Christmas has a special new meaning for thousands of persons in Managua, Nicaragua. They are among many in Latin America who for the first time are celebrating the day as Christians, thanks to evangelist Luis Palau and and his Continente ’75 crusade, one of the most ambitious mass-communication efforts in church history.

Billed locally as Nicaragua ’75, the $200,000 Continente project used a three-week evangelistic crusade in Managua’s earthquake-battered baseball stadium as a launch pad to reach all of Latin America. This was done through a communications satellite and a radio hook-up of fifty-six stations in twenty countries. HCJB, the 400,000-watt mission radio station in Ecuador, relayed the satellite signal to the other stations. Also, on the final three days of the crusade, a series of taped half-hour programs were shown on 100 television stations in twenty-three countries. These included stations that serve Spanish-speaking communities in California, Florida, and New York. Stations in every capital city in Latin America except Havana, Mexico City, and Lima aired the programs.

The telecasts featured Palau—probably Latin America’s best-known evangelist-discussing questions on youth problems, the home, and death. Listeners were invited to send for Palau’s booklet, The Fall of the Twentieth Century, provided by Bible Literature International of Columbus, Ohio. The full response to Continente will not be known for some time, but letters were pouring in daily early this month to Palau’s office in Mexico City, according to a Palau spokesman.

Managua, crippled by a devastating earthquake three years ago (see following story), was an unlikely site for such a historic endeavor. The stadium, all but the outfield bleachers rendered useless by damage, sits on the southwestern edge of the vacant expanse that used to be downtown. Bus service in the area is limited and virtually ceases citywide at 9 P.M. Much of the population has been relocated far from the city’s center—and the stadium. Many of the people are too poor to afford an auto, or even a nightly bus ride. Government censorship prohibits live broadcasts, even news; Palau therefore had to do without the live telephone talk shows on TV that here help spark crusade attendance.

As a result, the crowds were not as large as anticipated. They fluctuated from 20,000 on opening night, 10,000 the second Sunday, and 22,000 the closing Sunday to a week-night average of between 3,500 and 5,500. Even so, attendance was impressive by Nicaraguan standards (an audience of 4,000 in 400,000-population Managua is equivalent to 100,000 in New York City). And a number of taped programs were shown on local TV. People in some outlying areas assembled in churches to listen to crusade broadcasts.

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Nicaraguan church leaders say the crusade was the largest evangelistic campaign in the country’s history. It enjoyed the support of most of Managua’s 125 Protestant churches and many Catholics. Catholic charismatic groups attended.

Managua’s Protestant constituency is estimated at 30,000 persons (including children and nominal adherents), according to a recent survey by the Evangelical Committee for Development (CEPAD). Some missionaries feel that figure may be inflated, but so far the CEPAD study is the only in-depth attempt to arrive at an accurate church census. Several mission leaders say their constituencies have doubled since the earthquake. The CEPAD survey shows 550 Protestant churches with a constituency of 180,000 among Nicaragua’s population of 2.1 million. These include 40,000 adherents in the Moravian Church.

Evangelicals have been badly divided over the years, and there have been numerous splits within denominations. After the earthquake many congregations banded together to help with relief efforts. This move led to the formation of CEPAD and later to the decision to sponsor the Palau crusade. Some churches and missionaries opposed to Pentecostalism refused to support the crusade because of its cooperative nature, even though Palau himself is not a Pentecostal. Officially, the Central American Mission declined to back the campaign, but the three largest of its six Managua churches did participate, and contributed important leadership to it. (The Dallas-based CAM has a constituency of 3,500 in fifty churches in Nicaragua, with a missionary force of twelve.) Similar reports came from other groups.

In interviews, a considerable number of pastors and lay leaders alike remarked that the crusade had brought their churches together for the first time. They expressed hope that the new sense of unity will continue. Several new churches have already been organized as a result of the crusade, say local leaders.

