Page 4269 – Christianity Today (2024)

An Egyptian court sentenced Coptic Christian Sourial Gayed Isshak to three years in prison at hard labor in mid-July, convicted on charges of insulting the Muslim religion.The guilty verdict, handed down July 16 by the Dar el-Salam Court of Misdemeanors in the strife-torn Sohag governate, was read by Presiding Justice Hassan Ismail.Isshak’s lawyer, Mamduh Nakhla, promptly filed for appeal of the verdict and its unusually harsh sentence. A court appeals hearing on the case is scheduled for August 8, the weekly Watani newspaper reported.Under Article 161 of the Egyptian Penal Code, it is a punishable misdemeanor to “insult one of the heavenly religions.” According to Nakhla, however, the maximum penalty for conviction of a misdemeanor is a two-year prison sentence.”This is the first time in the history of Egyptian courts such an extremely harsh judgment was awarded for such a minor charge,” a Coptic observer in Cairo told the Compass Direct news service.During Isshak’s trial, prosecutor Hesham Kamel produced several Muslim witnesses who testified they had heard the Coptic shopkeeper curse Islam in the streets of El-Kosheh village last December 30, the day before violence broke out in the village over New Year’s weekend. The three-day rampage left 21 Copts and one Muslim dead. In addition, 260 Coptic homes and businesses were destroyed in El-Kosheh and neighboring villages during the carnage.After the prosecution and defense concluded their arguments at the final trial hearing on June 3, the Watani newspaper had reported “there was no substantial evidence produced to support the accusation.”Isshak is the first person sentenced in relation to the New Year’s weekend violence, which targeted El-Kosheh’s Coptic Christian population. Indictments were finally handed down some 10 weeks after the rampage, with 96 suspects accused of murder and another 37 charged with looting, arson and beatings.Although most of the 38 Copts on the list were indicted on minor charges, all have been imprisoned without bail. However, several dozen of the Muslims jailed have since been released by local investigators for “lack of evidence.”Just weeks ago, an Egyptian Muslim author accused of blaspheming against Islam and the Koran was given a six-month suspended sentence.Writer Salaheddin Mohsen had caused a hot national debate for his description of the Koran as a “book of ignorance” and for commenting that “Islam is the reason for the backwardness of the Muslim world.” In contrast to Isshak’s harsh sentence, however, Mohsen’s verdict was simply a “slap on the wrist.”Isshak, 37 and married, has been imprisoned since March 9 over the slander allegations, which he categorically denied in court.

Copyright © 2000 Compass DirectThe Watani newspaper is online, but it’s in Arabic.Earlier Christianity Today and ChristianityToday.com articles about El-Kosheh and the persecution of Egypt’s Coptic church:Egyptian Security Police Threaten, Torture Local Christian | Coptic Orthodox layman targeted for alleged evangelism activities.(July 10, 2000)Egyptian Court Convicts Christian Villager of Murder | Shaiboub Arsal Given Maximum 15-Year Sentence. (June 9, 2000)Family Disputes Coptic Pharmacist’s ‘Conversion’ to Islam | Third alleged conversion reported by Egyptian Christians in El-Fayoum (May 8, 2000)Egyptian Priest Accused of Attempted Murder | Village cleric charged with ‘provoking violence’ in El-Kosheh (Feb. 11, 2000)Egypt’s Christians seek answers after deadly riots | At least 21 Christians killed in clash with Muslims (Jan. 13, 2000)Church of the Martyrs | Copts thrive in the face of bloody carnage, legal restraint, and discrimination (Aug. 11, 1997)Did Carey Really Deny that Copts Are Persecuted? | Was the Archbishop of Canterbury misid? What did he really mean? (Dec. 20, 1999)New Coptic Church Forcibly Closed (Oct. 5, 1998)Extremists Kill Coptic Christians (Apr. 28, 1997)The U.S. Department of State and Freedom House have both issued reports criticizing the persecution of Christians in Egypt.

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The Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) is America’s largest Protestant denomination: it has nearly 16 million members and more than 40,000 affiliated congregations. Consequently, the SBC annual meeting often creates waves that splash elsewhere in the evangelical world. The recent annual gathering was just such a meeting. The key issue was the revision of the Baptist Faith and Message (BFM), the third major redefining of what it means to be a Southern Baptist.The SBC was organized in 1845, but it was 85 years before a conventionwide confessional statement was adopted, in 1925, during the Fundamentalist-Modernist controversy, providing one basis for denominational expansion while keeping theological liberalism at bay. In response to growing controversy over the Bible, Southern Baptists adopted a new version of BFM in 1963. Approved by an overwhelming majority of the 11,000 messengers (as Southern Baptists call their delegates), BFM 2000 keeps much of the 1963 language intact but makes several changes in an attempt to close ranks and define the SBC more conservatively.We applaud most of the changes as they will discourage the liberal drift experienced by other large denominations. At the same time, we wonder if the SBC has gone too far, both in seeming to eliminate discussion of some beliefs and in alienating opponents.

