist Seminary in Denver, Colorado.
Bill Bright, founder and president of Campus Crusade for Christ International, was honored recently by the Christian Booksellers Association in connection with the authorship of the evangelism booklet, “The Four Spiritual Laws.” The pervasive witnessing tool was first published in 1965 and since has been translated into 82 languages with an estimated 500 million copies printed.
Daniel E. Weiss, president of Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Philadelphia and Eastern College in St. Davids, Pennsylvania, has been elected board chairman of the Christian College Coalition. The three-year-old Coalition monitors legislation and issues affecting Christian colleges and involves about 40 accredited liberal arts colleges with a total student population of 46,000.
R. Keith Parks was elected executive director of the Southern Baptist Foreign Mission Board last month. Parks, a missionary in Indonesia for 14 years before being named area secretary for Southeast Asia, succeeds Baker James Cauthen, who will retire on January 1 after 26 years at the post.
Carl Mischke is the newly-elected president of the 400,000-member Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Church. Previously the denomination’s first vice-president, he had been acting president since the June 19 death of president Oscar J. Naumann.
NEWTON GINGRICH, 53, chairman since 1978 of the Mennonite Central Committee—Pennsylvania-based association serving most major Mennonite denominations in the United States and Canada—and a former moderator (1973–75) of the 96,000-member Mennonite Church; August 1 in Drumbo, Ontario, of a heart attack.
JOHN WRIGHT, 70, Roman Catholic Cardinal who, as the chief administrator for the world’s 500,000 priests, was the highest ranking American in the Vatican; he was controversial for his liberal, as well as conservative, causes—including support of the civil rights movement and opposition to ordination of women priests; August 10, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, after a long illness.
The kidnaping of Gudina Tumsa in Addis Ababa on July 28, just five weeks after his release from a second imprisonment, underscored the confused nature of an intensifying campaign against Protestant Christians in Ethiopia. Tumsa, 49, general secretary of the Ethiopian Evangelical (Lutheran) Mekane Yesus Church and chairman of the Council for Cooperation of Churches in Ethiopia, was leaving his denominational headquarters with his wife when both were abducted by a group of unidentified armed men in civilian clothing. His wife subsequently was released, but Tumsa’s whereabouts remained unknown.
Ethiopian authorities have hardened their attitudes toward Protestant Christians in recent months, according to a report from London published in the Austrian Evangelical Press Service (epd ö) in Vienna. The military junta has set up an internal committee to deal with church affairs, and seems most concerned about groups that have stated their opposition to excesses in the implementation of the socialist program.
Tumsa’s June imprisonment, for instance, stemmed from accusations that he was responsible for documents produced by his denomination that discussed Christianity and socialism.
Persecution, the press service reported, seems to be directed especially at the Pentecostal movement; but all Protestant churches and groupings are classed as Pentecostals and contemptuously called “Penties” in the current campaign. Ethiopia’s Protestant churches obviously have not been recognized by the authorities and revolutionary agitators as “traditional religions.” According to the reports, only Islam and the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, whose leadership is conformist, qualify. The more independent Protestant churches and congregations, which appeal especially to Ethiopian youth and express their convictions openly, apparently will no longer be tolerated. The state attitude toward the Roman Catholic Church is not yet clear.
Although freedom of religion is the officially stated line, says the report, it is known that Christians still are being imprisoned in many provinces, that churches have been closed, and that in many places Christians have been threatened with reprisals if they continue to attend religious services.
Some representative specific items:
• Le Messager Evangélique, a French Protestant paper, reports that political activists often force their way into private houses to break up “Penty” prayer meetings and groups studying the Bible. In Addis Ababa and Debre Zeit, youth gatherings recently were broken up and participants arrested.
(The same paper reports that all churches in the Kebre Mengist District of Sidamo Province have been closed. Protestants have been forbidden under threat of torture and execution to hold any kind of religious gathering. Here and elsewhere Christians are forced to make a written declaration that they will no longer attend church services.)
• The newspaper Addis Semen described a talk by the governor of Wollega Province, Negussie Fanta, to 121 young Christians, who had been denounced by the revolutionary youth organization, arrested by the local militia, and brought to Nekemte for a 12-day political reeducation course. The youths were warned to stop participating in meetings of their churches, which were branded as “conspiracies of a false and pestilential culture” hiding under the cloak of religion. Fanta told the interned Ethiopians that if they refused to support the revolution, or did so only unwillingly, they could not expect to be treated gently.
