Trouble for Christians Overseas

Egypt’S Coptic Pope Banished

NOTE: This issue went to press just as news of President Anwar Sadat’s murder became known.

The crackdown by Egypt’s canny President Anwar Sadat on “religious extremists”—both Muslim and Christian—had the appearance of a wise and neutral father impartially settling a family dispute. But on closer inspection, the arbiter, who ordered 1,536 religious and political activists detained and seven periodicals closed down early in September, looked to be neither disinterested nor evenhanded.

The handful of evangelicals apprehended included two leaders in the Brethren assemblies and an elder in a Cairo Evangelical Coptic Church who had been evangelistically active. Two dozen assertive Coptic Orthodox leaders were detained, including Father Zacharia (CT, July 21, 1978, p. 50). The Coptic Orthodox patriarch, Pope Shenouda III, was banished to a monastery in Egypt’s western desert, and the government decree recognizing his authority to speak on behalf of Egypt’s six million or more Copts rescinded. In his place, Sadat named a caretaker council of five prominent bishops.

But the overwhelming majority of those confined were Muslims aligned with the radical right-wing Muslim Brotherhood, the only visible opposition to Sadat’s rule, which was declared illegal during Nasser’s rule. Sadat outlawed or disbanded at least 13 Islamic fundamentalist societies. Those rounded up included virtually every vocal critic of Sadat’s peace initiative with Israel.

A summer filled with Muslim-Coptic violence set the stage for Sadat’s drastic move. A violent June attack on Christian homes and businesses in a northern suburb of Cairo occurred after extremist Muslims attempted to occupy land set apart for the building of a new church. At least 60 lost their lives, and thousands of dollars’ worth of damage was done. Several ugly incidents occurred in the remainder of the summer. Despite police protection provided for church property, a church was bombed during a wedding service; three were killed and scores injured.

Observers believed that Sadat’s government was taking advantage of the communal strife to put its opponents out of action. The arrest of a symbolic number of Christians was thought designed to obscure this actual intent and to appease the larger Muslim community.

As for Shenouda’s banishment, he was the first Coptic patriarch in living memory to have used his office to press determinedly for Coptic interests, doing so with such persistence that he angered Sadat. So the president appears to have settled that score also.

Many Copts are understandably dismayed by this turn of events, but most evangelicals see as many gains as losses. Although Shenouda stood up boldly to Egypt’s Muslim majority, he has opposed evangelicals with equal fervor, putting Father Zacharia and others on the sidelines for their popular weekly Bible studies. Shenouda is said to have advised an inquiring mother that it would be preferable for her daughter to marry a Muslim than an evangelical. And with Shenouda sidelined, at least one member of the caretaker council, the jovial Bishop Samuel, displays definite evangelical leanings.

Those detained (not in prison, but in encampment barracks with decent food) were advised that they could appeal during the first six months of their confinement. It would thus appear that many will be held for an extended period. If this proves true—but the Christians are released early—it will confirm the observers’ analysis.

HARRY GENET

And A Romanian Minister Packs Up

Romania’s most prominent Baptist pastor was subtly evicted by the Communist government last month. The Ministry of the Interior major who had shadowed Josif Ton for eight years let him know that if he applied for it, a 90-day visa would be granted, with the understanding that he would not be allowed to return. It was also made clear that he had no choice. And so Ton, his wife Elizabeth, and their daughter Dorothea crossed the Romanian border permanently on September 4.

Ton, pastor of a 1,700-member Baptist congregation in Oradea, did not leave protesting and struggling. An unusual sequence of events over the previous nine months had prepared him to accept—even welcome—the crossing.

Ever since Ton returned voluntarily to Romania in 1972 after earning a master’s degree in theology at Oxford University, he has been engaged in a sparring match with the authorities.

In late 1973, his thesis on “The Present Situation of the Baptist Church in Romania” was published. It outlined the restrictions being imposed arbitrarily on the church without sanction of constitution or law. The initial intense anger of the authorities quickly subsided, and the grievances listed were considered. Many of these, in force for a decade or more, were eliminated. A similar round followed publication of his “Christian Manifesto” in 1976.

Ton suffered personal harassment. He was subjected to searches, house arrest, and interrogations. His personal library was confiscated (but later released intact in response to a telegram appeal from the West).

