Atrocities Charged: Brazil Loses Lutheran Assembly

Reports of torture of political prisoners prompted the Lutheran World Federation to move the site of its Fifth Assembly. The meeting will take place July 14–24, not in Porto Alegre, Brazil, where it was originally scheduled, but in the small French town of Evian-les-Bains, near Geneva, Switzerland.

LWF officials said they “regretfully concluded that conditions for a strictly working assembly no longer exist in Porto Alegre where the meeting was planned.… The declarations made by several delegations that they would refuse to participate in an assembly in Porto Alegre and the reaction in Brazil to the LWF’s decision that it would refrain from extending an invitation to the federal government representatives is indicative of the tensions which would impair the intended working character of the assembly.”

The statement was issued just four days after the Geneva-based LWF had reaffirmed a decision to meet in Brazil but said that no representatives from the Brazilian government would be invited to attend. The Evangelical Church of the Lutheran Confession in Brazil, host to the Porto Alegre conference, wanted to have President Emilio Medici on hand.

The shift represents a major victory for religious liberals who have been in the forefront of a campaign that seeks to establish that the military government of Brazil is conducting a “reign of terror” against leftists.

The LWF has no legislative power over its member churches, which together make up the largest Protestant communion in the world. Its recommendations and study documents, however, have considerable weight, and its relief and rehabilitation programs are among the most extensive conducted by religious agencies. The LWF meets only once every six years.

The controversy seems to have begun with stories in secular newspapers in Europe. Reports indicate that documentary evidence was in hand showing that political prisoners were being mercilessly tortured in Brazil. Early reports also spoke of massacres of Brazilian Indians. Official Brazilian response has been to minimize the extent of atrocities and to deny government complicity.

During May and June, a number of liberal religious periodicals in the United States began carrying the torture reports. These reports cited the murder a year ago of a priest working in the poverty-laden northeast section of Brazil, Fr. Antonio Henrique Pereira Neto. They say that clergymen, mostly Roman Catholics, have been the second largest target of oppression and torture. The chief victims are said to be students. The death last November of a 23-year-old Jewish medical student was attributed to beatings suffered at the hands of Rio de Janeiro police.

One celebrated friend of the victims has been Archbishop Dom Helder Camara of Recife and Olinda. He brought the matter to the attention of Pope Paul last January. The Pope’s public response was that “the church will tolerate no longer the commission of atrocities and tortures in a country that calls itself Christian.” Thus far secular media have not carried substantial confirmation of the torture reports.

Attention has been focused on Brazil not only because the LWF was to have met there but because the country is the largest Roman Catholic nation in the world and has the largest number of Protestants in Latin America.

LWF officials said bravely that “changing the site of the assembly does not exempt the LWF from obligations presented by the theme ‘Sent into the world.’ It will be the task of the assembly to analyze and learn from the present difficulties and to define its witness as a fellowship of churches. It will be the task of the assembly to analyze and learn from the present difficulties and to define its witness as a fellowship of churches. The present discussion demonstrates that in effect the assembly has already started.”

The New Congo Superchurch

The Congo Protestant Council (CPC), an association of forty-seven missionary societies and forty-one Congolese churches, had never been known for harboring any ecumenical passions. In 1962, a telephone call from CPC headquarters in Kinshasa forced the editor of Envol to replace the word ecumenical in an article by the word worldwide. Two years later, at the CPC’s forty-third General Assembly in Lubumbashi, a proposal by an American missionary that the CPC should develop into a more “concrete form of Christian unity” was overwhelmingly defeated.

But things were surprisingly different last year, when the council held its forty-eighth General Assembly at the Catholic Center in Nganda. Christian unity became the major topic of discussion, and was identified by assembly officials as “part of the political scheme for re-unifying the nation.”

A resolution requested the National Executive Committee to draw up a draft constitution for a superchurch structure, as a means of “ensuring the organic unity of the Church of Christ in the Congo, consistent with the spiritual unity which already exists.” Another resolution deplored “the shameful conflicts and divisions” between church and mission and urged missions to proceed with all deliberate speed to merge themselves into the churches. Wherever a church had no legal status, the mission was asked to bequeath its own to the church.

The meeting left many persons worried and unhappy. An evangelical prayer bulletin later commented that “democratic procedures left much to be desired” at that meeting, and that following the meeting, “any Congolese Evangelical standing up for his faith and for his right of free religious expression faces the accusation of being unpatriotic.”

The general meeting in Kinshasa this year left even more people more perplexed and displeased. After a brief, tense opening session, attended by the Congo’s minister of justice, Bruno Ndala, the delegates lost little time in getting down to the question of church unity.