• The Lutheran World Federation quotes from a situation report it received last month: “In the provincial capital of Nekemte 88 people are still in prison. Others have been released after being more or less successfully ‘re-educated.’ One girl, who is known by name, was tortured so badly in prison that she died soon after being released. There is very strong pressure on young people who continue to declare themselves Christians. Up until now 33 churches and 31 preaching centers in and near Nekemte have been closed.”
The report continues, “In Illubabor also six churches are closed and their congregations under pressure. The toughest measures against non-Orthodox Christians are reported from Kaffa, where a young man was shot and two others wounded. Pastors and other members of congregations are in prison. Torturing is also reported.”
• More of the same kind of persecution is reported from other provinces, such as Gemu Goffa and Shoa.
Uganda
Taking Vigorous Exception
Uganda’s Christian and Muslim leaders issued a joint appeal in July for the restoration of law, democracy, and security in their troubled nation. The call was sent to President Godfrey L. Binaisa, who abruptly replaced Yusufu K. Lule in June, less than 10 weeks after the overthrow of Idi Amin.
The appeal was signed by Anglican Archbishop Silvanus G. Wani, Roman Catholic Cardinal Emmanuel K. Nsubuga of Kampala, Orthodox Bishop Theodorus Nankyama, and Muslim Chief Khadi K. Mulumba. They expressed disillusionment over “the huge gap between promise and fulfillment” by the Uganda National Liberation Front (UNLF), the coalition of exile leaders that assumed power in April.
The four men cited complaints, voiced to them by the public, including:
• No published text of the “Moshi Resolutions,” which were drafted at the formative conference of the UNLF in Moshi, Tanzania, and on which the UNLF says it bases Ugandan policy.
• A “premature and too abrupt change in government.” The turbulence in Lule’s brief administration has been traced to clashes between conservative, pro-Western members of the Front leadership, most of whom belong to the Baganda tribe, and the more socialist-oriented ministers who are believed to favor a political role for Milton Obote, under whom Bagandans had suffered. Obote was overthrown by Idi Amin in 1971.
• Internal insecurity, with the “liberation army acting in no better way than the soldiers of the former regime.”
• A ban on freedom of expression and peaceful demonstrations.
• Efforts to place soldiers in “administrative posts” throughout the country, which “smells [of] the return of a military government.”
• The seeming introduction of “a one-party system.”
The religious leaders called for publication of the Moshi Resolutions and clarification between them and the present constitution, and a more “democratic” and “representative” Consultative Council. They also urged a crackdown on rampaging soldiers, together with an upgrading of the quality of the armed forces, and a better trained police force “to combat rampant crime.”
South Africa
Being Somebody Alienates Almost Everybody
Jesse Jackson, the Chicago-based, black activist preacher, completed his two-week tour of South Africa early last month amid protests from both the religious and political left and right wings.
It was initially thought that Jackson’s outspoken criticism of the South African government’s policy of apartheid—he termed it “ungodly”—would bring objections only from the right. But his successful effort to bring together three black South African leaders who have long been at loggerheads sparked a strong attack from an influential staff member of the South African Council of Churches (SACC).
Just before leaving South Africa, Jackson arranged a five-hour meeting between Gatsha Buthelezi, chief minister of the KwaZulu “homeland”; Desmond Tutu, Anglican bishop and SACC general secretary; and Nthato Motlana, chairman of the Committee of Ten, which represents the radical left in Soweto, the huge township on the outskirts of Johannesburg where racial unrest began in 1976.
Bishop Tutu, regarded as the most influential black churchman in South Africa, and Motlana have refused any involvement in the government’s attempts to create separate political and social structures for blacks. But Chief Buthelezi, an outspoken critic of apartheid, has opted for limited cooperation with the government. He has said it is his Christian duty to maintain dialogue with his opponents.
Jackson obtained the black leaders’ commitment to seek “operational unity” and to refrain from attacking each other publicly. His efforts, however, prompted a rebuke from Thomas Manthata, who works for the Justice and Reconciliation Division of the SACC.
