COLOMBIA: Uprooting Protestantism

The uprooting of Protestant missions in Colombia, many of them U.S.-sponsored, goes steadily on. Missionary Juan de Jesús Varela reported last week that he had been haled before the military mayor of the village of Peque, and told that his services were a "mockery" to the Roman Catholic religion; he got 24 hours to get out of town. In little Tamalameque twelve Protestants were convicted of "holding services" and given a choice of $4.20 fines or ten days in jail (they chose jail sentences but were not held strictly to them). In the jailless hamlet of Colorado, two missionaries were held in stocks overnight on the parish priest's charge that they had beaten and insulted him. The Division of Foreign Missions of the National Council of Churches reported last week in New York that in April alone, 30 churches were closed by government authorities.

Though Colombia's constitution guarantees religious freedom to "all cults that are not contrary to Christian morality," anti-Protestantism appears to be drawing increasing support from the alliance between the Catholic Church and the military government. President Gustavo Rojas Pinilla darkly links the Protestants with subversion. "International Communism," he said early this year, "understands that in order to fight successfully in Colombia, it must first destroy as much as possible our religious unity." The archbishop of Popayán, in a pastoral letter, frowned upon the "tenacious, deceitful and well-organized propaganda put out by apostles of the Protestant heresy among us."

Less fanatical Colombians, too, doubtless resent instances of aggressive missionary proselytizing in Colombia, which overwhelmingly professes Catholicism. But they also deplore closing the missions, because the missionaries run useful hospitals and schools. Last month in tiny Noanamá, two Protestant nurses were prevented by civil authorities from treating a sick Protestant child. And the current Foreign Missions' report says that more than 200 Protestant schools have been closed in Colombia since 1948—to add to "46 church buildings destroyed by fire or dynamite" and "75 believers killed because of their religious faith."