Evangelicals in Africa

Moratorium, cultural revival, and human rights have been much-debated issues in some African church circles the last three years, but the week-long trienniel general assembly of the Association of Evangelicals of Africa and Madagascar (AEAM) held July 28 to August 3 in Bovake, Ivory Coast, passed them all upfora less sensational but more practical topic—the Christian home.

When the theme was announced, some critics said AEAM was shying away from Africa’s major issues. The emphasis, however, turned out to meet an African-felt need that also spoke to the major issues of the day.

“We are not running away from current issues,” declared AEAM president Samuel O. Odunaike, a 43-year-old Nigerian oil company personnel manager, in his opening address. “It would be irresponsible for us to fail to raise our voices against issues plaguing the continent. We cannot pretend what is taking place in Zimbabwe [Rhodesia] and South Africa is none of our business. It would also be wrong for us to be ‘evangelically silent’ on the brutalities in Uganda—especially as evidence gives credence to the allegation that the senseless killings are mainly directed against Christians. However, nothing could be more relevant today than the Christian home. It is the bedrock of the nation—the expression of a people’s cultural, political, and social values, and God’s center-piece for evangelism, revival, and renewal. May this assembly swing the pendulum of the African Christian home back to the heart of God.”

A discussion on polygamy continued late one night in dormitory rooms after Gottfried Osei-Mensah, a Ghanaian who is executive secretary of the Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization, questioned the practice of withholding baptism from a polygamist who has become a true believer. Osei-Mensah’s address did not condone polygamy, and some who responded to it agreed that methods other than withholding baptism should be found to emphasize the wrong of plural marriages.

African church leaders were more opposed to the suggestion than most foreign missionaries. “We can see the scriptural point,” they explained, “but we have to face the practical effects on our churches. We might have men waiting until they have three wives before asking for baptism.”

Other clashes of tradition and Christian concept emerged in discussions about the custom of having uncles rear one’s children and about the servant role of women in the household.

Terry C. Hulbert, Dean of the Columbia Graduate School of Bible and Mission, pointed out the importance of household evangelism and discipling by families to arrest the disintegration of the home in Africa’s turbulent social changes.

“This is the time for action, not talk,” pleaded Isaac Simbiri, secretary of the Evangelical Fellowship of Kenya. “As pastors, let’s start now to pray, to plan, to proceed. Churches grow when families grow.”

“This family emphasis is just what we need now in Ethiopia,” stated one delegate. “Our Christians don’t know which way to turn as Marxist ideology takes over.”

The issue of human rights did not have to be listed separately on the agenda, for delegates who had been denied their rights were present. Concern rather than bitterness marked their reports.

“One hundred years after our pioneers were martyred, persecution has returned,” stated Daniel Kyande, who recently fled Uganda.

“God has a purpose in the troubles in our land,” an Ethiopian said. “He is sifting His church. It will not fail.”

Moratorium—the banning of Western missionaries—received only passing mention; delegates obviously did not agree with the concept and did not feel it worth a resolution. “The growth of the Body of Christ in any environment does not call for either moratorium or segregation,” said D. Marini-Bodho of Zaire. In a paper on “The Family of God” he called for “unity and understanding” among Christians of all races.

The Christian home theme had been proposed by Byang H. Kato, a Dallas Seminary graduate who was AEAM general secretary before his death in a drowning accident in Mombasa, Kenya, in late 1975. Kato had also helped to set in motion several other projects that took shape at the assembly.

The Evangelical Theological Society of Africa was launched by the AEAM Theological Commission. Announcing its objectives, Richard France, until recently a professor in Zaria, Nigeria, stated: “African theology has come to represent liberal theology. Seminary text books are from North America or Europe. They must come from Africa. We need men who can declare what African evangelical theologians think. This was another of Doctor Kato’s visions.”

The Accrediting Council for Theological Education in Africa (ACTEA) was also formally launched at Bovake. Led by coordinator W. Paul Bowers, thirty theological educators from across Africa set up standards and procedures for accrediting post-secondary level theological institutions. Four key schools, representing Sierra Leone, Nigeria, Zaire, and Kenya, were accepted as candidates for ACTEA accreditation before the assembly ended.

Paul White, dean of AEAM’s new Bangui Evangelical School of Theology, reported that the school will open next month with thirty-five students and offer a program leading to a Master of Theology degree. Studies will be in French.