Most believers in Romania have found it possible to serve God, and suffer quietly within the restrictions imposed on the church by the state. A few have raised their voices to denounce the encroachment of the state and have found direct confrontation inevitable. In recent years, Ton has edged away from confrontation toward a lonely middle road of cooperation without compromise. It is a road that left him open to misunderstanding by his fellow believers and vulnerable to shifts in regime tactics. He sought a dialogue with the authorities, in which he dangled before them the assistance that Baptist representation in the Anglo-Saxon Western world could provide for Romania’s image and relations (helping it to reduce its dependence on the Soviet Union). He would then follow through by pointing out that this representation would be credible only if Romania stopped mistreating its Christians.

The authorities displayed a cautious interest in Ton’s proposition, and he talked several times with an adviser to President Nicolae Ceausescu. Ton pressed boldly for recognition of the some 200 Baptist congregations meeting without authorization, and for permission to build new church structures. Some of his suggestions were followed.

Last year Ton asked for permission to visit the West, speaking in a number of large congregations and at the Consultation on World Evangelization in Pattaya, Thailand. He believes his visit was granted by the authorities to test his approach. Would his itineration make Romania better known and appreciated?

On his return last fall. Ton waited to see what the regime’s assessment would be. He believes the result might have been positive had it not been for the change in climate introduced by events in Poland.

By last December, there were rumors that Ton was to be expelled. By January, Ton was confidentially informed that this was being considered at the highest levels. The family began receiving abusive and threatening phone calls.

Meanwhile, the urgent need for training pastors in Romania was making a deepening impression on Ton. Some 150,000 Baptists, organized into about one thousand churches, have only 170 pastors. Only four of them are university graduates. More than one hundred are due to retire over the next six to ten years. The state has systematically reduced the number of students allowed to attend the Baptist seminary until it is now down to only 15. There are no Romanian-language texts for the seminary; printing of religious books has been banned for the last 20 years. And the 150,000 Pentecostals and 30,000 Brethren have no training schools at all.

For years Ton had wanted a basic Christian library for Romanian believers, but hoped others would rise to the challenge. Last December, Ton recalls, a close friend challenged him to accept his patronage, move to Cluj, and devote his entire time to writing and editing. That offer plunged Ton into a reappraisal of his ministry. Not long after, he alerted his deacons that they should begin looking for his successor in the Oradea pulpit.

He soon became convinced, however, that working on the training books inside Romania would be, in his words, “so complicated that it was really impossible.” And so when he received an invitation last spring to return to England for three years to earn a doctorate, he saw that as his opportunity and approached the authorities for permission. Such applications routinely involve secret police interviews of acquaintances, and Ton heard from these that the investigating colonel was seeking to determine if Ton would be a greater liability to the regime inside the country or abroad. Eventually, he received permission.

Meanwhile, however, the Department of Cults had launched a new tactic for harassing the spirited leadership in the Baptist churches. It accused Ton and three other pastors—Vasile Talos, Joseph Sarac, and Vasile Brinzei—with embezzling church funds. Romanian law, in a most unbaptistic manner, holds the pastor accountable for all church funds spent that are not explicitly approved by the government. Since such approval typically takes years to obtain, churches have necessarily ignored the statute. In this campaign, the authorities told other pastors that if they defended the “Bucharest Four,” their own books would be examined. Ton was advised to keep quiet if he wished to obtain his exit visa.

Ton did not oblige. He alerted sources in the West to what was happening. A resulting published report caused several U.S. senators to write in protest to President Ceausescu. The Department of Cults backed down, saying it had the evidence to convict the four but did not want to involve the entire Baptist Union.

Ton pressed his advantage. In July, he wrote a paper attacking state auditing of church financial records as unwarranted interference. He distributed typed copies to the churches and, for good measure, sent one to the authorities. They quickly retaliated by informing him in writing that his visa application was denied.

But two weeks later, higher authorities, outraged, reversed that ruling. He was summoned by the Department of Interior and told to go and collect the family’s passports and leave.

The Tons distributed their furniture and other belongings and divided Josif’s library among pastors who read English. They arrived at the border with only four suitcases. But that was still too much. Border guards confiscated his address list, correspondence file, and sermon notes.

