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In the face of ceaseless killing and mounting political pressure, one of the smallest evangelical communities in the world is struggling to stay true to its values of nonviolence and interethnic fellowship while simultaneously responding to a growing interest in the gospel.

"I am an Albanian, and I am hoping for an independent Kosovo," says Ranko P., an emerging evangelical leader in the ethnically Albanian but politically Serbian province of Kosovo at the heart of the Balkans.

"There is no alternative to independence," he adds firmly. "But as a Christian I renounce violence, so I do not support the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA)."

Reluctantly, Ranko admits that, at times, he feels hatred toward the Serbs. "But Jesus has kept me from going to the mountains," he says, using an old idiom that connotes "joining the rebels," in this case the KLA, the Albanian guerrillas engaging the Serbian government forces in the latest of the wars fragmenting and devastating the former Yugoslavia.

Kosovo-Albanian evangelicals take a clear stand for peace and reconciliation. Soon after the outbreak of war in March 1998, they appealed to the international church to pray for "dialogue and understanding between the peoples in Yugoslavia." But Ranko admits that the political pressures make it increasingly difficult for Christians to live according to their values. "We want to be 100 percent Christians, and 100 percent Albanians, but it is hard to keep the balance," he explains. "If we emphasize our Albanian identity, we are rebels to the ruling Serbs. If we stress the unity of all believers, including the unity with Serbian Christians, we are traitors to the KLA." Ranko says, "We take our people to Bible training in Serbia. If Serbian believers come to us, we welcome them in the privacy of our homes. But we don't evangelize among the Serbs living in Kosovo, and we don't speak about our contacts with Serbs in public."

After a pause he thoughtfully adds, "You hear of the KLA executing traitors. And the Serbian police keep threatening us."

STRUGGLE INTENSIFIES: Kosovo has been called the "West Bank of Yugoslavia." The Serbs, predominantly Orthodox Christians as are the Russians, claim the land for historical and religious reasons. The Muslim Albanians, constituting 90 percent of the province's 2.2 million inhabitants, hold that Kosovo is their homeland. The modern-day conflict started in 1981, escalated in 1991, and exploded last March. Last year, more than 2,000 Albanians and 1,000 Serbs were killed in the war. Serbian forces wiped out more than 2,000 Albanian villages, leaving hundreds of thousands homeless (CT, March 6, 1995, p. 56). Neither side respects the armistice enforced by nato in October. The unemployment rate is 70 percent. According to the Austrian branch of Caritas, one of the major humanitarian agencies operating in the former Yugoslavia, 800,000 Kosovo-Albanians are in desperate need of outside aid to survive the winter.

EVANGELICALS PINPOINTED: The evangelical church community in Kosovo comprises less than.01 percent of Kosovo-Albanians and numbers no more than 200. Most believers are young; many are teenagers. The war is adding to the pressures of living among a vast Muslim majority.

"So far, no believer has been killed or badly hurt during the war," Ranko told Christianity Today. "The churches are in the cities, and the war is being fought on the countryside. But our pastors cannot travel to visit with and support each other, because the KLA frequently holds up cars and buses to force young men 'to the mountains,' that is, to draft them." In today's Kosovo, Ranko says, only women can travel with some measure of safety.

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February 8 1999, Vol. 43, No. 2