Hundreds of persons walked forward at every service in response to Palau’s appeal to receive Christ. Of the 6,000 recorded decisions, the vast majority were first-time professions of faith, and 75 percent were by persons under age 25, according to follow-up workers.

“The young people of Nicaragua have a deep spiritual hunger, and many are accepting the Lord,” commented Ernesto Duartes, 16, of Managua’s First Nazarene Church, himself a convert of only a year.

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When Palau first hit town, a slugfest of words broke out between the city’s two dailies, and other reporters and commentators joined the melee. Several writers in La Prensa, a liberal tabloid with a circulation of 60,000, suggested that Palau was a tool of wealthy Americans to lull back to sleep the now socially aware Latin Americans. They also accused Palau of exploiting the psychological condition of the earthquake victims, and they charged that the evangelical orientation of the crusade violated the modern spirit of ecumenism.

Novedades, a conservative tabloid of 25,000 circulation, struck back with sympathetic coverage of the crusade. It checked with the archbishop and reported that he had no problem with the Palau campaign. Editorial director Antonio Diaz Palacios, who says he became a follower of Jesus in a Catholic charismatic meeting about six months ago, defended Palau in front-page articles as “a preacher who tells how to love God and one’s own fellow men, and not how to hate them out of one’s own political and personal interests.” He chided La Prensa’s newsmen for “trite and infantile” statements, and he advised them to read the Bible “before mixing religion and politics.”

The news executive brought one of his reporters to the crusade on opening night, and the reporter walked forward with others at Palau’s invitation to receive Christ. At a meeting a week later the newsman’s wife was the first to respond. After interviewing Palau, another reporter for Novedades sought counsel from Palau regarding marital problems. At the following Sunday rally he walked forward with his wife and all fourteen of their children.

Another who professed Christ was the 17-year-old son of one of La Prensa’s writers who had bombarded Palau. The writer is also an Anglican priest who started out as a fundamentalist Baptist but then drifted into theological liberalism. A prominent Baptist pastor close to the situation said the priest’s household was thrown into turmoil by the son’s decision. Perhaps the boy will be the key in restoring the home spiritually, said the pastor.

Palau devotes a lot of attention to family-life themes in his messages, publications, and broadcasts. He blankets Latin America with daily five-minute and fifteen-minute radio broadcasts on some forty stations. Programs on family-life topics prompt the most mail, he says.

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Born in Argentina, Palau, 41, is married and the father of four young sons. He studied at St. Albans College in Buenos Aires and Multnomah School of the Bible in Portland, Oregon, where he maintains his home. Of independent evangelical background, he is associated with the Overseas Crusades mission agency, based in Santa Clara, California.

Palau holds four major crusades a year in Latin America, each in conjunction with a mass-media outreach. For the latter he usually sits in an easy chair in front of a TV camera and discusses questions telephoned to him by viewers. He has led a number of callers to Christ while on the air. Viewers making decisions for Christ are encouraged to meet with him at the studio or another meeting place before or after crusade rallies.

Palau is always under pressure to speak out about Latin American politics and to use his crusades as a platform for social-justice issues. He resists doing so, citing the need to retain evangelical unity and to keep the doors of certain countries open to his ministry. But he acknowledges that he is deeply disturbed by the poverty and corruption so rampant in the Latin world, and that he struggles with the question of speaking out.

Members of the Christian Social (Democrat) party, Nicaragua’s third-largest political party, handed out pamphlets that welcomed the crusade to Managua. The tracts implored Christians to become politically active. Christians say that Christ alone can save and change an individual, stated the pamphlet. But, it added, changed individuals must be the ones to save society.

An evangelical tract of questionable taste landed Palau in hot water with La Prensa. To promote the crusade, the Bible Society of Nicaragua advertised it on tens of thousands of tracts showing a Managua earthquake scene with the headline, “Not Even Punishment Breaks Them.” “I caused the hunger.… I destroyed them with a catastrophe … but they did not turn to me,” quoted the tract from Bible passages bearing the caption, “The Lord has spoken.” Palau disavowed the tract, but the outraged La Prensa blamed him anyway.

