25 Years Later, Life Still Springs from Death

In 1961, Paul Carlson spent three months in the Belgian Congo (now Zaire) with the Evangelical Covenant Mission. Though he returned to the U.S. to begin a medical practice, he could not get Africa—and its overwhelming medical needs—off his mind, once telling a colleague over lunch, “If you could only see, you wouldn’t be able to swallow your sandwich.”

Carlson became a full-time medical missionary in 1963, returning to the Congo along with his wife and two children. It was a move that would eventually cost him his life.

The following year, when armed rebel soldiers made advances into the area where Carlson was based, foreign embassies advised all missionaries to evacuate. Carlson accompanied his family and his nurse to safety, across the Ubangi River and into the Central African Republic. But unable to forget his patients, he returned, only to become one of 250 people taken hostage by the rebels.

According to firsthand accounts of the events of November 24, 1964, the soldiers marched the hostages into the streets. Upon noticing Belgian paratroopers attempting a rescue, rebel leaders called for the deaths of all hostages, including women and children. As the Belgians arrived, the hostages fled amid a barrage of gunfire. Some 220 survived the massacre; Carlson was not among them.

The story of the tragedy was widely reported. Time magazine made it a cover story for its December 4, 1964, issue; Life ran gruesome photos of slain bodies, including Carlson’s.

But on the twenty-fifth anniversary of the tragedy, those who remember Carlson are thinking more about life than death. And they like to think that the Loko, Zaire-based ministry established in Carlson’s memory is everything he would have worked toward.

Soon after Carlson’s death, several of his friends formed the Paul Carlson Medical Foundation. In 1968, the foundation received from the president of Zaire a new hospital complex and 5,000 acres of land. That year, IMELOKO (the Evangelical Medical Institute of Loko) opened its doors for service.

In addition to providing quality medical care, the institute has established a network of 15 rural health centers, whose services include medical treatment and nutrition education. IMELOKO has established 1,500 acres of land for the raising of cattle, chickens, and rabbits, and has built 14 ponds for the raising of fish. Local farmers have dug and dammed over 6,000 additional fish ponds, stocked with fish from IMELOKO’s “mother” ponds.

The institute’s agricultural staff instructs local farmers in modern farming methods; its technical services department offers education in various trades, including bricklaying and carpentry. IMELOKO has also introduced to the area the legumenous Leucaena tree, which grows up to 16 feet a year, restoring forest land and rejuvenating the soil in an area plagued by desertification.

Said Anne Ericson of the Paul Carlson Medical Program, which administrates IMELOKO, “The spirit that drives IMELOKO today is the same spirit that inspired Dr. Paul Carlson to give his life to the service of others.”

NORTH AMERICAN SCENE

LUTHERANS

ELCA Woes

Major financial problems have forced the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) to make cutbacks in programs and staff. The church is in the process of cutting 39 staff positions; several staff members have received termination notices.

The money woes will also mean decreases in church grants to Lutheran colleges and seminaries, and the reduction of missionary personnel. ELCA Bishop Herbert Chilstrom said the process was painful, but that the church had no other choice if it was to address last year’s $15 million shortfall.

Chilstrom, meanwhile, has been appointed to head a six-person National Chilstrom Council of Churches (NCC) panel charged with building ties with the evangelical and Roman Catholic communities. At a 1988 consultation of the NCC’s governing board, the lack of participation of conservative evangelicals, Catholics, and Pentecostals was cited as a major contributor to the NCC’s current malaise.

SOVIET IMMIGRANTS

Rude Reception

It was to flee persecution that Vladimir and Ekaterina Doroshkevich, along with their eight children, left the Soviet Union this past summer. But so far the family has found the U.S. to be something less than hospitable.

Police in White Bear Lake, Minnesota, are investigating incidents of harassment aimed at the family, including death threats and the burning of a cross on the front lawn of their home. Threats have also been leveled against the Calvary Assembly of God Church, which is sponsoring the Doroshkeviches’ resettlement, and against the family of the church’s pastor. Vandals recently got inside the church and painted various messages on its lobby walls, including “America is for Americans only. Our boys died over there so these people could live here? No way.”

Judi Jankowski, the family’s resettlement coordinator, said supporters of the family are “appalled” by the rude welcome. She said this is the first case of harassment directed against any of the more than 10,000 Soviet Christians who have come to the U.S. since last year.

FAMILY

Still a Priority

Americans continue to place a high value on the family according to a new survey released by Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Company. More than 80 percent of respondents nationwide said the family remains the central element in their lives. Over half said providing financial security for their families was among their top concerns.

“In spite of several decades of cultural and other attacks on family values, there remains a great reservoir of commitment to the family among average Americans,” said Gary Bauer of the Washington-based Family Research Council.

Yet Bauer said he was displeased with the “spin” some researchers were putting on certain elements of the survey. Nearly three-fourths of the respondents defined the family as “a group of people who love and care for each other,” while nearly one-fourth defined it as “a group of people related by blood, marriage, or adoption.”

“People attempted to make [that] answer appear to be an endorsement of some of the more bizarre living arrangements that exist today,” Bauer said. “I don’t think that’s what the average American meant.”

HOMOSEXUALITY

Controversial Report

Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Louis Sullivan has distanced himself from a departmental report released this summer under his name. The report suggests that “religions need to reassess homosexuality in a positive context within their belief system.”

The statement, along with calls for legitimizing homosexual marriages and accepting homosexuality as “healthy and natural,” appeared in a section on “Gay Male and Lesbian Youth Suicide” from the Report of the [HHS] Secretary’s Task Force on Youth Suicide.

In a letter last month to Rep. William Dannemeyer (R-Calif.), Sullivan said the views expressed in the section on homosexuality “do not in any way represent [his] personal beliefs or the policy of [HHS].” Sullivan said the report was “commissioned and written during the previous Administration.” “I am strongly committed to advancing traditional family values,” he said. “In my opinion, the views expressed in the paper run contrary to that aim.”

PEOPLE AND EVENTS

Briefly Noted

Awarded: To Miami pastor Martin Añorga, a native Cuban, for his radio broadcasts and publications on behalf of human rights and religious liberty in Cuba, the Presbyterians for Democracy and Religious Freedom “Faith and Freedom” Award. In presenting the award, U.S. United Nations Ambassador Armando Valladares, a political prisioner in Cuba for 22 years, praised Anorga’s witness to his homeland.

Shaken up: Executives from Zondervan Publishing House, who were among the thousands in attendance at Candlestick Park on the evening of last month’s earthquake in San Francisco. They were in town to sign a contract with Giants pitcher Dave Dravecky, whose book, The Dave Dravecky Story, will be copublished by Zondervan and Harper & Row.

Received: The 1,900th star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, by evangelist Billy Graham. According to the Hollywood Historic Trust, the occasion for the presentation was the fortieth anniversary of Graham’s public ministry. He is the first clergyman to be honored for ministry work.

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