While politicians and military men search for more than just a paper peace in South Viet Nam, many of the country’s beleaguered inhabitants are finding it—in God.
It’s been a year now since Le Van Thien, a 21-year old student at the Christian and Missionary Alliance (CMA) Bible school in Nha Trang, sparked a revival that spread throughout the land (see May 26 issue, page 32). During the Christmas break, the 120 Bible school students fanned out to their home churches and towns, furthering the movement. In the ensuing months, nearly 100 churches reported widespread renewal among members, and there were thousands of conversions. (About 95 per cent of the Protestants in South Viet Nam belong to the 375 congregations of the Evangelical Church of Viet Nam, affiliated with the CMA. The CMA has worked in the region since 1911.)
Some missionaries say that a vast spiritual outpouring was already under way among the Stieng Montagnards in the hills above An Loc and among the Bru tribes in Quang Tri province to the north when the movement at Nha Trang began.
As the revival proceeded, there were numerous reports of miracles, especially healings. Some of these were confirmed by missionaries on the scene. (A CHRISTIANITY TODAY correspondent says that films and well-publicized reports of the Indonesian revival may have contributed to the emphasis on miracles.)
There were several accounts of persons being raised from the dead. In one, a fifteen-year-old Montagnard named Djhang of the village of Lac Thien died of heart disease in May. But he arose after pastor Y Tang and elders of the village church prayed over him. Afterward, he visited dozens of churches with the story of what he had heard and seen in heaven.
Conversion accounts abound. One of the best known is about a young man who passed a church on his way to carry out a robbery. He heard shouting and crying, went inside to investigate, and was converted.
“Thousands of tribal people are turning to Jesus,” reported visiting surgeon Raymond E. Benson of Billings, Montana.
Lowland Christians and highlanders confessed racist attitudes they held toward each other. “The spirit of brokenness and confession spread throughout the Montagnard believers,” said Overseas Crusade missionary John Newman.
Many church members confessed they had withheld tithes, a serious sin in Vietnamese minds, and made restitution. Regular giving picked up. In a not uncommon act, a disabled veteran gave his life savings to help rebuild a ruined church.
Multitudes of tribal people threw down their charms and repented from spiritism. President Doan Van Mieng of the Tin Lanh church says he was shocked to discover that a number of pastors’ sons had dabbled in spiritual magic.
With the spring invasion by North Vietnamese troops, bombings by the Americans, and counterattacks by government forces came death, deprivation, and dispersion. Many Christians, including pastors, were killed. In the village of Soc Be alone nearly 100 believers were killed, and several Christian young people were captured by the North Vietnamese. A number of churches were destroyed and several predominantly Christian villages were leveled.
Nevertheless, there were many stories of miraculous deliverance. Noted Stieng evangelist Dieu Huynh was severely wounded in the seventy-day siege of An Loc and narrowly escaped exploding shells in treatment centers. His fiancée and friends nursed him back to health, and on June 14 he stumbled into the office of CMA mission chairman Thomas H. Stebbins. “It was like seeing someone back from the dead,” exclaimed Stebbins.
An Loc was devastated, and Huynh and his church members lost everything. Today he is carrying on a ministry among 1,500 in Long Thanh, a resettlement area near An Loc, and hundreds are enrolled in his new believers’ classes.
Diana Read, a nurse from London serving with the United World Mission, tells of a North Vietnamese rocket that hit a Bato church filled with members praying for peace—and failed to explode. Another time, she says, moments after a pastor and some members fled from a bunker it was destroyed by a direct hit.
Despite the increased hazards, teams of young people went on with their evangelistic travels, braving bullets, bombs, and nighttime terrors of noman’s land, carrying the Gospel to village after village. Several insist that angels visibly walked with them.
The revival shows no signs of abating. Missionaries and church members are swamped with both relief and evangelism ministries. (More than 250,000 refugees came pouring into Da Nang in May alone.) In the last two months, say CMA officials, four new chapels were dedicated in Saigon, and two more are nearing completion. Three new chapels have been constructed in refugee centers, and new believers are meeting in temporary facilities in five other centers. All of the Bible schools have double the enrollment of last year—in spite of heavy draft calls.
At the turn of the year, 400 pastors and missionaries plan to gather in Dalat to reflect on the peace movement God has brought to their land.
Nagaland: Big Baptist Birthday
Until almost the last minute, it appeared that India would not permit evangelist Billy Graham to travel to Nagaland for a crusade scheduled as part of the centennial of Baptist work there. Guerrillas had attacked an army convoy days earlier, and Indian army officers disliked the prospects of huge crowds. When permission finally came, part of the Graham team was left stranded in Calcutta. Only Baptist Graham, associate evangelist-bodyguard T. W. Wilson, song leader Cliff Barrows, pianist Tedd Smith, black tenor Archie Dennis of Pittsburgh, and follow-up director Charles Riggs were allowed in. Associated Press reporter Myron L. Belkind accompanied them.