Criterion or Focus?

“The criterion by which the Bible is to be interpreted is Jesus Christ,” the 1963 statement said. The new language declares that the Scriptures are “a testimony to Christ, who is himself the focus of divine revelation.” It also declares that Scripture “is God’s revelation,” not merely “the record of God’s revelation.” While it does not use the word inerrant, it declares, “all Scripture is totally true and trustworthy.”Removing fuzzy neo-orthodox-sounding language about the Bible clearly aligns the SBC with the kind of conservative evangelical view of Scripture set forth in the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy. This change also makes it more difficult for scholars to pit the Gospels against the epistles, or Jesus against Paul, in wrestling with controversial issues such as hom*osexuality and the role of women in the church. (For example, say some exegetes, since Jesus said nothing about hom*osexuality, it must not be a central issue for Christians.)Still, BFM 2000 is poorer without the rich Christocentric language of the earlier statement. Jesus Christ is surely the center of Scripture as well as its Lord. One can affirm this while also welcoming the clear affirmation of the Bible as God’s infallible, revealed word.

Closed to Openness

Another subtle change in BFM 2000 reflects the growing controversy concerning the omniscience of God. Historically, orthodox Christians—Catholics and Protestants, Arminians and Calvinists—have affirmed God’s complete knowledge of all future events. More recently, however, some theologians have advocated an openness-of-God theology that claims God’s knowledge of the future is limited. The new SBC confession affirms that God’s “perfect knowledge extends to all things, past, present, and future, including the future decisions of his free creatures.”This was echoed in a similar statement adopted by another Baptist body, the Baptist General Conference, one week later. Yet shutting down the debate by convention fiat runs a serious risk. Though openness theism clearly runs counter to historic Christian theology, it draws on aspects of the biblical witness that not all mainstream theologians have integrated into their teaching. The ongoing debate gives these teachers a chance to make their theology more fully biblical while remaining true to the tradition.

Confessional Departure

The new statement declares that “the office of pastor is limited to men as qualified by Scripture.” Despite the media blitz over this issue, there has been little controversy in Southern Baptist circles. In one sense the vote is merely the confirmation of the status quo. Even moderate Southern Baptists who affirm women in pastoral ministry do not generally call women as pastors of their churches, unlike progressives in other denominations. On another level, this action brings Southern Baptists into alignment with traditional Christians worldwide (including the Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches), most of whom limit the role of women in certain pastoral or priestly offices.Still, elevating this matter to the level of confessional status seems to us an unnecessary departure from the historic Baptist tradition: no previous Baptist confession has spoken to this matter directly.This portion of BFM 2000 will have little if any effect on local congregations (since Baptist polity allows each congregation to call whom it will). But those with egalitarian views in denominational agencies and seminaries may well feel the pinch, as the new confession will likely become for some not only a test of fellowship but also a requirement for employment. Clearly some SBC critics fear that the revised statement will become a litmus test. “Instead of building a consensus statement, [Baptist leaders] are using it as a club to drive out people they disagree with,” one leader said.

Closing Down the Flea Markets

Despite some theological concerns, we believe the wider evangelical community can learn something from our Southern Baptist brothers and sisters about the importance of maintaining a clear confessional identity in a culture suffering from relativism and doctrinal apathy. Many mainline Christians have too often adopted cultural trends as church policy. Instead of making critical distinctions, they embrace the wide spectrum. Theological pluralism, as Leonard Sweet aptly says, “became the fairy godmother of modern Protestantism,” resulting in “a veritable flea market of faiths.”Though critics have dismissed the previous three decades of Southern Baptist life as “the Baptist holy war”—a clash of church politics and strong personalities—in fact theological issues were also at stake, and BFM 2000 has brought some of these into clearer light. Without some kind of conservative renewal, the SBC would most likely have continued to drift toward the kind of accommodation to the culture seen in many mainline denominations. For example, shortly after Roe v. Wade the SBC went on record supporting abortion rights. Some moderate-supported groups now argue for the moral legitimacy of gay sex. BFM 2000 speaks a clear biblical word against such issues.