There were two “firsts”: this was its first meeting in French-speaking Africa, and the assembly elected an all-African executive committee for the first time. The average age of the members is 38 years. President Odunaike was returned to office; Pierre Yougouda (Central African Empire) became vice-president; Isaac Simbiri (Kenya), secretary; Godfrey Mulando (Zambia), treasurer.

To fill the post left vacant by Kato’s death, the assembly elected another Nigerian, Tokunboh Adeyemo, as acting general secretary of the AEAM. The doctoral candidate (Dallas Seminary) will assume office at the end of this year. Tite Tienou of Upper Volta was appointed as executive secretary of the theological commission.

The African family spirit came to the fore as the assembly dedicated the offices to God’s service. Aaron Gamedze, Swaziland’s chief of protocol and the mover of the original motion which brought AEAM into existence, chaired the closing service. He called several delegates to encircle each officer as prayers were offered. Kato’s widow was among them. The feeling of strong spiritual community was dramatic.

“This has been a much different general assembly from our first meeting in 1966,” Gamedze remarked. “AEAM has come of age. Evangelicals in Africa are a force to be reckoned with—and liberals are beginning to respect our position. The liberal viewpoint no longer goes unchallenged.”

The Passing Of a Byzantine

“Don’t forget that Makarios is a Byzantine,” a fellow Cypriot once said of his president. “What he says is one thing; what he means is another; what he does is something else.” No criticism was intended.

Having occupied for seventeen years the dual role of president and archbishop in the pocket-sized Mediterranean republic, Makarios died of a heart attack earlier this month. He was within ten days of his sixty-fourth birthday.

Born Michael Mouskos and early introduced to monastic life, he took the name Makarios (“Blessed”) on being made deacon in the Orthodox Church. He studied theology and law in Athens. Later he went to Boston for post-graduate work on a World Council of Churches grant, a pursuit that was interrupted when he was summoned home in 1948 to become bishop of Kition.

Cyprus was then under British rule, and the new bishop was soon prominent in the struggle for independence. In 1950 he was elected archbishop and spiritual leader of the island’s 78 per cent Greek majority. For suspected collaboration with the colony’s increasingly violent freedom fighters Makarios was forced into exile for three years, but he was allowed to return in 1959, and he was the obvious choice as president when independence came in 1960. He was 47.

The job was no sinecure; he came under fire from different quarters. He was less than conciliatory with the 18 per cent Turkish (Muslim) minority, against whom such strong measures were taken that a London newspaper called him “a priest with bloody hands.”

His more powerful adversaries, however, were those who wanted Enosis (union with Greece), a cause which they considered Makarios to have betrayed. His three senior bishops, all committed to that cause, declared him deposed as archbishop. His dual role, they claimed, was against canon law, the public good, and the gospel injunction against serving two masters. Makarios rejected the proceedings, and in turn drafted a collection of bishops from the Arab world to depose the dissidents. The archbishop promptly donned his presidential hat to ensure that the dismissals were enforced by the civil arm.

This and other opposition from fellow-Greek sources he chose to regard as plotting against national security. To protect himself he stored Czechoslovak arms in the archbishop’s residence, an action in itself not in accordance with any interpretation of canon law. He was notably tolerant to the republic’s small but influential Communist party. He threatened appeal for Russian aid against the periodically menacing mainland Turks, and he established good relations with Arab leaders. To the world he often appeared an enigmatic figure, perhaps because it suited him.

He survived several attempts on his life, one when his helicopter was crippled by gunfire just after takeoff. Finally in July, 1974, encouraged by the Athens junta, mainland Greek officers of the Cypriot National Guard spearheaded a coup against him, and he narrowly escaped with his life to a British air base. Cyprus Radio, indeed, reported his death, an error that gave scope to Makarios’s mordant wit.

But the coup went wrong. The result was not union with Greece but the toppling of the Athens government, the invasion and over-reaction by Turkey to aid the minority community, and the loss to the Greek majority of nearly 40 per cent of the island, which Turkey still holds.

Makarios returned to Cyprus five months later. Just this summer it seemed likely that he was about to make reluctant concessions to the Turks, whose leader he had met for the first time in fourteen years.

He died with no obvious successor, certainly none who could continue the double leadership of church and state, even if this were desirable. His departure leaves a dangerous vacuum.

They buried Michael Mouskos on a mountain slope in the Troodos range. He had chosen the grave himself, in a place just above the monastery where he had been a novice forty years ago.