Arriving in the States, Ton plunged into a month-long whirlwind speaking tour of U.S. churches from Lynchburg, Virginia, to Seattle. He planned then to gather at least 10 Romanian exiles at one location and concentrate on producing Romanian-language materials, beginning with a 12-volume set of texts plus TEE (theological education by extension) manuals. Two are already completed: New Testament Survey, by Merrill C. Tenney, and Mark, by Irving Jensen. Ton also plans to begin recording messages for broadcast into his native land.

Those Communist bureaucrats may soon fervently wish they had stuck with their original decision to keep Ton inside Romania.

HARRY GENET

World Scene

Ireland’s prime minister wants to remove the pro-Roman Catholic tilt from the republic’s constitution. Garret FitzGerald, son of a Protestant mother from Northern Ireland and a southern Catholic farmer, would also scrap sections that claim territorial control over Northern Ireland and amend the constitution to allow for divorce legislation. FitzGerald’s plan to effect change in the South in order to win confidence in the North depends on his ability to convince members of his own minority Fine Gael party, pushing it through Parliament, and submitting it to a national referendum.

The Belfast headquarters of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland was severely damaged by a bomb blast last month. Damage was estimated at more than $350,000.

East German (Lutheran) Protestants are restoring the Augustinian monastery at Erfurt where Martin Luther spent decisive years of his life as a monk and professor of theology, living in a small cell. The ancient buildings were almost completely destroyed during an air raid in 1945, shortly before the end of World War II. Roofing of the monastery’s east wing was completed last month. Reconstruction is to cost $2.5 million, with two-thirds of the funds coming from churches outside the Democratic Republic. The goal is to complete the work by 1983, the five-hundredth anniversary of the German Reformer’s birth. The complex also houses a Protestant seminary and will include an international conference center.

Several Christian prisoners in Soviet labor camps have gone on hunger strikes to obtain Bibles or get them returned. Gleb Yakunin, 47, the Orthodox priest serving a five-year sentence for activities with a religious rights group, had his Bible confiscated on arrival at Perm Labor Camp No. 37 in the Urals Mountains. It was a volume printed in the Soviet Union under the official auspices of the Moscow patriarchate. In a note smuggled out of the camp, Yakunin said he would go on hunger strike September 16. Also on hunger strike to demand Bibles are Alexander Ogorodnikov and Vladimir Poresh.

African evangelicals bolstered their underpinnings last month in meetings in Malawi’s new capital, Lilongwe. The 340 participants at the fourth general assembly of the Association of Evangelicals of Africa and Madagascar (AEAM) added an evangelism and missions commission to complement the existing theological commission. It also dealt with dissension that had plagued the school it sponsors for French-speaking Africa—the Bangui Evangelical School of Theology—by downgrading missionary principles in the squabble and appointing Zairian Paluku Rubinga as its first African dean. The assembly was skillfully managed by AEAM general secretary Tokunboh Adeyemo.

Africa’s first graduate-level English-language seminary has moved a couple of steps closer to reality. The board of governors of the Nairobi Evangelical Graduate School of Theology (NGEST) has approved the initial curriculum for courses to be offered beginning next fall, and has named a registrar: Joash Okong’o, 37, a Kenyan and a graduate in theology of the University of Saskatchewan, Canada. The school is expected to be located on a 27-acre site on the outskirts of Nairobi. The project director and principal for a three-year term is British businessman Anthony Wilmot, an Africa veteran.

SWAPOonce again heads the list of groups receiving grants from the World Council of Churches. The South-West Africa People’s Organization, the Namibian party that was the target of South Africa’s recent raid into Angola, received $125,000 in the annual WCC grants announced last month. An equal amount was split among three South African groups resisting apartheid there. The remaining $337,000 was allocated among 42 other organizations devoted to various aspects of political, economic, and cultural independence for minorities worldwide. A month earlier, the Salvation Army finally severed its membership in the WCC, the culmination of a protest it lodged in 1978 against grants to a guerrilla group, the Patriotic Front of Zimbabwe.