Kohima, the capital of Nagaland, normally has a population of 20,000. But 100,000 lined the streets to greet Graham’s motorcade. Many of them had hiked for days through dense forests. (About 350,000 of the state’s 520,000 inhabitants are Christians, mostly Baptists. Baptist missionary W. A. Clark of America, with the help of Christians from Assam, founded a church there in 1872. The Christian community experienced rapid growth. It is now totally under indigenous leadership.)
As many as 80,000 attended Bible studies conducted by Graham on two mornings, and more than 100,000 attended each of the three evening services, held on an athletic field. Nearly everybody stood up on the altar call the first night, a clear case of misunderstanding Graham’s invitation. But with more precise explanation the next two nights, the response was still huge.
Many of these people had arrived the preceding week to celebrate their one-hundredth birthday as Baptists. Baptist World Alliance president V. Carney Hargroves of Philadelphia was there. He said that more than 40,000 jammed into and around the huge thatched-roof structure that had been specially built for the occasion in the village of Impur. There were hours of singing and preaching.
A gap of several days occurred in the program when Graham’s associate evangelist, Akbar Abdul-Haqq, an Indian, canceled a scheduled preaching campaign, ostensibly because of the unpopularity of Indians in Nagaland.
Leaders of the underground movement that wants independence from India promised to observe a cease-fire during the celebration and crusade. But shots rang out in the distance as Graham prayed for the sick in a morning Bible study. Guerrillas had ambushed military forces three miles away. The evangelist appealed to the jittery crowd to remain calm, and only a few left.
Despite the heavy military presence and the occasional violence, Nagaland is known for its gentle, unselfish culture. “It’s beautiful to see,” says Tedd Smith. “Nobody has much, but everybody helps each other. It’s what Jesus was all about. I hope India keeps on keeping out the foreigners so it isn’t wrecked.”
A century ago, the fourteen tribes of Nagaland (it is situated in India’s northeast corner, along the borders of Burma and China) were animists, and some were even headhunters. But a Baptist missionary changed all that.
David Wilkerson: A Best-Seller in Brazil
Judging by the advance publicity, evangelist David Wilkerson’s sixteen-day crusade in Brazil was aimed at reaching the burgeoning drug population of the land. But most of the reported 250,000 who showed up to hear him in the seven cities visited were from the evangelical community, leading him to complain publicly about his lack of contact with non-Christians. Nevertheless, Wilkerson’s office later announced that 25,000 decisions had been recorded in the thirteen services where he spoke.
Several government officials, including the nation’s minister of education and the governors of the districts of São Paulo and Brasilia, met with Wilkerson to discuss the worsening drug problem among Brazil’s young people. The evangelist announced later that a Teen Challenge center will be established next year in Rio de Janeiro.
The crusade was billed as the first interdenominational youth campaign in Brazilian history. Representatives of most major denominations cooperated. Many Catholic priests urged their young people to attend the meetings, and the Catholic response was almost consistently favorable.
Seemingly, the least cooperation came from campaign organizers. There were delays, fouled communications, bad acoustics, and mixed-up schedules. And there was apparently little organized follow-up for those who signed decision cards. Some of the problems were probably traceable to a cultural gap between U. S. and Brazilian coordinators. Brazilians aren’t as organizationally oriented as Americans.
But despite the snags and confusion, the campaign over all was a big plus for the evangelical cause. Reporters swarmed Wilkerson in each of the cities and gave his meetings wide coverage. Manchete, the country’s leading magazine, interviewed him, and he appeared on the nation’s top-rated television show. (A Portuguese translation of Wilkerson’s book The Cross and the Switchblade is currently Brazil’s religious best-seller.) The evangelist pointed the newsmen to a spreading Jesus movement among Brazilian high schoolers and collegians.
A single service in Belem attracted more than 50,000, and in some meetings it was reported that as many as 15,000 were turned away. Assemblies of God missionary leader Reginald Hoover said that the crusade gave existing church youth groups new impetus. Some leaders even attributed an increase in confiscation of drugs and arrests of pushers to the conversion of many drug-users.
Those who attended the meeting in Campinas, an agricultural center near São Paulo, will long remember the altar call at that meeting. As is Wilkerson’s custom, he asked young people who walked forward on the invitation to throw their drugs, cigarettes, hypodermic needles, and the like on the platform. After an impressive shower and a prayer, he asked the group to smile forth their new joy in Christ.
Asked why he wasn’t smiling, a boy standing in the front said, “Because there’s not much in my life to smile about.” The boy had his head down, and Wilkerson instructed, “Look up.”
The youth lifted his head, then cried, “I can see! I can see! For the first time in my life I can see!”
But true to the campaign’s pattern, say American missionaries who were standing nearby, in the ensuing confusion no one knows quite what happened to the boy who was blind but now can see.
FAITH SAND PIDCOKE
On the Great Commission
As expected, Uruguayan Methodist Emilio E. Castro, 45, will succeed his old friend Philip A. Potter next month as director of the Commission on World Mission and Evangelism of the World Council of Churches. Earlier, Castro’s name had been in the hat along with Potter’s and two others for the job Potter eventually got, that of WCC general secretary.