Manthata, also a member of the Committee of Ten, has twice been detained without trial by the South African government. He called Jackson “a diabolical western agent who has his eye on election to the United States Congress.”
Jackson left South Africa with the declared goal of obtaining cancellation of the world heavyweight boxing championship fight between South Africa’s Gerrie Coetzee and America’s John Tate, due to be held October 20 in Pretoria. (Because of racial separation in sports, South Africa has been barred from international competition in many fields. Jackson seeks to convince Tate that going ahead with the match would be “a betrayal of his own people.”)
During his visit, Jackson met with top leaders in the political, religious, economic, and commercial fields. This included an interview with Piet Koornhof, department minister responsible for black affairs who has advocated gradual liberalization of the race laws. Jackson was impressed with Koornhof, saying he was “like a breath of fresh air in the National [governing] Party.” He pleaded that Koornhof not be left to stand alone.
THEO COGGIN
Northern Ireland
The Great Papal Nonevent
Did Pope John Paul II intend to visit Northern Ireland during his trip to Ireland this month? After a spate of rumors, the Vatican announced that such a visit “was never foreseen.” But Irish Roman Catholic bishops had gone so far as to map out a Northern Ireland itinerary for John Paul, the first reigning Pope to visit Ireland. Armagh, the ecclesiastical capital of Irish Catholicism, lies north of the border and was an obvious destination.
The announcement of the Pope’s proposed visit, to occur while enroute to the United States, produced the inevitable reaction. The Roman Catholic population at large expressed great delight; the ecumenical wing of the Protestant churches gave loud acclaim; and Ian Paisley, clergy leader of the Protestant Democratic Unionist Party, protested loudly and even threatened huge demonstrations and a possible confrontation with security forces if the Pope crossed the border from the Irish Republic. The Irish Council of Churches said it would welcome a visit.
William Craig, the strongly evangelical moderator of the Irish Presbyterian church, took a firm but courteous stand. He recognized the right of Northern Irish Roman Catholics to welcome the Pope, but said he himself would not be prepared to meet him. Craig stressed, however, that his reasons were theological rather than personal, in view of the major issues that still divide Rome from the churches of the Reformation.
A letter to the press from Herbert Carson, endorsed by 11 other Baptist ministers, took a similar line. It rejected the intolerance of those who opposed the Pope’s visit to the North, denying Catholics their civil and religious liberty. This was an unbiblical position, the pastors argued; it was also inconsistent, they said, since those protesting were themselves ready to claim the liberty to cross the border and preach in the Catholic South. At the same time the Baptists distanced themselves from the ecumenical euphoria; they said the visit was strongly oriented toward the cult of Mary, thus detracting from the unique glory of Christ.
Observers noted the irony of a situation in which the same pontiff who was able to go behind the Iron Curtain appeared to be blocked from Northern Ireland by the threat of Paisleyite demonstrations.
Burma
Opening the Door Just a Crack
The visit last month to the United States by Lalthanliana, Burma field director of Bibles for the World, was another indication that the revolutionary government of Burma is cautiously relaxing its isolationist posture.
The regime of General Ne Win, who came to power in 1962, moved to restrict foreign influence in 1966. It evicted all Protestant and most Roman Catholic foreign missionaries, and nationalized all private hospitals and schools (except theological schools). At the same time, until late last year travel abroad for religious conferences was virtually impossible. Visitors’ visas to Burma were valid for only 48 hours.
It is now possible for churchmen, who are officially invited, to leave Burma for a religious purpose, and visitors’ visas have been extended to one week.
Burma’s great horseshoe of mountains, ringing the Irrawaddy River plains to the west, north, and east, historically have insulated the Burmese from the Indian and Chinese populations on either side. But Chinese insurgency in the north of Burma and China’s recent attack on Vietnam are thought to have shaken the authorities’ assumption that the Burmese brand of socialism would stave off Communist infiltration.
Lalthanliana, informally known as Thana, believes his government is now unleashing religious forces, hoping these will serve as a deterrent to Marxist ideology.
This strategy may be effective among the tribal people of the mountains. Adoniram Judson and most missionaries since have found the plains Burmese solidly Buddhist and resistant to Christianity. But the mountain tribesmen, animistic in background, have been more responsive. The Karen of eastern Burma—some 7 percent of the Burmese population—are 20 percent Christian (largely Baptist).
