Tuesday, February 13, 2007

Death-Defying Christianity

ChristianityToday.com has an interesting story about a Colombian minister who practices social justice even though such activities could cost him his life.

Jesús Goez is hiding in plain sight.

He preaches every Sunday.

Runs a feeding program for 600 kids.

Supervises a job-training program.

Operates a recycling program and a bakery.

He does all this to keep his tiny church with its big vision moving forward—while living miles away from right-wing paramilitary squads that have tried to assassinate him.

Goez is not unlike countless pastors, union leaders, and journalists. Each group has become mired in Colombia's fierce ideological war. Leftist guerrillas, private armies, and right-wing paramilitaries—backed by factions within the Colombian army—have torn the country asunder since the 1960s.

The church in Colombia has paid a staggering price in this conflict. In 2004, armed groups murdered 40 Protestant leaders, according to the Council of Evangelical Churches of Colombia. More than 50 congregations closed due to violence. (Nearly 10 percent of Colombia's 47 million people are Protestant.)

"All those funerals. So much death. In this war, the violence, the threats, the death, it penetrates your soul," says Mennonite pastor Ricardo Esquivia, one of Colombia's leading Protestants and peace activists. "So you pray, asking God for strength so that your soul does not become as sad as all the things happening around you."

The violence and conflict in Colombia, a combination of drug wars, militias, and corruption, has cost more than 200,000 lives and displaced another 3.4 million people. And the poverty rate is very high.
A long time ago, Goez and other church leaders realized that charity alone would not provide a comprehensive solution for the 49 percent of Colombians living in chronic poverty.

Many complex factors contribute to poverty. Private armies have terrorized poor farmers off their land. The oil industry and agribusiness take possession of strategic land to explore for oil or to grow coffee, bananas, or flowers for the florist industry. As a result, millions more Colombians today live in urban areas, working in low-wage textile or food-processing jobs.

Many churches care for the poor through traditional outreach and human-rights advocacy. But there has been a backlash. According to reliable reports from displaced farmers and others, the government's military intelligence has kept the Presbyterian Church of Colombia under surveillance for documenting human-rights abuses.

Like most international stories, the affairs in Colombia are complicated and there's no easy way to divide the good guys from the bad guys. President Alvaro Uribe has a mixed human rights' record, but under his administration, "murders, kidnappings, and massacres have decreased significantly."

Stories like Goetz's remind us that doing Christ's work can be personally risky and we are fortunate that in the U.S. we don't have to face these sorts of dangers.