Terror in El Salvador

The assassination of El Salvador’s foreign minister, Mauricio Borgonovo, by a leftist terrorist group has brought the already strained relations between the government and the Roman Catholic Church to a critical point. Borgonovo, 37, was found shot to death near the capital on May 10. He had been kidnaped April 19 by the “Popular Forces of Liberation,” which had demanded the release of thirty-seven political prisoners as ransom.

One Jesuit priest was killed, three were expelled, and at least one disappeared after Borgonovo’s death. The nation’s hierarchy claimed there is a “large, planned campaign against the church which has been manifested in many ways.”

Priest Alfonso Navarro was shot to death in San Salvador May 11, the day of Borgonovo’s funeral. A rightist group, the “White Warrior Union,” claimed responsibility and said it was only the beginning of vengeance for the slain official. A child accompanying the priest was badly wounded in the shooting. The terrorists had issued a statement holding “the Jesuits and other Communist priests” responsible for Borgonovo’s safety and threatening that if he were killed or the government gave in to the kidnapers’ demands, “we will execute members of the above-mentioned group, eye for eye and tooth for tooth.”

Spanish Jesuits Andres Salvador Carranza and Jose Luis Ortega and a Panamanian, Marcelino Perez, were detained by authorities May 19 and expelled to Guatemala, where they were held incommunicado by police for six days before being sent to their home countries under strict security. The government refused to acknowledge their presence in Guatemala, though one official finally told reporters they were being held “for lack of proper documentation.”

The conflict between the Catholic Church and the government of Colonel Artutro Molina has been building up for some time, primarily over the thorny issue of land reform. The church has called for a more equitable distribution of wealth, and a number of priests, especially Jesuits, have reportedly encouraged peasants to take over unused lands belonging to large landowners. Priests were accused of having helped organize a May Day demonstration that had been banned by the government. It was broken up by police, and at least eight demonstrators were killed.

Jesuit Rutilo Grande García and two companions were murdered March 12. At least fifteen priests, mainly Jesuits, have been expelled from El Salvador since January.

In a mass for Borgonovo, Archbishop Oscar Romero called for national concord and peace and urged the government not to let loose “a wave of vengeance.” He said, “The church does not condone violence.… Vengeance must be replaced by kindness.” Pope Paul, who had called for Borgonovo’s release, expressed in a telegram to Jesuit leader Pedro Arrupe his “solidarity” with the Jesuits in the “painful trials to which members of the Company of Jesus have been submitted recently.”

President Molina announced an ambitious land-reform program several months ago—before the national elections—but it appears to have been derailed by the large landowners (some critics claim it was never intended to go anywhere). The Association of Cattlemen of El Salvador, representing the established wealthy families, attributed the recent troubles, including kidnapings, occupation of land, and the May Day massacre, to “Marxist penetration in elements of the Catholic Church,” including the priesthood, and called for rapid and energetic action by the government.

Archbishop Romero said that the church is facing a wave of defamation and calumny. “We have never advocated violence or subversion,” he said, but he added that tragedies such as Borgonovo’s death will continue “as long as there is not greater social justice and the political problems which separate men in this country are not resolved.” He said the church has always supported the defense of human rights and absolute respect for human life.

Evangelicals in El Salvador (whose four million population is overwhelmingly Catholic) tend to support the government and to see new opportunities for preaching the Gospel in the current situation. President Molina called in a number of leading evangelical pastors to explain the government’s position after a recent incident in which several students were killed, and the pastors prayed with him.

In an unrelated incident, Baptist missionary Bruce Bell was declared persona non grata in El Salvador. Bell, pastor of a large church in the capital, was accused of having links with the CIA and with the military in Honduras. He had made frequent trips to Honduras to preach in evangelistic campaigns. The real reason for his expulsion, however, appears to be related to a dispute involving a high government official whose son he had tried to help.

Meanwhile, in neighboring Guatemala, another feud is simmering between the Catholic Church and the officialist political party, once the staunchest of allies. Vice-president Mario Sandoval Alarcón, general director of the Movement of National Liberation, a rightist party, claimed that the church is becoming a vehicle for Communism by its actions in the name of renewal. Sandoval’s statement, made at a world anti-Communist congress in Taiwan, stemmed from a document released by the Guatemalan Bishops’ Conference several months ago that called for greater social justice.

In reply, the bishops issued another document defending the right of the church to “promote the dignity of the human person and the fundamental rights of man.” “The church has the obligation to proclaim justice in the social field and has the right to denounce injustices, the fruit of sin.” the bishops said. “Christian love and the promotion of justice cannot be separated, if we want to be faithful to the message of Christ.”