Preserving a Fragile Unity

Confessions of faith inevitably raise the question of unity and diversity. While each community of faith should be free to define its own distinctive beliefs and expect its leaders to abide by the consensual wisdom of the community, confessions serve better when they focus more strongly on the central affirmations of the Christian faith, “the faith once delivered to the saints.”Confessions of faith can err either by being too tightly drawn or too loosely constructed. Finding the right balance is always difficult, but we should never forget that we are called by Christ to preserve the peace and unity of the church as well as its purity. What Kentucky Baptist leader S.M. Noel said of confessions in 1826 is still true: “It should be large enough to meet the exigencies of the church by preserving her while in the wilderness, exposed to trials, in peace, purity and loyalty. And it should be small enough to find a lodgement in the heart of the weakest lamb, sound in the faith.”Both the 1925 and 1963 versions of BFM served as rallying points for Southern Baptist unity, but it is not at all clear that BFM 2000 will have the same effect. Already the large Texas Baptist Convention has indicated it will not adopt the new confession, and some other Baptist bodies may follow suit. Though other dissenting Baptist groups are emerging, none of them is likely to become a “counter-SBC.” Thus far, critics have been much better at saying what they are against than what they are for.It is clear that most Southern Baptists support the conservative direction of the SBC, even if many of them are unhappy with the triumphalist language some Southern Baptist leaders repeatedly used. Outgoing President Paige Patterson, for example, said of feminist critics: “The problem is they have to argue with God, not with us.””I wish they wouldn’t do some of that stuff,” said Jim Queen, director of the Chicago Metropolitan Baptist Association. “I think it gets misunderstood and misinterpreted.” It also tends to alienate the opposition.Several years ago former President Jimmy Carter, a Southern Baptist Sunday-school teacher, assembled a group of Baptist leaders from both sides to talk about the possibility of Baptist reconciliation. They agreed to pray for one another and to find ways of working together on common goals. Unfortunately, little progress has come from this Christlike gesture.When the dust from this conflict settles, and the realignments are a bit clearer, it will still be important for Bible-believing Baptists on all sides to reach out to one another in Christian love, to model the kind of charitable orthodoxy symbolized by the outstretched arms of Jesus.R. Albert Mohler, president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, has sometimes been less than irenic in the heat of denominational battle. Seven years ago, however, he wrote, “The future shape of the Convention must avoid the twin dangers of obscurantist, angry, and separatist fundamentalism on the right and revisionist compromise on the left. In between lies the evangelical option—an irenic, bold, and convictional posture which combines concern for orthodox doctrine with a spirit of engagement with the larger world and a missionary mandate.”Southern Baptist leaders on all sides might note that such words are even more pertinent now.

Related Elsewhere

Read the Baptist Faith and Message 2000 for yourself, or peruse the 1963 version. For a synopsis of what was added and what was taken out, click here.The Southern Baptist Convention‘s site has links to every board, organization, and ministry in the convention.Previous Christianity Today coverage of the Baptist Faith and Message includes:Culture Clash | Asserting the Bible’s authority, Southern Baptists say pastors must be male. (June 30, 2000)Weblog: Baptists OK New Statement, which Opposes Female Pastors (June 15, 2000)Submission Rejected | State convention counters SBC marriage statement. (Dec. 27, 1999)Texas Baptists Counter Official Southern Baptist Stance on Marriage | Baptist General Conference of Texas goes back to 1963 statement, rejecting 1998 vote. (Nov. 11, 1999)Seminary Faculty must sign pledge | Professors must agree to teach Baptist Faith and Message statement. (Dec. 7, 1998)

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“Psalm 78 lists “the praiseworthy deeds of the Lord, his power,and the wonders he has done.” It includes God splitting the RedSea into two walls, making water stand up straight. Burning asupernatural fire over the heads of his people at night, like asignal flare, to show them where to go. Making rock gush water asif it were a fire hydrant. Dropping flaky, delicious white foodout of the sky.

With that hall-of-fame list of miracles, you might be surprisedat the psalm’s climax. Here is the concluding deed of God thatshould astound anyone:

“He chose David his servant and took him from the sheep pens;from tending the sheep he brought him to be the shepherd of hispeople Jacob, of Israel his inheritance. And David shepherdedthem with integrity of heart; with skillful hands he led them.”

It’s a miracle that God would choose a kid who didn’t know muchexcept how to take care of farm animals. It’s a marvel that Godwould entrust his people to David’s care. It’s a wonder that Godwould transfer David from a pen to a palace.

David felt overwhelmed that God had chosen him to lead. Heprayed, “Who am I, O Lord God, and what is my family, that youhave brought me this far? … You have looked on me as though Iwere the most exalted of men, O Lord God” (1 Chronicles 17:16-17).

Do you genuinely feel awed that God has called you to lead—thathe has entrusted you to care for other people, guide a church ororganization, point the way?

Or do you feel slightly resentful at the expectations, the lackof appreciation, the fact you’re waiting to be discovered?

I have felt both ways as a leader, and I confess: the days I havespent chafing at leadership’s indignities outnumber those onwhich I felt sunny and grateful for the mere privilege ofinfluencing other human beings. I must pause until my blurryvision comes back into focus.

The fact that God chose me to lead any other Christian is amiracle. God knows my weaknesses, my worries, my whims. He knowsI have less experience, thinner education, weaker leadershipgifts than many other people who could do my job and would liketo.

Beyond all that, why would he entrust me with people he createdand is even now transforming? When they are fully glorified, thepeople I’m now leading will be so dazzlingly holy that I will betempted to fall on my face and worship them.

Maybe we should take a moment, right now, and say to ourselves:It’s a miracle that God would choose me. It’s a miracle that Godwould use me.