North American Scene

In the latest round of the Goldwater-versus-Falwell fight. Moral Majority’s Jerry Falwell commented on Sen. Barry Goldwater’s criticism of the religious New Right. “It is apparent,” said Falwell, “that the senator has decided never again to run for public office.” In a speech from the Senate floor, Goldwater had said he was “sick and tired of political preachers … telling me … that if I want to be a moral person, I must believe in A, B, or C.” Falwell’s response was three pages long, a point-by-point refutation of Goldwater’s charges, concluding with the veiled threat that those who put the senator in office would not vote for him again.

How much trouble would you take to reconstruct charred fragments of a fire-damaged manuscript kept under lock and key in London? A lot—if they were all that remained of a 1,500-year-old Bible manuscript known as the “Cotton Genesis.” With the help of ultraviolet lights, Venetian mosaics, and 40 years of painstaking labor, art historians Herbert Kessler and Kurt Weitzman have finally succeeded in reconstructing the parchments. “The Cotton Genesis in its day was the most famous and studied manuscript in existence,” said Kessler. It was written by Egyptian Christians and once owned by England’s King Henry VIII before it was badly damaged in 1731 when fire swept through the British Museum. The replica of the manuscript is expected to be published next year.

They said legal abortions would stop and illegal ones would multiply. But neither of those predictions made by pro- or antiabortionists came true. Despite the Hyde Amendment’s turn off of federal funds for abortions, 95 percent of low-income and other women who otherwise might have turned to Medicaid for help got abortions anyway. According to Dr. Willard Cates of the government’s Center for Disease Control, these women have gotten safe, legal abortions through state and privately funded programs. Only 1 percent resorted to illegal operations.

The public rates clergymen higher than individuals in 24 other occupations in terms of honesty and ethical standards, according to a recent Gallup poll. Some 63 percent of respondents rated clergymen very high in these categories, and 28 percent rated them average. Pharmacists rated next highest: some 59 percent of the respondents rated them as very high in honesty and ethics, while 33 percent rated them average. Others in the top 10 professions were, in order, dentists, medical doctors, engineers, college teachers, policemen, bankers, TV reporters, and newspaper reporters. At the bottom of the list were car salesmen. Only 6 percent rated them very high; 33 percent rated them average, and 55 percent rated them low or very low.

Imagine the army without chaplains. That may happen if a lawsuit in a New York U.S. District Court succeeds, which challenges the army’s use of taxpayer money to support a military chaplaincy. In the suit, lawyers Joel Katcoff and Allen Wieder dispute this use of federal funds, charging the chaplaincy is “designed to inculcate religious values” and “by design and appearance lends its prestige, influence, and power to organized religion.” Such action, they say, violates the First Amendment, which prohibits Congress from making any law “respecting an establishment of religion.” Some church-and-state experts are concerned that the way the chaplaincy is now structured may make it vulnerable to attack.

New Jewish Pentateuch Commentary Published

The first Jewish commentary ever produced in North America on the Pentateuch—the first five books of the Bible—has been published by the Union of American Hebrew Congregations.

It took the Reform Jewish agency 18 years to complete The Torah: A Modern Commentary. The 1,824-page volume will sell for $25.

Rabbi Alexander M. Schindler, president of the union, described the commentary as “a reverent but not Orthodox approach to the Pentateuch.” He said it is “unique in that it treats the Torah [Jewish law] both as a literary document subject to critical examination and as the bearer of a sacred message. No other Jewish commentary on the Torah ever approached the text in this way.”

Commentaries on Genesis, Exodus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy were written by Rabbi W. Gunther Plaut, senior scholar and rabbi emeritus of Holy Blossom Temple in Toronto. The late Rabbi Bernard J. Bamberger of New York, a past president of the World Union for Progressive Judaism, wrote the commentary on Leviticus.

The volume’s features include a series of excerpts from various religious and secular sources in literature that have a bearing on the Scripture texts. Each of the five books is introduced by a 5,000-word essay by William W. Hallo, curator of the Babylonian Collection at Yale University.

RELIGIOUS NEWS SERVICE

Gunmen Slay Mennonite Pastor In Guatemala

The escalating violence in Guatemala has reached into the evangelical missionary community with the murder of John Troyer, a Mennonite pastor. Troyer, 28, was shot to death September 13 in the isolated village where he and his family lived, near the town of Tezpan in the central highlands. Loved and respected in the community, he was the first Protestant missionary killed in Guatemala during almost a century of labor in the country.