Dr. Pierre Shiumba, honorary general secretary of the CPC, made a spirited plea in favor of the proposed superchurch, which he said was what the African Christians of the Congo wanted. “We just want to be free to determine our own future, to form our own church,” he declared. “The mission era is finished.”

Jean Massamba, assistant director of the Kinshasa Theological School, presided over the sessions and developed the conference theme, “Christ Makes All Things New,” in his morning devotional messages. He asked missionaries to “recognize that the Spirit is doing a new thing in Africa. He is revealing to Africa in a greater way the scriptural truth of Christian unity, something which the European (and American) churches have failed to demonstrate.”

Sensing the rather anti-missionary tone of some of the official speeches, Noah Kabeya, a professional diplomat and an active Presbyterian layman, advised that serious attention be given to the decisions in progress lest difficulties arise later. He reminded his fellow Congolese of a situation of which they are only too sadly aware: “The problem in some government offices is a lack of cooperation between officials who have authority but lack ability, and technicians who have ability but not authority.” “Missionaries must continue to work and cooperate with the church,” he concluded, “because the church has need of help just as a grown daughter needs help and advice from her father.”

The Reverend Benedict Assani, president of the Association of Evangelicals in the Congo, said that while the evangelicals fully supported the CPC on the mission-church merger issue, they felt it was too soon to talk about organic union.

A number of delegates, including the Reverend Jean Ruhigita, second vice-president of the assembly, stated that their churches were not interested, and would never be interested, in organic union, as this appeared to them to be a step backward toward Catholics.

The debate was stormy; though about unity, it sadly lacked the spirit of unity. The Reverend Jean Bokeleale, CPC secretary general, was forced by the circumstances to call two special sessions behind closed doors, one for only the Congolese participants and the other for only the missionaries.

At these sessions, the necessity for immediate organic union was carefully explained. Attention was called to an observation by Senegalese president Leopold Senghor that “he who has the Congo has Africa.” The Congo, it was explained, is large and strategic, and holds the hopes of black Africa for leadership in all fields. Christians in the Congo must therefore unite, not only to strengthen national unity but also to exert effective and united influence on the government.

Again, it was explained, the Congolese church needed a new identity, and needed to shake off missionary domination, symbolized by the existence of missions as separate institutions and the denominational distinctions. Some missionaries were said to have exploited “the naïveté and ignorance of Congolese to encourage and provoke conflicts.”

After eight days of heated debating, the Church of Christ in the Congo was voted into official existence at 2:30 A.M. on Sunday, March 8, 1970. Of the voting members, thirty-two voted in favor of the new superchurch, fourteen voted against, and two abstained.

The CCC is the largest nationwide organic union of churches in Africa. There is probably no national church as inclusive anywhere in the world. Individual churches are free to retain their denominational labels and organizational structures, their distinctive doctrinal beliefs, and even their own legal status with the government. But they will be referred to as “communities” rather than “churches.” A “community” retains its membership in the superchurch so long as it continues to “accept Jesus Christ as Saviour and Lord, and the Bible as the basis of faith.”

The new superchurch has also adopted “a policy of neutrality with relation to all foreign religious movements, notably the World Evangelical Fellowship and the World Council of Churches.”

“All things new” in the Congo; but, as the editor of Congo Mission News, Robert Niklaus, points out, “the mandate of extending Christ’s kingdom on earth remains unchanged. The only variation will be the size and variety of ministry by a growing Church in a growing Congo.”

ODHIAMBO W. OKITE

The Americas’ Greatest Natural Disaster?

Church relief agencies are appealing for special help to alleviate suffering caused by the Peruvian earthquake, which one observer termed “the greatest natural disaster in the Western Hemisphere.”

There are said to be at least 35,000 known dead. Some think the toll may rise to 60,000.

Among the first church agencies reporting that they were sending help were Church World Service (the relief arm of the National Council of Churches), the Salvation Army, and the United Methodist Committee for Overseas Relief.

Wilson O. Radway, CWS operations director, said: “I went to Peru to see the damage for myself and to see how best the churches might respond beyond emergency shipments. I have seen the aftermath of many disasters; I have never seen anything to match this one.”

Radway said there have been worse earthquakes (some 180,000 were killed in China in 1920 and some 143,000 died in Tokyo in 1923). But he declared that the two earthquakes in Peru on May 31 and June 1 “represent the greatest natural disaster in the Western Hemisphere.”

Local congregations everywhere were urged to plan special appeals for funds to aid the survivors.

Irish Turmoil Scrutinized

A joint statement issued by four church leaders in Northern Ireland contends that religious differences are not the primary cause of the continuing violence there.

