November 11, 2002
Churches under attack as Colombian war intensifies
___By Chris Herlinger
___Religion News Service
___CALI, Colombia (RNS)--Colombia's Protestant churches--many of them small, independent congregations in rural areas--are finding themselves under assault as a 38-year war intensifies, with numerous pastors and church leaders targets of assassination, a new report says.
___One pastor was killed recently while conducting a Sunday School class as young children looked on in horror.
___"The church has been greatly affected by the intensification of the armed conflict, (and) none of the armed groups have respected the faithful," said the report written by Ricardo Esquivia, a well-known Mennonite peace activist and director of Justapaz--the Mennonite Christian Center for Justice, Peace and Nonviolent Action. Esquivia also is president of the Human Rights and Peace Commission of the Evangelical Council of Colombian Churches, a coalition of Protestant churches in Colombia.
___The report is written as a letter to Christians elsewhere in the world and focuses solely on the plight of Protestant church leaders and members in what is a predominantly Catholic country--90 percent of Colombians are Roman Catholic.
___Since it does not focus on the deaths of Roman Catholic clerics who have been killed in recent years, including Archbishop Isaias Duarte Cancino of Cali, who was assassinated in March, the report is an admittedly incomplete picture of the threats facing Colombia churches. Even so, Esquivia's report provides something of a "grassroots" glimpse of the day-to-day horrors experienced by churches as Colombia slides into a sharpening of the conflict that claims at least 3,500 lives a year and has killed 40,000 in the last decade.
___The war is a complex, multi-tiered conflict pitting various armed groups against each other. Two leftist guerrilla groups are fighting the U.S.-backed Colombian military. Also involved are private armies and right-wing paramilitaries, which human rights groups have said are allied with the Colombian military. Colombia's new president, Alvaro Uribe, has called for an increased military effort to defeat the guerrillas and has the support of the Bush administration.
___Perhaps the most significant contribution of Esquivia's report is a listing of 26 pastors and church leaders killed in recent years. The list is striking both because church leaders have been killed by armed assailants from both left- and right-wing groups and because the church leaders who have been killed do not fit the traditional profile of leftist, activist clergy who often were the targets of previous conflicts in Latin America, such as the decade-long war in El Salvador.
___Most, in fact, are pastors of small, independent Protestant or Pentecostal churches, and few of them are affiliated with what are called the more established denominations, such as the Presbyterian or Lutheran churches. Those churches account for about 5 percent of the membership of Colombia's Protestant churches.
___Small, independent churches often are located in rural areas--where the war is being waged with the most ferocity--and their membership is overwhelmingly poor, said Barbara Gerlach, co-chair of the Washington-based Colombia Human Rights Committee.
___Some of the churches tend to be apolitical, while others have a strong sense of the "social gospel" and are committed to working for peace, she said. In both cases, the churches "are caring for people who are displaced and fleeing the war."
___That can cause problems, she said, because caring for someone identified as either a guerrilla or paramilitary--or a supporter of either--can be interpreted as taking sides in the conflict, as is even being in an area controlled by one of the armed groups.
___The church leader assassinated while conducting Sunday School class was Aristos Porras Arango, 34, a leader of the Association of Evangelical Churches of the Caribbean in the village of Villa Madeira, Cordoba province. He was assassinated May 5 by armed men thought to be members of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, a right-wing paramilitary group, the report said.
___Another victim was Fredy Antonio Urueta, a pastor in the town of Las Piedras, Sucre province. He was killed May 6, presumably by members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, the most prominent left-wing guerrilla group. Urueta was taken from his church while leading a prayer vigil and was killed in full view of church members, the report said.
___In addition to assassinations, numerous pastors and church leaders have been kidnapped for ransom. Armed groups have declared pastors and church leaders as military targets, and more than a dozen Protestant leaders have received threats against their lives.
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