Castro is president of the 2,000-member Evangelical Methodist Church of Uruguay, with headquarters in Montevideo. He also coordinates the Provisional Commission for Latin American Evangelical Unity (UNELAM). He previously headed the South American Association of Theological Schools and taught at the Mennonite Seminary in Montevideo. He has been an outspoken advocate of social reform and at times has tried to mediate between the government and Tupamaro guerillas. In 1970 he was arrested and detained briefly while the Tupamaros held U.S. advisor Claude L. Fly hostage.
With a world view akin to Potter’s, Castro will no doubt keep the WCC’s brand of evangelism tuned more to social activism than to theology or conversion of the individual. To him, liberation means more than salvation.
The NCC: Cary and Conflict
A forty-five-year-old official of the United Church of Christ, the Reverend W. Sterling Cary, was elected president this month of the National Council of Churches (NCC). He is the first black, the first representative of his denomination, and the youngest person ever to head the council.
Cary was chosen by the nominating committee of the ninth and last General Assembly of the NCC, which met in Dallas. He ran unopposed.
The opening of the five-day triennial assembly was marred by a dispute over one of the speakers, Imamu Amiri Baraka (Leroi Jones) of Newark, New Jersey. Fraternal delegates from the American Jewish Committee publicly challenged the propriety of Baraka’s place on the program. They charged that the noted black poet-playright “has become notorious for his anti-white racism and vicious anti-semitism.”
NCC executive R. H. Edwin Espy acknowledged the objections by saying that the topic of the assembly was conflict. “We built conflict into the agenda, and our purpose here is to learn to live with conflict as Christians.” He pointed to the meeting’s theme: “The demands of the Gospel in a world of conflict.”
NCC officials, prodded by religion columnist Lester Kinsolving, disclosed that Baraka was paid $1,500 plus expenses for his appearance.
Cary, who headed the planning committee for this month’s assembly, will preside over a restructure of the NCC during his three-year term. The new organization will combine the 275-member General Board and the much larger General Assembly into a single 347-member Governing Board that will meet twice a year.
Before signing on as associate minister of the Metropolitan and Suffolk Associations of the United Church of Christ in New York, Cary pastored churches in New York and Ohio. He is a graduate of Morehouse College and Union Seminary.
DAVID KUCHARSKY
CHRISTMAS IN ISRAEL
There will be no heavenly host to sound out the message of Christmas from Bethlehem this year, but there will be several orchestras and twenty choirs with about 1,500 singers on hand from the United States, Europe, and South Africa. As in previous years, a large contingent will attend a carol and Scripture service at the Shepherds’ Field on Christmas Eve, then move on to perform in Manger Square. The sights and sounds will be transmitted to the world by television.
This year the program will be extended to include performances in Jerusalem, Nazareth, and various settlements in Galilee. Choirs from Baylor University in Waco, Texas, and Southwestern Seminary in Fort Worth will unite with the Israel Protestant Community Choir in a performance of Handel’s Messiah in Nazareth on Christmas Eve. Orchestras traveling with the U. S. groups will join with members from the local Israel Philharmonic Orchestra to supply accompaniment.
This 300-voice combined choir will perform five times in Israel during the season, with astronaut-turned-evangelist lames B. Irwin as MC. Irwin will also show a short film of his moon walk during the Apollo 15 flight.
The choir, minus the Israeli singers, was scheduled to travel to Jordan for a televised performance before King Hussein on December 20.
DWIGHT L. BAKER
No Decisions
Nearly 12,000 registrants attended last month’s national missionary convention of the Christian Churches and Churches of Christ (instrumental). The meeting was held in two sections, one in Norfolk, Virginia, and the other in Phoenix, Arizona. Preaching, music, and mission reports highlighted the convention. (Such conventions are non-delegate in nature. No decisions binding upon the fellowship of the various independent supporting churches and missionaries were passed—or even considered. As a fellowship, the Christian Churches support more than 1,500 home and foreign missionaries.)
There were standing ovations at both sectional meetings for a missionary family who commuted between the two cities: J. Russell Morse, his wife, and his son, Eugene. The family has served for more than fifty years in China, Burma, and Southeast Asia, and thousands have reportedly come to Christ through their efforts. For physical reasons, the Morses were unable to leave Burma when missionaries were ordered out in 1966. They were taken by the Lisu tribe to the hills and finally to India, but they were refused entrance. For several years they pioneered a work in a virgin valley among the Lisus.
WESLEY PADDOCK
HOME FOR CHRISTMAS
Thousands of Asian refugees from Uganda will be home for Christmas—but not in their native country. Many are being resettled in Europe and North America. The U. S. government has permitted 1,200 to enter.
Churches are leading the way with housing and help. Last month a 32-year-old former bicycle-shop owner and his children landed at Kennedy International Airport. A New Rochelle, New York, Methodist pastor met the family and took them to his home, where they were given temporary shelter. His congregation provided food and clothing.
Examples like this are multiplying across the country. United Methodist Committee on Relief (UMCOR) executive James J. Thomas said that “calls began coming in from all over the country” after UMCOR made its appeal. “More sponsors came forward at first than there were refugees; several churches and two seminaries are on a stand-by list to receive the next arrivals,” he said. Other denominations are working with Church World Service to house the refugees. Christians this Christmas are reaching out to those for whom there was no room in Uganda.