J. D. DOUGLAS

A Visitor From the Middle East

Patriarch Elias IV of the Antiochian Orthodox Church had never been to America before. Nor had any of his 163 successors in Syrian Orthodoxy’s See of Antioch. So when he came to the United States this summer his visit to the faithful of his church was an event of special significance. Thousands turned out to greet the prelate, who, for his followers, is on an equal footing with Roman Catholicism’s Pope.

The unprecedented visit was climaxed by the patriarch’s appearance last month at the annual convention of the church’s North American archdiocese. A special stained-glass sanctuary of Orthodox icons was set up in the Washington hotel where the meeting was held. Some 3,000 persons from the Antiochian community’s churches (there are just over 100 in the United States and a handful in Canada’s principal cities) participated. The North American constituency is reported at 350,000, including non-communicants who attend church events occasionally. The archbishop, Philip Saliba of New York, told a reporter there are about 50,000 “dues-paying” members.

Among the special events lined up by the convention leaders was an interview with President Carter for the visiting prelate. Elias came away from the Oval Office vowing to go home to “light a candle” for the American chief executive in one of the ancient churches near his Damascus home. Carter requested his prayers, the patriarch told journalists. And he in turn requested Carter to keep working on a settlement in the Middle East.

Palestinian politics was a principal topic when the prelate met reporters during the convention. Jews, he declared, have little “historic connection” with the territory of the current state of Israel. When one of the newsmen suggested that the “whole weight” of Scripture was on the side of the Jews on this issue, Elias calmly replied, “As far as we Christians are concerned, we are the new Israel. The coming of the Messiah fulfilled all the Old Testament prophecies.”

He insisted that Jews and Christians lived at peace with Muslims in the area until modern times. He said that his own residence is in the Jewish quarter of Damascus, and that his relations with his neighbors are good. His relations with the Muslim leaders of Syria and other Arab states are perhaps better than with the Jewish neighbors. He is the only Christian leader who has ever been invited officially to Saudi Arabia, and at a meeting in Pakistan once he became the only Christian leader ever invited to address a preponderance of the world’s Muslim heads of state. While he was in Washington, Elias and his North American hierarchy were the guests of honor at a dinner given by ambassadors of the Arab states.

Bolstered by his presence and his outspoken position on the Middle East, the delegates to the convention passed a series of tough-stance resolutions. One statement condemned the action of the Israeli government in legalizing three “additional Zionist-Israeli settlements on occupied Arab lands in violation of international law” as well as other “previous illegal establishment of settlements.” The resolution asked President Carter to persuade Israel to avoid “encroachment upon Arab territories.”

The delegates also advocated “American Christian-Islamic dialogue,” more balanced news media coverage of the Middle East, settlement of the Lebanese conflict with “peace and justice” for all, and relaxation of U.S. and Canadian immigration regulations to allow the admission of Lebanese refugees.

While the Syrian Orthodox faithful were meeting in Washington, the government back in Syria relaxed its own regulations on behalf of some of its Jewish residents. President Assad gave his consent for “proxy” marriages of twelve women to members of the Syrian Jewish community in New York. The women, then considered married under Syrian law, boarded planes for America to meet their husbands and to get married under American law. Most were going to Brooklyn’s Ocean Parkway section, sometimes known as “Little Syria.” It has the largest concentration of Jews of Syrian origin in the United States, nearly 25,000, according to the New York Times.

Chile Cover-Up?

Roger Vekemans, the Jesuit sociologist sent to Chile two decades ago to “rescue” that country for Roman Catholicism, is not talking about the money he got from the United States for alleged covert activities. He is now in Colombia, involved in preparations for a 1978 meeting of Latin American bishops.

Enough of Vekemans’s former associates and friends are talking, however, to raise serious questions about his management ability if not about his integrity. The lay-edited National Catholic Reporter (NCR) last month reported that the priest had once been in danger of criminal prosecution for mismanagement of some of the $5 million he got from the U.S. Agency for International Development (AID). The major expose in the weekly paper again raised questions about the Belgian Jesuit’s connections to the Central Intelligence Agency (see October 10, 1975 issue, page 62).

Vekemans left Chile when Marxist Salvadore Allende became president in 1970. Long before that, officials of Chile, the United States, and various Roman Catholic agencies were suspicious of the effectiveness of the Jesuit’s operations, according to the special report by NCR Washington correspondent Richard Rashke. By 1971 an AID audit showed mismanagement of at least $400,000, according to documents unearthed by Rashke.