—Kevin A. Miller is an executive editor of the popular preaching Web site, www.PreachingToday.com. You can reply to Kevin atNewsletter@LeadershipJournal.net.

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A dying woman has filed a $40 million lawsuit against religious broadcasters Paul and Jan Crouch and their Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN), among others. Sylvia Fleener, 53, of Union, West Virginia, claims that The Omega Code, the 1999 apocalyptic movie, was originally her story. Fleener’s attorney described her as an interdenominational Christian minister dying from internal scleroderma, which causes hardening of the organs. According to a statement from her attorney, Daniel Quisenberry of Kirtland & Packard, his firm began legal action because Fleener felt convicted by God to speak out. Quisenberry’s firm filed the lawsuit on July 11 in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles. The lawsuit says Fleener presented TBN officials with a manuscript titled The Omega Syndrome in 1996, hoping TBN would produce a film from it.Fleener received no response but was surprised when TBN released The Omega Code last year. The complaint alleges 38 similarities between characters and plot devices in the two works. Both feature the Bible as the source of coded information on the end times. Both have a lead character who is initially good but ends up as the Antichrist. And in both, racists seek to kill Jews.Quisenberry says Fleener was a 20-year supporter of TBN and had confidence in its TV ministry. He adds that TBN officials ignored Fleener’s comments when she brought the similarities to their attention.Colby May of Washington, D.C., an attorney for TBN and Crouch, denied Fleener’s claims. “It is a shame and certainly a hallmark of life in America in the 21st century that this kind of legal difficulty traces and tracks every business,” May tells Christianity Today. “In this instance, there is simply no truth to the claim that Trinity and anybody associated with The Omega Code infringed on anybody’s copyright or intellectual property, and certainly not Mrs. Fleener’s.””A writer knows when [her] material has been taken.” Quisenberry tells CT in response. “She noticed, of course, that the title was close but didn’t expect the parts of her book were there as well.”Progress of the complaint is uncertain. Quisenberry wants to depose Fleener before her death. “She would rather spend the rest of her days on this earth with family and friends close to her,” he says. “Instead, she got this big fight thrown in her lap.”

Christianity Today

stories dealing with

The Omega Code

and other kinds of apocalyptic entertainment include:Apocalyptic Sales Out of This World | Popular fiction and movies have Christians panting for more Premillennialism. (Mar. 1, 1999)Christian Filmmakers Jump on End-times Bandwagon | Bestseller

Left Behind

The Omega Code

:Christian Filmgoers Create Heavenly Box Office for ‘Omega Code’ | Los Angeles Times (Oct. 22, 1999)Sleeper ‘Omega’ Cracks Hollywood Code | USA Today (Oct. 19, 1999)‘Omega Code’ Matches Prophecy with Thrills | Orange County Register (Sept. 9, 1999)

Copyright © 2000 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

I received a letter recently that illustrates how alien philosophies infiltrate today’s churches. Julie, a Bible-study leader in a solid evangelical church, wrote to tell me of a discussion with moms in her church about their favorite books for children. She was appalled that so many touted books with naturalistic themes.Julie picked up one of the books—a Berenstein Bears title—and showed the moms the page that read, “Nature is all there is, ever was, or ever will be.”They didn’t get it. The moms were too young to remember Carl Sagan or the famous line from his book and film, Cosmos: “The cosmos is all there is, all there ever was, and all there ever will be.””How do we wake people up?” Julie asked in her letter.Good question. If the polls are correct, foreign ideas have penetrated not only children’s books but our most basic beliefs. Gallup reports that 20 percent of born-again Christians believe in reincarnation and 26 percent in astrology. Forty-five percent of those George Barna classifies as born again believe that “if people are good enough they can earn a place in heaven.” And Wade Clark Roof in Spiritual Marketplace writes that half of born-again baby boomers believe all religions are “equally good and true,” almost half have no involvement in a conservative Protestant church, and a quarter believe in communicating with the dead!Admittedly, poll data can be ambiguous, and the term born again has certainly been trivialized. Still, the data paint a shocking picture of the state of evangelical Christianity. On any Sunday, an alarming number who fill our pews are either biblically illiterate or, worse, syncretists.How can we explain this? Roof offers one answer: boomers tend to substitute feelings for objective reality, seeking self-centered spirituality over the structured demands of organized religion. With self-fulfillment their standard, they pick and choose, as if at a salad bar, from any belief system that provides comfort or meaning.The problem is that “salad-bar Christianity” often goes unchallenged by the larger Christian community. Some seeker-driven churches are reluctant to confront such syncretism and thus scare people away.The spirit of the age shuns absolutes, and this has weakened the church’s capacity to raise such challenges even if we were disposed to. A seminary dean told me his students all say they believe in absolute truth, but at the same time are reluctant to “impose” their views. Serious laity are even less inclined to challenge one another in today’s relativistic environment, for fear of being thought of as intolerant or bigoted. Mark Dever, pastor of Washington’s Capitol Hill Baptist Church, sums up the problem bluntly: “The church has lost the capacity to judge between good and evil, truth and falsehood.”Pastors I’ve consulted agree that there is a problem and believe the answer is in better expository preaching. That is needed, but I question whether this alone will turn the tide.To teach believers to be discerning demands a systemic effort to examine how Christianity stacks up against other claims in every area of life. When worldviews are honestly compared, the truth of Christianity (and the untruth of other views) becomes clear.It is vital that Christians become more discriminating. Discerning Christians would have clearly seen the pagan presuppositions behind that statement in the Berenstein Bears book that so many moms unthinkingly embraced. As Julie discovered, believers may understand Scripture but still not recognize naturalistic claims that undermine biblical belief.Most importantly, when we discern what is false we must have the courage to label it as such. Some seekers might be driven away, but better that than the insidious spread of syncretism within the church.The church today needs to take a lesson from one of the heroic figures of a century ago. Alarmed by the rise of modernism and false teachings spreading even in evangelical churches, New Testament scholar J. Gresham Machen published a scathing attack in his classic, Christianity and Liberalism. Machen argued that the beliefs many were embracing weren’t simply a new version of Christianity; rather, they constituted another religion altogether. The book was a sobering jolt to many Christians.So too we should label today’s syncretism another religion. Much of what passes for born-again Christianity may suit the spirit of the age, but it isn’t authentic Christianity. This truth needs to be communicated both to those in the pews and those in our pulpits as well.