Last year the less numerous Kachin of northern Burma—less than 2 percent of the population—celebrated the centennial of missions work among them. The Kachin are 50 percent Christian, and their churches celebrated by baptizing 6,000 in one day, and by commissioning 300 young men to evangelistic work in Kachin State where Communist infiltration is a threat.
Leader of the Kachin revivalist thrust is U Khun Naung, a retired army colonel. General Ne Win recently asked Khun to serve in his cabinet, and Khun accepted with the understanding that he would still be allowed to preach.
Thana belongs to the Lushai tribe, which straddles the Indo-Burmese border on the west (known as the Mizo tribe in India, where secessionist guerrillas are battling the government). Born in India, Thana’s father R. Dala was an interpreter for Watkin Roberts, an early Welsh missionary, and among his earliest converts. (Bibles for the World president Rochunga Pudaite is the son of a convert of Dala.)
Thana moved as a missionary from the Mizo to the Lushai side of his tribal territory. Then, as the expulsion of foreign missionaries approached in 1965, Thana applied for and obtained Burmese citizenship.
Within months, Thana says, he was victim of a frame-up: an ammunition cache was planted in his pigpen, he says, and authorities were anonymously tipped off. He was arrested and imprisoned without trial for four years. Thana had written 20 books of Bible exposition for the Lushai church by the time of his 1970 release.
Thana estimates there were 3,000 Lushai believers when he went to prison in 1966. Thana’s Evangelical Free Church in Burma (no relation to the North American denomination) now fields 80 Lushai evangelists, and the church is 14,000 strong.
Thana administers this thriving mountain ministry from the capital, Rangoon. There he also pastors a congregation of mountain tribal people who have been transferred to the plains city. He represents his people before officials in halting Burmese.
Thana does report some response, however, among the majority Burmese. Six Buddhist priests, he says, were converted in a recent Campus Crusade for Christ campaign. They continue to itinerate in their saffron robes; but now, to the consternation of their former coreligionists, they are proclaiming the gospel.
World Scene
The South African Council of Churches cautiously edged toward endorsing civil disobedience at its July conference. Some apartheid laws, the delegates declared, are “morally so objectionable that we cannot obey them with a clear conscience.” Their resolution went on to offer “moral encouragement” to individuals and groups “who commit themselves to acts of conscious affirmation of interracial fellowship” that may be illegal.
More details have surfaced on church repression in Mozambique. The All Africa Conference of Churches reports that since January the Marxist state Frelimo Party has nationalized and closed 15 Roman Catholic churches, including a cathedral; a number of Anglican churches, including the country’s only Anglican cathedral; three Presbyterian churches; and one Nazarene church. The only Catholic seminary in Mozambique closed after all 20 students were inducted into the armed forces.
More than 30,000 persons canceled their memberships in the Church of Sweden during 1978. The official information center of the church (the largest in Lutheranism) reported this was its largest single-year membership decline ever recorded.
The three American youths imprisoned by Czech authorities in July were released last month (Aug. 17, 1979, issue, p. 47). They had been held incommunicado in separate cells in Brno for most of their 34-day detention. Told they were being held on charges of smuggling or attempting to smuggle Bibles, the three were questioned but not formally interrogated. They were not brought to trial, but were released at the same Austrian border crossing at which they had been arrested.
A unique church growth strategy in suburban Lima, Peru, is a rousing success. Beginning with a 120-member house church in Lince in 1973, the Christian and Missionary Alliance built a modern 1,000-person capacity church building (to appeal to the burgeoning middle class) and imported an Argentinian pastor. The Alliance also launched a nearly continuous evangelism effort in Lince, with two-week campaigns every month. The Lince church recently went to two Sunday morning services, and 200 persons have enrolled in its twice-weekly Bible academy for new converts. In 1975, the CMA repeated the process by building a 2,000-capacity church for the Pueblo Libre congregation.
Indonesian authorities appear to have adopted a policy of phasing out the work of Christian missionaries. Missionaries whose annual visas require renewal and who have been in the country for five years or more are being notified that they will be granted only six-month visas. Southern Baptist sources say the action immediately affects about 100 missionaries.