A New Church In Poland

Some 50,000 Roman Catholics stood in the rain in Nowa Huta, Poland, last month during the dedication of the first Catholic church in that postwar industrial town near Cracow. Its design is based on Noah’s Ark, and its capacity is 5,000. Funding came from both inside and outside Poland.

The event was symbolically important. Nowa Huta was originally conceived as a new socialist town, one that needed no church. Permission to build a church was first sought by Catholic leaders in 1956, but it was not granted until 1967. In 1960, hundreds of believers, including old women, moved to protect from police removal a wooden cross that had served as a center for open-air worship. The church people threw rocks at the police, who responded with tear gas. In the end, the cross remained.

In a sermon during the consecration service, Cardinal Karol Wojtyla said that Nowa Huta (New Foundry) was built originally with the idea “that it will be a city without God, without a church.” But, said he, “Christ came here and with the people who are working here said that man’s history cannot be judged by economic criteria of production and consumption.” Man, he asserted, is greater than that.

The week preceding the consecration was a troubled one. On May 7 the battered body of a 23-year-old student leader of Poland’s dissident movement was found in an apartment stairwell in Cracow. His colleagues claimed he was murdered by government toughs in retribution, a charge authorities denied. Thousands in Cracow and Warsaw attended memorial masses for the student. Authorities arrested dissident leaders in an apparent attempt to head off demonstrations.

In a separate development during the week, the Central Council of the Polish Catholic Bishops Conference released a study of “some urgent social and moral questions of great importance for the life of the church in Poland.” The council expressed concern over apparent government moves to curtail or eliminate certain church administrative, educational, and communications centers. It also called attention to an “intensification of atheistic propaganda” directed at Polish youth.

Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski, Poland’s Catholic primate, injected his advice into the week’s clamor, too. He called on the government to “revise [its] whole system of governing.”

Giving

Americans gave a record $29.42 billion to charitable causes last year, an increase of 9.4 per cent over 1975, according to a report of the American Association of Fund-Raising Counsel. Of this amount, 43.6 per cent ($12.84 billion) went to churches and other religious organizations, an increase of 9.9 per cent over 1975. The next largest share, $4.37 billion, went to charities involved in health operations.

Ethiopia: Pulling Out

“Communications are so erratic” within Ethiopia and between that African nation and the outside world, said a veteran missions executive, “that it’s hard to find out what’s going on there.”

Reports from a variety of agencies indicate that “what’s going on there” is that the missionary presence is being reduced drastically and by the end of this month may be down to less than half its 1974 size. It was three years ago that a coup toppled Emperor Haile Selassie, but differences between the revolutionaries have now led to what one observer calls “anarchy all over the place.” What had been described earlier this year as the largest struggle within a black African country (except for the Nigerian civil war of the last decade) last month took on international dimensions with the introduction of Cuban military “advisors.”

Generally deteriorating conditions, rather than any direct government policy, are forcing the departure of many missionaries. The central government has taken over the Lutheran “Radio Voice of the Gospel” (see April 15 issue, page 57), but other seizures of mission property have been at the order of local “peasant associations.” These associations have been given considerable autonomy by the military rulers in Addis Ababa. Sudan Interior Mission, the largest missionary force in the country, has had its largest medical institutions “nationalized,” for instance. Four United Presbyterian mission station properties have been “nationalized.” But the local governing authorities in a number of communities are reported to have asked overseas workers to stay and have decided against taking over their properties.

Even where expatriate Christian personnel are welcome to stay in certain territories, they face nearly impossible working conditions. In addition to the breakdown in communications, civil strife has disrupted transportation. Many commodities, including fuel, are frequently unavailable at any price.

Because of the unsettled conditions throughout the nation, embassies are telling missionaries from their countries that their safety cannot be guaranteed. The Ethiopian government itself has advised foreigners in some parts of the nation to go to safer areas.

One of the keys to continuing work in remote areas for many missions is the availability of Missionary Aviation Fellowship aircraft. Regular runs of those planes ended last month, and MAF asked government permission to remove the aircraft from Ethiopia. An MAF spokesman said there was a possibility that his organization could still provide some emergency flights, but routine work was getting “more and more complicated and difficult.”