Related Elsewhere

For a clear statement of the essentials of the faith from an evangelical perspective “The Gospel of Jesus Christ: An Evangelical Celebration”, is a Christianity Today document crafted by the likes of J.I. Packer and R.C. Sproul and signed by everyone from Kay Arthur to Charles Swindoll. For a list of drafters and endorsers click here.You can also read CT Executive Editor David Neff’s ”A Call to Evangelical Unity.”Some of Charles Colson’s earlier columns from Christianity Today include:A Healthy Cult (June 12, 2000)The Court’s in Session (Apr. 25, 2000)The Ugly Side of Tolerance (March 6, 2000)Scouts Dishonor (November 15, 1999)What Are We Doing Here? (October 4, 1999)How Evil Became Cool (August 9, 1999)Does Kosovo Pass the Just-War Test? (May 24, 1999)Why We Should Be Hopeful (April 26, 1999)Moral Education After Monica (March 1, 1999)The Sky Isn’t Falling (January 11, 1999)

Copyright © 2000 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

China’s most famous house church prisoner, Mr. Xu Yongze, is free. The 58-year-old founder of the Born Again movement was released on May 16, after serving a three-year “re-education through labor” sentence for establishing an illegal organization in China. Xu revealed that he was tortured during interrogation sessions. Three weeks after his release, he told a friend in Beijing that once he had each arm handcuffed to an iron gate, and when the gates were opened, he was stretched up off the ground in a gruesome crucifix position.”I came to feel how Jesus must have felt on the cross,” Xu said. He expressed his appreciation for the international pressure that was put on the Chinese government to treat him fairly. Xu was originally arrested on March 15, 1997, when police raided a meeting of house church leaders in central China. Initially, no word was heard of him, and Christians worldwide began to fear the worst, especially when official church leaders like Dr. Han Wenzao denounced him as a “cult leader” and refused to admit he was a Christian at all.There were fears he might be executed. Then Chinese authorities intended to give him a 10-year sentence, but international pressure built up to such an extent that he instead received a four-year sentence, which was decreased to three years in December 1997. Xu’s wife—arrested with him–served a sentence of a year and a half. Xu said that during the first months of his detention, he was slapped hundreds of times. He was also handcuffed with both arms behind his back and pulled up in mid-air for beating. He served his sentence in a labor camp where each prisoner had to string 2,500 Christmas tree bulbs every day with a thin wire. Sources say these decorative lights are exported to the United States. Xu said he was not forced to work and was treated fairly well towards the end of his sentence, so he helped a weaker prisoner meet his quota. Xu is now recovering in Nanyang city, in Henan province. No stranger to controversy, Xu Yongze shot to international prominence in April 1988 when he was arrested in a Beijing public park en route to see visiting American evangelist Dr. Billy Graham. Ironically, Xu had been dubbed, “The Billy Graham of China,” and his arrest shrouded the American evangelist’s first visit to China in more controversy than expected. But Xu’s main claim to fame rests on his record as the founder of the hugely successful Born Again movement, a Henan-based house church network whose membership may run into the millions. Early in the movement’s history there was an insistence on copious weeping as an essential evidence of repentance, though in recent years this distinctive has been toned down. Still, this emphasis on emotion is what led to charges of him being called a cult leader, and not only by those in China’s official church, but also by some house church leaders. It was partly to offset this reputation that Xu convened talks in 1997 between rival house church movements to promote greater mutual understanding. Some believe it was these talks—billed misleadingly in some quarters as “unity” discussions—that spooked the Chinese government into wholesale arrests, because they fear any large movement that operates outside official control.