President Jimmy Carter disclosed that he witnessed to Korean president Park Chung Hee during his visit to Seoul last June. While teaching his adult Bible class last month at the First Baptist Church of Washington, Carter touched on the Christian’s duty to win new followers, and cited his own experience. In a meeting with about 20 Korean Catholic and Protestant religious leaders, Billy Kim, a leading Presbyterian minister, had urged him to make the attempt. A short time later, Carter said, he and Park, a Buddhist, were traveling together in a car, with only an interpreter and a security guard. “I told him about our faith,” Carter told the class. “He was very interested.” Pressed for time, Carter recommended that Park pursue the subject with clergyman Kim.
Cuba
Bible Smuggling Comes Home to Roost
A single-engine Piper aircraft took off from Nassau, Bahamas, on Saturday, May 26. Its cargo was 750 pounds of Spanish-language proreligious/anti-Communist leaflets sealed in plastic. On the covers were illustrations of Marx and Lenin. The light craft’s flight plan was cleared for overflight of Cuba, enroute to Montego Bay, Jamaica.
Late that night, the plane made radio contact with air traffic controllers at Kingston, Jamaica. The pilot reported a possible distress situation: he was low on fuel. Still over Cuba, he said he could see the night lights of Montego Bay across the 150-mile stretch of the Caribbean. The plane crash-landed on the south coast of Cuba at about 11:46 P.M. Not long afterward, Cuban officials reported on the radio network that the two occupants of the downed craft were uninjured.
A U.S. State Department source reported the Cuban charge that the plane had been dropping leaflets along the Cuban shoreline. The two Americans aboard were placed in a Havana prison for political offenders. It was not until six weeks later, on August 3, that U.S. consular officials were first allowed to visit them.
The plane’s passenger was Tom White, 31, a former schoolteacher who has been on the payroll of Jesus to the Communist World since April 1976. (White’s wife, Ofelia, continues to receive support from JTTCW.)
Michael Wurmbrand, general director of the Glendale, California-based mission organization, maintains that the flight was in no way instigated or approved by him, but was plotted alone by White for the long Memorial Day weekend. If JTTCW were going to engage in such an operation, Wurmbrand says, it would use one of its own two planes.
Instead, says Wurmbrand, White apparently decided to draw on a $30,000 to 40,000 legacy from his father’s death to provide “a gift to the Cuban people.” The plane’s cargo of literature, although identical to a JTTCW leaflet, was printed by White, he says, in a Glendale print shop.
The pilot was Melvin Bailey, 32, a Newport News, Virginia, computer programmer with 10 years of military flight experience and a commercial license, who had rented the $30,000 plane. A “for deposit only” check from JTTCW for rental of the plane was received and banked on May 22. (White had assured Bailey that he would insure the flight, but no evidence that he did has surfaced.)
Bailey’s wife Mary says that until the day before the overflight, he had never met White. Bailey had written to JTTCW perhaps as early as February of 1978, offering his services as needed, and mentioning that he was a pilot. White, who processed such correspondence, recruited Bailey through handwritten correspondence on JTTCW letterhead dated April 27 and 30 of this year.
Mary Bailey says that her husband was aware that the material was to be dropped over Cuba, but that he believed the material was to be Scripture portions. The correspondence, she says, indicated that JTTCW had knowledge gleaned from previous overflights. Bailey intended to donate his time. The two men rendezvoused in Florida, loaded the plane, and proceeded together to Nassau.
White’s mother, Dorothy Shields, of Dallas, Texas, says her son called very early on the morning of Friday, May 25, to let her know he was beginning his adventure. She recalls that he mentioned he had discussed the project with Michael Wurmbrand during the preceding day or two.
Mrs. Bailey, who held a part-time position as a shorthand and speedwriting instructor, says she has been forced to take a second job to provide for herself and two small children. She says that although she contacted JTTCW, no help was forthcoming until August (after CHRISTIANITY TODAY inquiries).
A U.S. State Department source said Cuba has charged the pair with illegal entry and dissemination of anti-state propaganda, but did not know when they would stand trial. There is little basis for U.S. government intervention, the source said.
Regardless of the outcome, the incident brought closer to home the controversial activities of Bible-smuggling organizations targeted at Communist nations.
HARRY GENET