Another important factor in operating remote stations is two-way radio, which gives isolated missionaries a method of keeping in touch with colleagues. SIM’s permit to operate such a communications system in Ethiopia expires at the end of this month. Most of the stations left without aircraft service and radio are being closed, though some will continue to be operated by national Christians.

Four Southern Baptist missionaries have spent some time in Ethiopian jails during the turmoil. One spent sixteen days in detention on what Baptist officials called a “firearms technicality.” No charges were ever filed against the others, and they were freed after two days of arrest. Their arrest was not seen as part of any general campaign against missionaries, however. Less than half of the Southern Baptist group is remaining in the country, and the advisability of their staying will be decided in July.

The Lutheran World Federation announced that all expatriate personnel who were assigned to Radio Voice of the Gospel have now left Ethiopia.

The SIM force in Ethiopia was down to 163 (from a high of over 300) last month, but an early-June departure of missionaries being sent home was expected to drop the strength to well under 100. There are some 2,300 SIM-related congregations in Ethiopia.

Only a “skeleton crew” of United Presbyterian workers—mostly single people—is staying through summer. After June departures, only about a dozen of the fifty usually assigned will remain.

One missions executive said every board he has heard from has “put a hold” on sending personnel into Ethiopia. In most cases that includes missionaries scheduled to return to the field from furlough. Several of the agencies have already started reassigning their personnel to nearby African nations or to other work.

Death in Zaire

One United Methodist missionary was killed and two others were reported missing late last month as a result of the invasion of Zaire’s southern province of Shaba. Word of the death of Glen J. R. Eschtruth, 49, came as his wife and eight other missionaries were evacuated from Kapanga. They had been detained since early March, and Eschtruth, supervisor of the Methodist mission’s medical work in the Kapanga area, was reportedly kidnapped in mid-April. The State Department confirmed his death.

As Zaire’s President Mobutu returned from the Shaba skirmishes to a triumphant welcome in Kinshasa, two Methodist missionaries were still unaccounted for. Frank Anderson and Stanley Maughlin had stayed on to look after the station at Sandoa when other workers were evacuated March 13. When Zairean forces retook Sandoa last month, the men were not there, and local reports indicated that retreating invaders had taken them into Angola.

Eschtruth, a graduate of Asbury College, had been in Zaire since 1961. He supervised eighteen rural clinics as well as the hospital in Kapanga.

German Get-togethers

Thousands of West German evangelicals took part in last month’s three-day Gemeindetag (Fellowship Day) conference in Dortmund, a city of 650,000 in the Ruhr valley. The event, organized by leaders of the evangelical wing in West Germany’s state (Lutheran) church, featured German evangelist Gerhard Bergmann (whose books have sold three million copies) and Latin American evangelist Luis Palau, president of the California-based Overseas Crusades mission agency. Some 35,000 people attended the final rally, held in a stadium and televised over a major network. It was the first time an evangelical program was broadcast live in West Germany, according to Gemeindetag officials.

Earlier, Palau was guest evangelist at Weg 77 in nearby Essen, where crowds during the week of meetings fluctuated between 2,500 and 4,500. The evangelist also spoke at the university and other schools in Essen. Weg (Way) was organized by the Evangelical Alliance of Essen and coordinated by Ulrich Parzany, a youth evangelist and the pastor of Essen’s largest church. Parzany said he was pleasantly surprised by the major attention given to the crusade by the media. Although 95 per cent of Essen’s people are listed as belonging to the church, only 7 per cent attend, he pointed out. (The statistics are comparable for much of heavily populated Ruhr region, which is in the western part of the country.)

After the meetings in Dortmund, Palau traveled to politically troubled Argentina, the land where he was born, for a week-long youth crusade in Luna Park in Buenos Aires.

Church of Compassion: Going For Broke

When James Eugene Ewing—known as “the Reverend” by the estimated half a million “members” of his “mail order” Church of Compassion—moved his operation from Texas to a lavishly redecorated old movie theater in downtown Los Angeles three years ago, he had every reason to appear confident. After all, his advice on fund-raising techniques had helped save evangelist Oral Roberts from financial disaster six years earlier. Other evangelists too had profited by his counsel.

The 44-year-old onetime dirt-floor revival-tent preacher rented a mansion in Beverly Hills opposite the home of Pat Boone and worked at developing his church. He held only occasional services in the theater, yet took in $3 to $4 million a year. He leased a dozen expensive cars, including three Cadillacs, a Rolls Royce, and a Stutz Black Hawk.