Copyright © 2000 Compass DirectOther Christianity Today stories about Xu Yongze and house churches in China include:Arrests of Pastor Signal Religious Freedom Setback | Li Dexian repeatedly detained. (Jan. 25, 2000)A Tale of China’s Two Churches | Eyewitness reports of repression and revival. (July 13, 1998)Xu Yongze Sentenced | Chinese house church leader banished to labor camp for 10 years. (Nov. 17, 1997)To read the 1999 report on religious freedom in China and other countries, click here.

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More than 200 Indonesian Christians and Muslims have been killed this summer in violence linked in part to simmering religious tensions. Many of the deaths occurred on the eastern Indonesian island of Halmahera after militant Muslims, calling themselves Laskar Jihad, attacked a Christian village. Indonesia’s 207 million people live on the nation’s 13,000 islands.Tempers continue to flare in the troubled region, which has seen more than 2,500 people killed since religious fighting broke out 18 months ago. According to reports, a band of about 500 Muslims armed with military-style weapons attacked the predominantly Christian village of Duma. During the one-hour clash, Christians fought back with homemade weapons or fled into nearby forests.In addition, many homes and a church were torched. An army official said there were only 30 officers on duty at the time of the attack, and they could not slow the fighting until reinforcements arrived.Military officials were eventually able to bring the village under control, and the wounded were taken to a nearby town. The violent outbreaks have divided Muslims and Christians serving in police and military units.While Indonesia is overwhelmingly Muslim, the Maluku islands, where the violence has broken out, are predominantly Christian.

Copyright © 2000 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

“Personally, I’m more interested in the historical missionary women who were failures,” says Karen DuBert, who serves with team in Mozambique with her husband, Phil. “I guess that’s because sometimes I feel like a failure. We don’t really have our role [as missionary wives] designed; we have to make it for ourselves.”Karen, a stay-at-home mom, has built many female friendships in the port city of Quelimane. Along with an Argentinian missionary friend named Silvia, she visits women in the town jail to teach them the Bible. One woman had stolen a pair of shoes and sat in jail for 13 months before she was brought to trial.Another woman who was being beaten by her husband defended herself by cutting him with a razor, which required him to get eight stitches. The judge sentenced her to two-and-a-half years in jail.”There is a lot of injustice going on for everybody,” says Karen, “but the women especially have much less chance of being looked out for. A lot of times someone in the court is waiting for a bribe, and these women don’t have enough money, so they just sit there.”She and Silvia began showing up at the court, pressing courtworkers (and anybody who would listen) to put these women’s trials on the docket and move up the dates. The woman who cut her husband had waited in jail for a year before the court sentenced her. She had become a Christian through their ministry, and Silvia and Karen went to the judge and vouched for her. Silvia asked if she could take responsibility for her and take her home as hired help. The prison director said she could, and she was released under Silvia’s care after serving one year of her sentence.

Wendy Murray Zoba is a senior writer for Christianity Today.

Related Elsewhere

See today’s related articles A Woman’s Place and Church Planting in Senegal.

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While attending an interracial nondenominational church in the early 1960s, Ruby P. Clarke sensed a call to serve in missions. She applied to United World Mission, which accepted her as its first African-American missionary and sent her to white churches to raise her support. She was ready to go after only three months. After she served for eight years in Mali with Muslim women, the mission asked her to join a church-planting team in Senegal. “The Mali and Senegal teams were all-white,” she says, “but there was no distinction whatsoever. The Muslims and Senegalese accepted me for what I was—a missionary for Jesus Christ.”It is my burden to see the African-American community [and] church get fired up for career missionary service. I believe the pastors must have a burden for career missions, and train and encourage their people toward that end.”

Wendy Murray Zoba is a senior writer for Christianity Today.

Related Elsewhere

See today’s related articles A Woman’s Place and Prison Ministry in Mozambique.

Web sites for agencies cited in this article:Southern Baptist Convention & International Mission Board:www.sbc.net & www.imb.org