The statement from the Roman Catholic, Presbyterian, Episcopal, and Methodist churches asserts that the “serious and deep divisions … arise from deep and complex causes—historical, political, and social.”

New light was shed on the problem in May when Prime Minister Jack Lynch of the predominantly Catholic Irish Republic fired two of his cabinet members and then had them arrested for gun-running. Charles Haughey, former finance minister, and Neil Blaney, former agriculture minister, were taken into custody along with two other men. Lynch alleged that they were mixed up in a plot to smuggle in guns and ship them to the Protestant-ruled British territory of Northern Ireland, where Catholic elements have been battling discrimination. Right-wing elements in the fray are worried that Catholics want to cut Northern Ireland’s ties with Britain so that the Emerald Isle can be “re-united” and the Protestants be subjected to Catholic domination.

Lodge At The Vatican: An Ironic Envoy

In 1960, John F. Kennedy, in his campaign for the U.S. presidency, questioned the value of an American government representative at the Vatican and vowed he would not appoint any. He didn’t. Nobody bothered to raise the question with the other contender, Richard M. Nixon, or his running mate, Henry Cabot Lodge. Ten years later it appears that maybe they should have been asked that question.

Nixon, upon assuming the presidency in 1969, said he was considering appointment of a Vatican ambassador. He later said he would not. Last month, the White House announced that the President would dispatch an emissary to the Pope after all. The choice: Henry Cabot Lodge.

Lodge, it was explained, is representing the U. S. government at the Vatican. Senate confirmation of his selection is unneeded, however, because he does not have ambassadorial rank. All his expenses are being paid by the government but he is not to receive a salary as such. Whether the “expenses” include payment of a generous consultant-type remuneration was not immediately clear. Lodge, 68, is to visit the Vatican two or three times a year and stay from two to four weeks at a time. He is an Episcopalian.

Personalia

Dr. Richard Jungkuntz, 51, was appointed provost at Pacific Lutheran University, which is affiliated with the American Lutheran Church. Jungkuntz was until recently the executive director of the Commission on Theology and Church Relations for the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod. He failed to win reappointment to that post.

Pope Paul VI will go to Australia and the Philippines in November. It will be the 72-year-old pontiff’s ninth trip outside Italy.

Dr. Dillwyn T. Evans was elected moderator of the ninety-sixth General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in Canada. The 52-year-old Evans, born in Wales, is a pastor in Thornhill, Ontario.

Edward B. Fiske of the New York Times was given this year’s William B. Leidt award by the Executive Council of the Episcopal Church for the “best religious writing in the secular press.”

Dr. Leslie Parrott was elected president of Eastern Nazarene College. He has been pastor of the First Church of the Nazarene in Portland, Oregon.

Dr. James Hastings Nichols was appointed academic dean of Princeton Theological Seminary. He has taught church history at Princeton since 1962.

The Rev. Olan Hendrix was appointed general director of the 153-year-old American Sunday School Union, with headquarters in Philadelphia. He is a former home secretary for the Far Eastern Gospel Crusade.

Religion In Transit

A federal court in Providence handed down a unanimous ruling declaring unconstitutional a 1969 Rhode Island law that authorized the state to pay part of the salaries of parochial school teachers.

The Federal Communications Commission granted a construction permit to the Radio Prayer League to install a new transmitter and increase the power of its station KJNP, North Pole, Alaska, to 50,000 watts, with unlimited hours of operation day and night.

A nude couple received communion in Minneapolis during an American Lutheran Church district convention. The only reported “hostility” to the young pair came from a white-haired man who was headed in the opposite direction to partake of the elements. He turned and slapped the girl’s buttocks.

The Baptist Standard reported a record weekly circulation of 376,535. The figure represents the biggest circulation among all periodicals, secular or religious, in Texas. The Standard serves the state’s 1,800,000 Baptists through more than 100 regional editions.

A new hymnal for Spanish-speaking United Methodists is expected to be published by 1973.

A grant of $100,700 from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development will help the county of Maui, Hawaii, restore Hale Aloha Congregational Church, one of the island’s most historic landmarks.

A new journal will be published by the Northern and Southern Provinces of the Moravian Church in America starting this September. It will take the place of the Moravian and the Wachovia Moravia, the two monthly publications of the provinces.… The quarterly theological journal published by the American Church Union,American Church Quarterly, has changed its name to the Church Theological Review.

The World Fellowship of Buddhists, an ecumenical body probably representing the world’s largest religious grouping, will hold a twentieth-anniversary meeting in Ceylon in May, 1971. At least four issues of stamps made by Asia’s Buddhist nations and 200,000 commemorative coins will mark the event.

Have something to add about this? See something we missed? Share your feedback here.