An internal AID letter dated September, 1971, obtained recently by NCR indicated that the then-U.S. ambassador to Chile, Edward M. Korry, advised against full-scale investigation and prosecution of the priest. Korry told NCR that Vekemans had asked him to call off the auditors even though he claimed that he could “account for every nickel.”

Korry, according to the 1971 letter, concluded that “a criminal action against Father Vekemans would specifically contradict our objectives in Chile.” The reason he cited was that publicity about criminal activity by the priest would be grist for the Communist propaganda mill. Vekemans was identified in the public’s mind not only with the Roman Catholic Church but also with the anti-Communist Christian Democratic Party of former president Eduardo Frei.

According to NCR, President Kennedy and then-attorney general Robert Kennedy took a special interest in Vekemans’s projects in the early 1960s to increase support for Frei’s party. The Jesuit was a guest in the Kennedy White House and reportedly bragged to a friend after one visit that he had picked up $10 million for his Chilean projects. Frei was elected president over Allende in 1964.

Vekemans refused an interview with NCR on the new charges, Rashke reported. The correspondent was also unable to get some pertinent government documents declassified.

Meanwhile, the World Council of Churches’ press service reported that Chile’s current government (which toppled the Allende government in September, 1973) has recognized a “National Evangelical Coordinating Center” to handle liaison between itself and “junta-friendly” churches. The WCC report said President Pinochet’s policies regarding churches was “discriminatory” and “may be designed to bring about formation of a ‘Protestant State Church.’ ”

Deaths

ABRAHAM J. FELDMAN, 84, nationally known Reform Jewish leader and ecumenist; in West Hartford, Connecticut, after a brief illness.

MURIEL S. WEBB, 64, former Episcopal Church executive and since 1974 the director of the relief and refugees commission of the World Council of Churches; in Greenwich, Connecticut, of cancer.

The WCC: Supporting A New Order

One of the themes that grew out of the 1975 assembly of the World Council of Churches at Nairobi was “the search for a just, participatory, and sustainable society.” By the time the council’s policymaking Central Committee ended its Geneva meeting this month, the meaning of that theme was much clearer.

Committee members learned, for instance, that inherent in commitment to a just, participatory, and sustainable society (JPSS) is support for the “new international economic order.” They were told that since Nairobi the council has initiated or strengthened programs to express “solidarity with the efforts of people’s movements to build countervailing power” and to build awareness among “church constituencies about the issue of a new international economic order.”

Closely related to this question, the 134 WCC policy-makers were told, is the issue of transnational corporations. They learned that two high-level consultations have already been held and a staff task force formed to deal with transnationals.

Creation of another transnational corporation of its own, a “world bank” known as the Ecumenical Development Cooperative Society, was announced during the two-week Geneva meeting. It began operations in July after receiving notification from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that the SEC had no objection to the investment of the funds of American church agency trusts in the bank. The new WCC-sponsored financial institution began with an operating capital of just over $1 million. Some $190,000 of that cannot be used, however, until the Charity Commissioners of the United Kingdom agree to the investment of British funds in the venture. The bank is domiciled in the Netherlands and will make low interest loans to projects in the developing nations. The executive director is a Sri Lankan, and so far some 30 per cent of the investment has come from the Third World. The wealthy, tax-supported German church has not yet joined as a shareholder, but it is studying the matter. An American representative has been named to the staff to encourage U.S. church agencies to invest.

Another WCC intervention in world issues, related to the “sustainable” aspect of the JPSS theme, was its representation at the International Conference on Nuclear Power and its Fuel Cycle at Salzburg, Austria, in May. Delegates were primarily representatives of governments, but the WCC team was one of few non-governmental delegations there. In the debate, the WCC spokesman emphasized ethical and moral concerns related to the expansion of nuclear power and refused to give a wholehearted blessing to either the anti-nuclear or pro-nuclear forces. The WCC’s presence in the Salzburg sessions was hailed in Geneva as a triumph for the council.

The committee approved plans for a major international conference in 1979 on the JPSS theme. It will seek to bring together all the various sub-themes now being developed in various WCC units, highlighting WCC concerns in a variety of areas. There would be some 300 official participants, with the majority nominated (but not finally elected) by member denominations of the council.