Jews for Jesus:www.jewsforjesus.org

A.D. 2000:www.ad2000.org

Urbana:www.urbana.org

InterVarsity Christian Fellowship:www.ivcf.org/missions

Interserve:www.interserve.org

Frontiers:www.us.frontiers.org

SIM:www.sim.org

Latin American Mission:www.lam.org

Assemblies of God:www.ag.org

Team:www.teamworld.org

World Relief:www.worldrelief.org

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Sometime in the night of May 8 this year, Pat Hornberger was awakened by a dream in which she saw an automobile accident. She was so concerned, she spent the rest of the night praying for 16 members of her church, Solana Beach (Calif.) Presbyterian, who were on a two-week trip to Ethiopia. Two other members of the same church also woke up that night and were moved to pray for the team.There had, indeed, been a car accident involving the Ethiopia missions team, one that injured three people. And this accident, it turned out, became a turning point for the trip, for Solana Beach’s 55-year history, and, we trust, for a little-known people in East Africa, the Afar.Short-term missions had always been a part of this affluent United Presbyterian Church of 2,000 members in north San Diego County. Teams had traveled to a Presbyterian hospital north of Nairobi, Kenya, to rebuild its maternity ward. Other teams went to Malawi and Mexico, while young people traveled on longer mission opportunities. But this was not just another missions trip: it was a long-term, highly focused, investment in an overlooked people group.The trip to Ethiopia was the culmination of several years of prayer and planning by the staff of Solana Beach Presbyterian Church. Our missions pastor, Tom Therault, has been keenly interested in isolated peoples. As the newly installed senior pastor, and having served 20 years on the board of World Vision, I was convinced of the urgent need to meet both physical and spiritual needs of all the world’s people, especially the poor.

Descendants of Noah

The church’s missions committee appointed a sub-committee to research and pray. They selected the Afar, whose 1.7 million members claim to be descendants of Noah’s son Ham. Mostly nomads who care for cattle, camel, sheep, and other livestock, the Afar live in clans of 200 to 1,000 people on the parched deserts of Ethiopia, as well as in Eritrea, Somalia, and Djibouti.While a few Christians, including some from the indigenous Mekane Yesu Church, have worked among the Afar for decades, these Islamic people are largely overlooked by aid agencies. Further, temperatures of up to 125 degrees make the land unattractive to prospective government workers who provide health care and other services. Fewer than one in four Afaris has access to health care. In 1992 just 10 percent of Afari children were enrolled in primary school, and fewer than 3 percent of eligible students were in secondary school.My own relationship with Ethiopia dates back to my involvement in World Vision’s relief work during the great famine of the mid-1980s. Because of cyclical droughts, a century of ecological degradation, and uneven distribution of wealth, Ethiopia’s population of 60 million is subject to recurring famines. Poverty is a constant: Ethiopia’s per-capita income is just $350 a year.But Ethiopia also is a land of great strengths: a proud, ancient people and strong religious traditions, both Christian and Muslim. World Vision’s efforts to reverse environmental degradation in Ethiopia’s Antsokia Valley proved that the land could be fertile, allowing farmers to produce food even when rains fail. In fact, the relative oasis of Antsokia attracted thousands of Afari nomads, and their livestock, in search of pasture and food in this year’s drought.As we accumulated facts about these people, our thinking increasingly moved beyond the usual one-shot, short-term mission project. As a congregation, we wanted to make a significant investment in these people.This meant, first, partnering with local Ethiopian Christians. We have been working with the Evangelical Church of Mekane Yesu (House of Jesus). This church was founded by a freed Ethiopian slave and has worked with Presbyterian and Lutheran missionaries, as well as with World Vision.Second, this meant a major financial commitment over a period of years. Solana Beach has committed at least $650,000 during the next five years to meet some Afari needs: improved irrigation and livestock, an adequate supply of safe drinking water, medical care, and education.Third, it meant regular contact with the people to whom, and with whom, we are trying to minister.

Beyond bulletin inserts

Solana Beach, a community of wide streets, beautiful homes and ocean breezes, is about as far away from the Ethiopian desert as one can get. How, then, could we communicate our vision for the Afar to our congregation? It would take more than inserts in the church bulletin.Two members of the church went to Ethiopia last year to establish relationships with the Mekane Yesu Church and World Vision. Then the Rev. Iteffa Gobena of the Mekane Yesu Church came to Solana Beach, where he preached and shared his church’s vision for the people of Ethiopia.Pastor Therault and I then started putting together a trip to Ethiopia. We prayed over hundreds of names in our congregation and developed a list of about 40 people whom we sensed God might be calling to Ethiopia. A general congregational announcement was made, but the team that finally emerged consisted mostly of people invited from the list. They were selected more for their willingness to commit than for any vocation or gift. It soon became evident, however, that God had placed these particular members on this team. Each one made a contribution. One woman was a nurse. Another member, who had considerable experience with Muslims through business dealings, offered deep insights, such as how to treat the Afar with respect as one “people of the book” to another.The team was in place—and each member had made a $3,000 financial commitment—by March 1. For the next two months, team members spent most of their discretionary time preparing for the trip: researching on the Internet, watching videos, meeting together, and recruiting 200 prayer supporters. One member read the Qur’an to better understand the Afar. World Vision brought in experts to help team members understand the context in which they would work. And we tried to mix in some fun: the team took a field trip to an Ethiopian restaurant.