Human-interest stories were plentiful. For example, physician Ernesto Lopez and his wife persuaded a couple who are their best friends to accompany them to a crusade meeting. Lopez had received Christ in February at a luncheon for professionals (Palau was speaker), then had become part of the Catholic charismatic movement. His wife and daughter also became Christians.

The Lopezes’ friends were among the first to leave their seats that night as Palau invited those who wanted Christ to come forward.

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“There have been great changes in Managua,” said Lopez, his voice choked with emotion. “It’s like Christmas, having a crusade like this.”

EDWARD E. PLOWMAN

Evangelical Development In Nicaragua

As was their custom before retiring, Norma and Adonirum Salazar were on their knees praying by their beside. It was about one-half hour past midnight on the morning of December 23, 1972, and the sky around Managua, Nicaragua, had an eerie red glow. Weeks earlier, in preparation for a trip to the United States, the couple had packed their things and moved from their rented house to the guest home of the Central American Mission, for which they worked.

Suddenly the room began to sway violently and the lights went out. Instinctively, the couple ran to another bedroom to get their children. Along with two other families in the house they stumbled their way to the safety of the patio outside.

Mrs. Salazar remembers vividly the roar from the earth, the trees around the patio whipping back and forth, the crashing and tinkling of articles falling inside the house. Later, they would find the TV and dishes smashed and the stove and freezer moved nearly a foot from the wall. Miraculously, the house stood.

There were two spasms of side-way shift in quick succession, lasting less than a minute, followed forty-five minutes later by a vertical oscillation.

Across town a wall caved in on a hospital nursery, crushing thirty babies. At the Grand Hotel downtown the roof and top floors collapsed, killing two dozen guests. A huge chunk of the presidential palace tumbled into the crater of a dormant volcano, but General Anastasio Somoza Debayle, the president, was unhurt.

Christmas parties were in full swing in many homes and clubs when the earthquake hit. Many of the revelers perished. The Hotel Intercontinental withstood the quake, but billionaire recluse Howard E. Hughes fled from his seventh-floor suite and spent the rest of the night on the parking lot. He left Nicaragua soon after daybreak.

The Salazars joined others who drove in the morning darkness to downtown Managua to check on relatives and friends. From the crest of a hill they could see three large fires downtown burning out of control. The central-district streets were impassable. Buildings were down everywhere. Gone was the home the Salazars had been renting. Dazed and injured people were wandering about. Rescue workers were probing debris. Screaming children tugged at motionless forms prostrate on the sidewalk.

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In all, perhaps 10,000 people died, and 20,000 were injured. More than 50,000 homes were destroyed, as were most of Managua’s schools, shops, factories, and office buildings. Overnight, 50,000 lost their places of employment. (Church leaders say fewer than thirty Protestants lost their lives in the quake.)

It was like a war movie set, only real, recalls physician Gustavo Parajon, a Baptist and a leader in the evangelical community. After checking to make sure some relatives and missionary friends were okay, Parajon proceeded to the Baptist hospital. It was a shambles. The main building was badly damaged, and most medicines and supplies had been destroyed. Parajon and others set up makeshift facilities outdoors and worked around the clock until medical volunteers and mobile hospitals arrived from abroad.

To help dispense the relief aid flowing in, Parajon assembled leaders of eight denominations on December 27, and under a tree in front of the Baptist high school they formed a disaster aid committee. By March, thirty denominations were represented on the committee, and attention shifted to long-range rehabilitation and development projects along a broad front. The name was changed to Evangelical Committee for Development, known as CEPAD (the abbreviation of its name in Spanish).

