Church Emerges from Bloody Civil War

The organ is working again in Monrovia’s Trinity Cathedral. It, like most everything in Liberia, had been out of order since June 1990. But now, with electricity restored in many parts of the war-torn capital, Episcopalians are once again singing:

By thine hour of despair, by thine agony of prayer;

By the gloom that veiled the skies, O the dreadful sacrifice;

By thy days of sore distress, in thy savage wilderness;

Listen to our humble cry, hear our solemn litany.

Liberians have good reason to be somber. A 16-month civil war has left their West African country virtually in ruins. Some 20,000 people have been killed by marauding bands of government troops or rebels. And Christian churches, a strong part of Liberian society ever since the country was founded by freed American slaves in 1822, have seen firsthand the worst cruelty the war has offered.

Liberia’s chain of violence began in April 1980 when military leader Samuel Doe ordered the killing of former President William Tolbert in a bloody coup. Tolbert was a Baptist pastor and headed the Liberian Baptist Convention until his murder. Doe himself was a member of Liberia’s oldest church, Providence Baptist Church, founded at the country’s birth.

Ten years after his coup, Doe was still hunting church leaders. He reportedly drew up his hit list after the Liberian Council of Churches (LCC) teamed up with the Liberian Muslim Council to organize peace talks in June 1990 in the capital of neighboring Sierra Leone.

But Doe fell victim to the same brand of political violence last year. In September 1990 he was tortured to death by rebels from Prince Johnston’s Independent Patriotic Front of Liberia (INPFL) rebel faction.

Casualties among the Christian community took a dramatic turn when government troups assaulted Saint Peter’s Lutheran Church in central Monrovia in July 1990, resulting in the deaths of as many as 600 men, women, and children who had sought shelter there.

According to LCC president J. K. Levee Moulton, Benedict Mason of the African Methodist Episcopal Church was the only pastor to be executed during the fighting.

There were, however, other victims among Liberia’s clergy. According to Edward Kofi, director of the indigenous Liberian mission African Christian Fellowship, two of its most dedicated pastors, Alex Melnor and Dennis Gaye, also perished in early 1990 as fighting broke out in the northeast section of Liberia. Magnus Amejash, leader of Liberia’s Presbyterian Church, was also killed, though it is uncertain whether he was targeted by Doe’s men or was caught amidst street fighting.

According to pastor Randolph Cooper of the Crozierville Methodist Church, “Pastors were bad news.” Cooper says churches were targets during the civil war “because they stood up against the [Doe] regime.”

Other casualties of the war included Protestant missionaries Tom and June Jackson, who were killed in March 1990 near the city of Bahn, some 200 miles from the capital of Monrovia.

Strength In Crisis

In the aftermath of the civil war, an interim government has yet to gain control of the countryside outside Monrovia. Regional heads of state are currently involved in talks they hope will lead to a lasting, peaceful solution. And the LCC, whose headquarters was looted and destroyed during the war, is preparing for a campaign to help arrange a permanent settlement. An estimated one million refugees—nearly half the population of Liberia—have been displaced by the violence. In spite of the current situation, however, church leaders see hope for the future.

“The crisis has strengthened the church. Christians have increased their faith,” says Cooper. “Many churches maintained their ministries throughout the war, meeting in homes, praying, and fasting for an end to the bloodshed.”

Pastor Samuel Reeves of Providence Baptist Church says he hopes that when a lasting peace is finally reached, the people will not falter in their faith. “People are on fire again for the Lord, and we hope and pray that they will stay at that level. [But] there is a human tendency to put God on the shelf until trouble comes again.”

Expatriates returning to help reconstruct the country have also noted the role played by the Liberian church throughout the conflict. Veteran Southern Baptist missionary John Carpenter says he was pleased to see how alumni from the Baptist seminary had taken up work in the war zones around the country after regular pastors fled for their lives.

“We are going to see a more purified, stronger church than ever before,” Carpenter says. Reflecting on the misery the war has brought, his wife, Betty, says tearfully, “For every horror story there is a story of God’s miraculous works.”

Missionaries with SIM International are currently preparing to resume broadcasting after government troops blasted SIM’s Radio ELWA in July 1990 when rebel chief Charles Taylor of the National Patriotic Front of Liberia used the transmitter to announce his shadow government. According to broadcast director Lee Sonius, a small FM transmitter will begin broadcasting in October for approximately six hours per day in the greater Monrovia area. SIM also plans to locate ELWA’s five full-power transmitters and studio facilities in several other African countries.

SIM workers have reopened the bullet-marked medical clinic at the ELWA compound and are providing care for refugees in the area. Work is continuing on the badly damaged hospital there as well.

Leaders Suspended

Aside from physical damage to churches, ministry-outreach programs, and Christian broadcasting efforts, the Liberian church is also confronting casualties of a different nature. Recently, the United Methodist Church of Liberia announced that an unspecified number of ordained ministers and other religious leaders were suspended for abandoning their normal church functions during the civil war.

The announcement, reported by the Liberian weekly newspaper Patriot, stated that church leaders were suspended in late June at the annual Methodist conference held in the northern town of Ganta for “acts incompatible with their ministerial duties by becoming ‘commandos.’ ”

Peter Kekelen, Kokoyah district superintendent of northeastern Nimba County—where Liberia’s brutal civil war began on December 24, 1989—was quoted as saying the suspension order would stay in effect until the affected pastors “repent.” Kekelen did not name those involved, but he said most are from rebel-held regions.

Missionary sources in neighboring Ivory Coast say they were not aware of the decision by Liberia’s Methodist leaders, but say many church workers were intimidated by rebel leader Taylor and his NPFL troops, and acted out of fear for their safety.

By Richard Nyberg in West Africa.

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