Angel on wheels

By the time we left California on May 4, we felt we were as prepared as we could be. But as is often the case with such things, we discovered that God’s preparation for our trip was even better.After two days of travel (from Los Angeles to Frankfurt to Cairo to Addis Ababa) and meetings in the Ethiopian capital, we set off in four crowded and stuffy vans down winding roads, and a drop in elevation of 9,000 feet, toward the small desert town of Asaita, the capital of the Afar district. Our convoy of four split in half as the two lead drivers left the other two vehicles behind.More than three hours into our grueling and monotonous trip, a large bus bore down on the third vehicle, whose driver swerved to avoid a collision. His van flipped over twice, landing upside down, collapsing the roof. When we in the fourth van came upon the wreckage, we were horrified: it looked as if no one could have survived. But then a window was kicked out, and the four occupants slowly emerged.The driver was uninjured, but Aklilu Dogisso of World Vision Ethiopia complained of chest pains; Peggy Ngubo of Solana Beach had a broken collarbone; and Mike Lynch, a World Vision representative from southern California, had lacerations, a concussion, and possibly cracked ribs.We were hours from the nearest town. We had no cell phone or radio to reach our colleagues in the first two cars. A couple of buses stopped, but instead of offering assistance, passengers only helped themselves to bottles of water from the wrecked vehicle.As we waited without shade in the desert heat for what seemed an eternity (but was probably less than an hour), a small van marked medical drove up. An energetic young man emerged, dispersed the growing crowd, and examined the injured. He then arranged transport to a small clinic where the injured could be treated and the rest of us could regroup. At the clinic, as arrangements were made to evacuate the injured to Addis Ababa, we called for another vehicle. We eventually were reunited with the rest of our team and arrived in Asaita, albeit exhausted, concerned, and still shaken. After figuring out sleeping arrangements, we slept as best we could under mosquito nets and on beds shared with tiny bugs.We had assumed that the next morning a few of us would meet with top government officials to exchange polite greetings; instead, the entire team was invited. When we walked into the meeting room, we were astonished to find a large group of government officials, as well as many people from the town, 40 to 50 people in all. Gracious speeches were made and translated. A long report prepared especially for us was read, telling us of the needs of the Afar (and their animals): concerns about health, child mortality, clean water, agriculture, and others.The top official told us how grateful the Afar were that such a large group had come at such sacrifice to meet and serve them. He said that no one ever came to the Afar region. It was too far. Too hot. Too poor. Their needs were great but few people cared. Government, aid organizations, the United Nations—no one ever came.”But you came,” he said. “And we know you really care about us and our needs because you came, even though it was hard, and even though your colleagues were hurt in the accident.”

Providence happens

I immediately wondered how these officials found out about our accident. And why were we, relative strangers, being so warmly received? Why did it seem that every door for future visits and cooperation had been opened by these Afari officials, these “gatekeepers” of power and influence in that region?It turned out that all this was the work of the young man who had rescued us the day before. He was the highest-ranking health official among the Afar, and had just happened to be on the road in our vicinity at the time of the accident. He had lost both of his parents while a young boy; the Mekane Yesu Church had placed him in a church-run hostel and saw that he was fed, clothed, and educated. He had gone on to higher education and returned to serve his people. He remembered the love and kindness shown to him as a boy, and he made sure other officials knew of our mission and intent. He became one of the government escorts who accompanied four team members to meet clan chiefs and other Afaris, including the Imam, the supreme religious leader of the area. He even intervened in one tense incident when a group of young men with machine guns surrounded our photographer, making menacing demands.God’s providence was also evident when we returned home and heard how he had awakened three people in the middle of the night to pray for us—just at the time we needed it most.We have planned annual exchanges with our Ethiopian partners, alternating our visits. In addition to the $650,000 pledged by members of the team and our session, we’re encouraging our local Presbytery to make the work among the Afar an annual budget item. Even the young people of our church have become involved, pledging to raise funds for the Afar over the next five years through World Vision’s 30-Hour Famine. Yet the commitment is deeper still and likely to be longer-lasting. Among ourselves, church members talk about a 10- or 20-year relationship with the Afar.”Maybe forever,” say some.

Roberta Hestenesis senior pastor of Solana Beach Presbyterian Church and a member of the board of World Vision.

Related Elsewhere

Other Christianity Today stories about Ethiopia include:International Community Has No Excuses in Ethiopia, Says Aid Official | Starvation not widespread, but growing rapidly. (Jan. 18, 2000)Guardians of the Lost Ark | Ethiopia’s Christians stake their identity on being heirs of Solomon and keepers of his treasure. (June 14, 1999)Ethiopia Focus on Evangelism | Southern Baptists train for outreach in Addis Abbaba. (Feb. 8, 1999)Centuries-old Treasures Pilfered | Priceless Artifacts are disappearing from Ethiopia’s churches and monasteries. (November 16, 1998)Roberta Hestenes’s church, Solana Beach Presbyterian, has a its own Web site. For in-depth information about the secular and religious history of Ethiopia, visit africana.com.Ethiopian church tradition about the birth of Christianity in that nation includes this tale of two shipwrecked Syrian slaves and the young prince whom they served.

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