Today, thirty-two denominations along with the Bible Society of Nicaragua and Alfalit, a literacy organization, are members of CEPAD. They represent most of Nicaragua’s 550 churches. It has a monthly budget of $30,000, staked by Church World Service ($200,000 per year), the Christian Reformed World Relief Committee, the TEAR fund of British evangelicals, Christian Aid of Britain, the Mennonite Central Committee, Bread for the World, World Vision, and others.

Parajon serves as president. The paid staff includes Executive Director Benjamin Cortes-Marchena, a former bank officer who doubles as a pastor, and Gilberto Aguirre, a Baptist who directs CEPAD’s program activities. Aguirre, 30, a former high school teacher, served as coordinator of last month’s Palau crusade in Managua (see preceding story). Both the elected and staff leaders of CEPAD are evangelicals. Oversight is in the hands of a general assembly and a six-member executive committee.

So far, CEPAD has granted $400,000 in loans for low-income housing and small businesses. It has constructed 450 houses itself and operates a training center for carpenters where small prefabricated houses are built. It conducts sewing courses for women, seminars on family life, health, and nutrition, and conferences on development, management, and agriculture. With branches in six cities, it operates day-care centers, urban and rural clinics, and scholarship and literacy programs. CEPAD sent thirty tons of food and tools and $5,000 in cash to Honduras hurricane victims. It also sent Aguirre to help set up a relief operation similar to CEPAD.

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In cooperation with World Vision, CEPAD sponsors pastors’ conferences that have drawn together the majority of Nicaragua’s Protestant ministers. One of the topics discussed, says Aguirre, is the social responsibility of the Christian. “Pastors change suddenly because of this course,” he says. “They begin asking, ‘What can the Lord do through me to help change the condition of my people?’ ”

A few churches and mission groups have backed away from CEPAD. A spokesman for the Central American Mission says he fears the heavy support of Church World Service, the relief arm of the National Council of Churches, will lead to NCC influence over CEPAD. He also complains that some CEPAD seminars have been led by liberals.

In interviews, Parajon, Cortes-Marchena, and Aguirre all discounted the possibility. Parajon said there are “absolutely no strings” tied to the CWS money. A CWS worker who was in Managua for two years, Lutheran Gerald Akers (“a real brother in the Lord”), returned to the states months ago, he said. Cortes-Marchena stated that he is counting on CEPAD’s staff leaders and representatives to maintain CEPAD’s evangelical stance. Aguirre agreed but lamented that CEPAD has had to hire some non-evangelicals in special areas because evangelicals have not always been willing—or competent—to help out.

At any rate, there is plenty for CEPAD to do. Nicaragua, with a population of 2.1 million and a land area the size of Alabama, has many problems. About half of its people are illiterate. Poverty is everywhere. Many people live in small shacks with dirt floors and no electricity, running water, or sewage. Wages are low (a laborer earns $50 to $75 a month, a secretary averages $150), and the cost of living is high (a can of peas costs $2).

Five per cent of the people own 85 per cent of the land. Nicaragua has some of the richest soil on earth (even the fence posts grow), but much of it is badly mismanaged. Improper farming methods are used, and vast stands of valuable forests are being stripped with no planting of new trees.

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Corruption and bribery are a way of life. Part of the reason is political. President Somoza and his relatives own many if not most of the country’s commercial enterprises, from banking and utilities to manufacturing and construction. They hold a virtual stranglehold on government, business, and the press. The U. S. government meanwhile has pumped $140 million in grants and loans into the land and is responsible for much of what little reconstruction is taking place.

There are some bright spots for the churches. Tides of revival are flowing in many churches, especially among young people. Some denominations have doubled since the earthquake. The quake and its aftermath, according to church leaders, have led to a search for God—with much response. A handful of Catholic cursillo members after the quake visited charismatic leaders in Honduras, then planted the movement in Nicaragua. Today, say leaders, there are more than 7,000 Catholic charismatics, 4,000 of them in Managua, and the end is not in sight.

EDWARD E. PLOWMAN

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