A dozen armed men burst into the Troyer home just before midnight, dragged the family out, and accused them of being rich Americans who did nothing to help the poor. They ransacked the house and attempted to set it on fire, then burned the missionaries’ car and motorcycle. Then they told Troyer and Gary Miller, a single teacher who lived with the family, to walk toward the church. Minutes later, a volley of shots rang out. Troyer was killed instantly. Miller, 21, was wounded when a bullet nicked his lung. He reached the hospital the next day and upon his release returned immediately to the U.S.

Troyer’s wife, Marie, and five young children, including five-month-old twins, also flew home to Michigan immediately. They were followed by the rest of their group, the Conservative Mennonite Fellowship (CMF). A small, publicity-shy mission, CMF had some five couples working in Chimaltenango just west of Guatemala City. Reports said Merril Yoder, the group’s leader, and possibly some of the other men would return to Guatemala in a few weeks to evaluate the mission’s future.

Another agency with close ties to CMF, Mennonite Air Missions, also withdrew its personnel from the country. The leader and only pilot, Harold Kaufman, left a month earlier due to unsettled conditions in the Quiche area where he did most of his work, and into which he flew regularly. Although a dozen Catholic priests, including American Stanley Rother, have been murdered or kidnapped in recent months in Guatemala, Troyer is the first evangelical foreign missionary to be martyred in the 99 years since the first permanent work was established in the country by Presbyterians at the invitation of liberal president Justo Rufino Barrios. Over the years, there has been unusual liberty to preach the gospel in the country despite scattered local incidents of persecution. Several pastors and laymen reportedly have been killed in the current wave of violence, but in many cases, the motives were not clear.

STEPHEN R. SYWULKA

Major Battle Coming Over Arkansas Creation Law

The trial to decide the constitutionality of Arkansas’ creationism law could become a major court test: it now seems likely the country’s foremost proponents of creationism will be involved, a factor previously in doubt.

The trial itself, however, has been postponed until later this year or early next year. The American Civil Liberties Union, which is challenging the law: the state attorney general, who will defend it; and federal Judge William Overton, who will hear the case, have all agreed on the delay, because of the complexity of the matter. The trial had been set to start in Little Rock on October 26.

Many expected the creationism trial in California last winter to become a showdown on the creation-evolution question. It did not because the creationists who brought suit there chose not to pursue the constitutional question of whether teaching creationism, which accords with the Bible’s understanding of origins, violates the First Amendment to the Constitution.

The Arkansas law will require, starting in the fall of 1982, inclusion of creation science in public high school science classes if evolution theory is taught.

Wendell R. Bird. Jr., of El Cajon. California, and John W. Whitehead of Manassas, Virginia, two Christian lawyers well-versed in First Amendment issues, will assist Arkansas State Attorney General Steve Clark, who must defend the statute. Exactly what their role wall be has not been decided, an administrative aide to Clark said.

That recent development is one of several signaling a change in fortune for those who back the law but who have been held at arm’s length. Additionally, Bird and Whitehead have furnished Clark with a list of potential witnesses who support creationism, including about 60 scientists, as well as other experts.

Proponents of creationism may have an even bigger role in the trial. Fifteen individuals and four organizations—including a group of orthodox Jew’s, a Muslim, an evolutionist, and a group of about 600 scientists—have appealed a ruling denying them intervention as codefendants with the state.

In August. Judge Overton denied intervention, declaring that Clark had shown he would defend every conceivable area in which the would-be interveners might have an interest.

It appeared for a while that Clark would refuse any help from backers of the law. When the ACLU filed suit in May, Clark said he, too, had doubts about the law (CT. Sept. 18, p. 40). Subsequently, he refused the offer of free legal assistance from Bird and Whitehead. When the motion to intervene was made in July, Clark unequivocally opposed it. He explained that intervention by anyone would “muddy the waters” and possibly’ delay the trial.

Bird is optimistic about the intervention appeal, saying that “precedent is on our side.”

Of the list of about 60 scientists from which expert witnesses will be selected, nearly half are in some field of life science and all but one have an earned Ph.D., Bird said. The list is an implicit reply to evolutionists, who have impugned creationists’ credentials. The list includes biochemists, paleontologists, microbiologists, zoologists, and geneticists.

JACK WEATHERLY

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