Now all that is gone, for Ewing and his church filed for bankruptcy last month in Los Angeles federal court. No spokesman for Ewing or the church could be located, but it was learned that he was plagued by about fifty lawsuits, dwindling contributions, and rising costs for publication of World Compassion magazine. The bankruptcy petition listed more than $2.7 million in secured and unsecured claims and only $486,000 in assets, most of the latter in antique furniture and works of art that adorn the theater-church. There was also a piece of property valued at $120,000 in Fort Worth, where the church was originally chartered in 1958 as Camp Meetings Revivals.

Ewing, who is divorced, in recent years drew a salary of between $63,000 and $76,000. He personally guaranteed some of the loans made to the church, in one instance pledging as collateral his $40,000, forty-seven-foot boat. Two other church officials, M. R. McElroth and O. Duane Snyder, also filed for bankruptcy.

Portents of the church’s financial fall were evident last year when nearly half of the thirty-two persons on the staff were laid off and others found that their pay checks bounced. In April, services at the theater were halted.

According to an “unauthorized” biography of Oral Roberts by former associate Wayne Robinson, Ewing was a master at eliciting contributions through mail appeals. In the past he had helped Roberts, Rex Humbard, Billy James Hargis, T. L. Osborn, Don Stewart (A. A. Allen’s successor), and others. Stripped of embellishments, the pitch was that if you give a dollar to God (through the evangelist), God will bless you with two. Ewing created the slogan that was to become a Roberts hallmark: “Something good is going to happen to you!”

The turning point for Roberts, said Robinson, came in 1968 when Ewing told him to write supporters that he would take all their letters into his prayer tower and pray for their requests for three days and then write replies. The appeal was so successful, Robinson recalls, that sacks of mail overflowed the prayer tower and donations in 1969 doubled to $12.3 million. Another admirer of Ewing fiscal genius was Humbard, for whom Ewing once composed a letter that Robinson said brought in an average return of $64 per copy.

Ewing sometimes hosted lavish banquets, to which he invited leaders of religious organizations. Here he would advertise his fund-raising services. One source said Ewing offered his help on a commission basis.

Although Ewing had only an eighth-grade education, his folksy form letters—with words purposely misspelled—were personalized by computer typed-in names and mailed to as many as 1.5 million homes a month, a worker said. Promotion campaigns often involved mailing inexpensive items like prayer cloths and glow-in-the-dark light-switch plates “free” in return for donations. Particularly controversial was the church’s Giant Family Bible plan. Bibles that cost the church $10, including mailing charges, were “given” to members who signed a pledge card committing themselves to paying $108 in monthly installments of $6.

By filing the voluntary bankruptcy petition, Ewing and the church may now start anew in Los Angeles or elsewhere, free of the $2.7 million in church debts. A former employee said Ewing had held a crusade in Florida recently and perhaps would try to relocate the church there.

RUSSELL CHANDLER

Religion in Transit

An elderly woman tourist from Missouri was stricken with a heart attack on the Capitol steps in Washington last month. Democratic congressman Robert J. Cornell of Wisconsin was summoned. Cornell, one of two Catholic priests in Congress (the other is Robert F. Drinan of Massachusetts), administered last rites. The woman died later at a hospital.

Six Canadian church bodies have called on President Carter to back their plea for an “open-ended moratorium” on the proposed construction of an oil and gas pipeline from Alaska across western Canada. Among other things, the churches want land claims to be settled, rights of Indians to be guaranteed, and environmental safeguards to be instituted before construction begins. The church coalition includes Catholics, Presbyterians, Lutherans, Mennonites, and the United Church of Canada.

Separatist preacher Carl McIntire has taken up yet another cause: he wants to stop the switch from Fahrenheit to Celsius (or Centigrade) temperature readings. He says it’s all part of a Soviet plan to take over the world—by degrees.

Signed into Rhode Island law last month was a measure prescribing a period of silent meditation not to exceed one minute at the start of the day in all the state’s public schools.

The United Methodist Board of Global Ministries adopted a resolution urging the U.S. government to break diplomatic relations with Taiwan and seek to establish them with Peking.

On the second anniversary of the fall of Cambodia, Klong Yai Baptist Church was chartered, the first Cambodian church organized in Thailand. Located in a refugee camp, the church has 251 charter members, most of them Cambodians but some Vietnamese and Chinese. Nearly 600 persons have been baptized in the Klong Yai camp since Southern Baptist missionary Daniel R. Cobb and nalional worker Has Savile (the church’s pastor) began work there. The pair and another missionary have also baptized nearly 1,250 in three other camps, according to press sources.

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