Proving that it is sustaining itself currently, the committee adopted a 1978 Budget of $14 million, up about $1 million from the current year’s spending formula. Included in the amount is additional funding for the Ecumenical Institute outside Geneva, which was once in danger of being closed for lack of financial support. Its new board has now submitted a balanced budget, and additional outside funding has been pledged. Because of the recent uncertainty, much of the staff has been lost. The director, John Mbiti, will step down next year and resume a teaching role.

In another money matter the WCC announced additional grants from its Special Fund to Combat Racism during the central committee meeting. This year’s allocation, the seventh since the fund was established in 1970, is $530,000, bringing to $2,6 million the total disbursed so far. Various organizations on six continents are the recipients of the 1977 grants. Eleven of the thirty-five groups are getting the WCC money for the first time.

In addition to the JPSS theme, the committee also studied another theme, “The Confessing Community.” Under this heading, a 1,300-word letter was sent to member churches, calling for self-examination and prayer. The letter was the subject of vigorous debate in the meeting, and when the vote was taken on a show of hands, seven members opposed it and seven abstained. Speeches were made by thirty-seven delegates from twenty-five countries during consideration of the letter. It went through three drafts at the meeting but was still criticized for being applicable only to the developed nations. There was also criticism that it did not communicate directly to congregations. A Cuban pastor, Francisco Norniella, said it was too pastoral and not prophetic. Bishop Henry Okullu of Kenya complained that the whole process of drafting and discussing it diverted the energies of the committee away from more pressing matters.

Taking action on some of the “more pressing” matters, the committee:

• Condemned white minority governments of southern Africa for perpetrating “grave and blatant injustices … in the name of Christian civilization.”

• Expressed concern that some white South Africans were planning to emigrate to Bolivia to transfer racism there.

• Declared that “torture is epidemic” in today’s world and urged churches to expose it.

• Authorized further revision of statements on baptism, eucharist, and ministry in the hope that there can be agreement on a theological document on these subjects at the next WCC assembly.

• Approved establishment of an advisory group on human rights (see September 10,1976, issue, page 69), with the hope that it will begin work within the next six months.

• Accepted four churches as full members and two as associate members, bringing to 293 the number of affiliated denominations.

Religion in Transit

ABC-TV says it is remaking parts of the first two episodes of its controversial comedy series, “Soap,” scheduled to premiere this fall. The series was attacked sharply after church and secular previewers published analyses. Some observers, including a number of executives of ABC affiliates, still have reservations: they fear the clean-up will not be thorough enough, and they suspect that moral barriers will be under continual assault as the series progresses.

The United Presbyterian governing body of churches in Orange and Los Angeles counties in California, voted against admitting graduates of the charismatic-oriented Melodyland School of Theology as candidates for the ministry within its territory. Neo-Pentecostalism is not part of Presbyterian and Reformed tradition, the presbytery said.

Young Life staff member Robert Mitchell has been appointed executive director of the organization, succeeding the retiring president, William S. Starr. Young Life, headquartered in Colorado Springs, has more than 1,100 clubs involving 100,000-plus teen-agers, 600 staffers, and 6,000 volunteers in the United States, Canada, and thirteen foreign nations, according to leaders of the group.

Guy Charles, a former leader in the gay-rights movement, resigned as president of Liberation in Jesus Christ, a Virginia-based evangelical “ministry of healing” for homosexuals. Personal problems and board pressure preceded the move.

Street evangelist Arthur Blessitt led more than 1,000 Christians in a witness encounter on crime-ridden Hollywood Boulevard in Los Angeles last month. He gave them training in a week-long “street university” along with crash instructions the night before on a Christian television channel. The evangelist has been carrying a large wooden cross around the world (he recently spent two months in Israel where, he says, the response was “phenomenal.”) He is spending the summer preaching in California before embarking for South America.

Pastor James G. Harris of University Baptist Church in Fort Worth, Texas, a past president of the Southern Baptist Foreign Mission Board, died at age 64 of an apparent heart attack while jogging shortly before a Sunday morning worship service.

About 600 delegates took part in the Ghana Congress on Evangelization at Kumasi last month. Stronger ties of unity were forged among the participants, who came from a variety of denominational and nondenominational backgrounds. Reports given at the congress on the “New Life for All” movement indicated that the outreach campaign was having significant impact in the churches: there were remarkable conversions, healing of divisions, and increased giving for mission support. The delegates themselves took part in evangelistic crusades throughout the area during the final three days of the congress.

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