Political missionaries neglect non-leftist victims
Commentary by James D. Berkley, The Layman, April 27, 2009
Apparently the way Presbyterians do ministry in Colombia is mostly political – working against earthly kingdoms and powers, doing community organizing, standing up to injustices and putting themselves in harm’s way. In one sense, it’s a bold and self-sacrificing way to minister.
However, there is always the risk that the political aspect of the work and the political ideologies of worldly forces can begin to overwhelm the distinctly Christian aspect of the ministry, so that what Presbyterians finally end up doing becomes quite indistinguishable from what other idealistic groups as varied as socialist revolutionaries, the Peace Corps, or Rotary International might accomplish.
It becomes nice people trying to do good things of a human nature rather than disciples of Jesus Christ taking the Good News of the Kingdom of God to a world of hurt, both in Word as well as in deed. In its crassest form, such work can become “I can help you” rather than “Jesus can help you.” It becomes, “Together we’ll tackle the earthly powers” rather than “God’s power needs to be at work to transform all of us.”
Presbyterian political activity in Colombia
One longtime Presbyterian missionary to Colombia, Alice Winters, has said Jesus “was an accompanier,” referring to an accompaniment program that appears to be the major way for Presbyterians to minister in Colombia these days. In Colombia, left-leaning human-rights activists, labor union leaders, community organizers and some pastors feel threatened by military and paramilitary groups that suspect them of guerrilla sympathies. Such reactive groups also oppose any activist work, because it undermines the interests with which they are aligned, such as the military, large landowners and industrialists. In the face of this, Christian accompaniers from the U.S. escort threatened individuals, hoping that the negative prospect of a murdered American might deter an attack on an accompanied Colombian.
Accompaniers “initiate or join in projects that will enable the community to take its life in its own hands again,” a Presbyterian News Service article quotes Winters as saying. “Accompaniers work with the community to seek justice.” Thus Presbyterian mission sounds no different than what any secular community organizer or political activist might attempt. And the political organizing is being done in opposition to a popular government that was democratically elected on a platform to battle an unpopular Marxist uprising.
Rick Ufford-Chase, former moderator of the General Assembly, is a strong advocate for accompaniment, writing passionately from his experience as an accompanier in Colombia. As moderator, he told moving stories of Christians targeted by right-wing paramilitary killers, brave voices for the people who needed to hide out and watch their backs. Ufford-Chase wanted to help protect such victims with his own presence. It was an honorable and unselfish act.
But one gets the feeling that there is special animation because the villain is either government militarism or shadowy right-wing paramilitary operatives. Much of peacemaking seems to rage against “North American empire” and free-market capitalism, perhaps more so than it does against human-rights atrocities. It seems that much of what animates such peacemaking derives from a kind of self-loathing for being a citizen of a country with conservative politics or a free-market economic system.
Reading Web sites and materials by the Colombia missionaries and peacemaking groups, one does hear mention of a couple of bad actors: armed terrorist groups known as FARC and the National Liberation Army (ELN). But such Marxist revolutionary groups merit only slight mention, and their killings, terror and kidnappings receive rather vague and unemotional attention.
What does get the major attention of Presbyterian missions seems to be the Colombian military and a right-wing paramilitary terrorist group called the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC). It was to defend against these often-shadowy forces that Ufford-Chase went to Colombia to offer accompaniment. Certainly the extra-legal and tyrannical acts of government and the far right need to be called out and staunchly opposed. Terror and repression are unjustifiable, no matter what ideology is the source.
Ufford-Chase uncharacteristically silent
It is interesting, however, that Ufford-Chase didn’t go to the countryside to stand alongside some Christians marked for kidnapping and death by leftist FARC forces due to their greater allegiance to the Kingdom of God and unwillingness to support violent revolution. In fact, North American accompaniers seem loath to say anything negative about FARC. It appears to be more politically correct to protect Christians in danger from government or paramilitary forces rather than Christians getting cut down by terrorist guerillas.
On March 19, when I read of Colombian Christian leaders being kidnapped, intimidated, and killed by FARC, I wrote Ufford-Chase to ask what he thought of that. Would his group be sending accompaniers to help these Christian brothers and sisters threatened with death by FARC? “Now that the shoe is on the other foot, will the same indignation for human-rights violations animate folks like the Christian Peacemaker Teams?” I asked. “Or does it take right-wing oppression and violence to get their righteous juices stirred?” After all, intimidation is intimidation, injustice is injustice, and violence is violence, no matter the source. Should there not be equal-opportunity protection provided by accompaniers?
Ufford-Chase did not reply. I wrote again on March 26: “I really would like your answer.” Nothing. Again on April 13, I reforwarded the e-mail: “I’m serious about wanting your response to this change of circumstances. What do you think?” Ufford-Chase has not responded. His enthusiasm for defending against right-wing atrocities apparently is not matched by an equal enthusiasm for protecting defenseless Christians from left-wing atrocities. One helps the left-leaning, politically active Christians; one has nothing to say about the simple Christian folk who are dying because they are unwilling to take up violent revolution with the leftist guerillas.
Unwilling to oppose FARC
So does anyone in the accompaniment camp have anything negative to say about FARC? Not really, although a coalition of peace groups has produced a statement that declines to support a people’s march to condemn FARC violence last month. “Simply condemning opposition may confuse issues of structural and political complicity in state oppression,” they argue. In other words, they don’t want to put the onus on FARC to stop the killings and kidnappings, because that could be seen to take the government off the hook to effect meaningful political change.
While the Christian Peacemaker Teams – affiliated group cannot work up any animus against FARC, deep animosity against the establishment quickly surfaces. “This march is a smoke screen that attempts to hide the responsibility of the Colombian State, corporate executives, cattle ranchers, politicians and others, who have supported paramilitarism,” the statement fumes. Thus the march against FARC’s atrocities “becomes a threatening referendum, seeking an unlimited mandate for military escapades,” they claim. By thi
s group’s reckoning, simply by saying no to FARC’s violence, one must be supporting government violence.
The sad fact remains that Christians are being killed. Some Christians get killed by right-wing thugs because they stand up for the poor. Some Christians get killed by left-wing terrorists because they won’t support an armed revolution. But don’t both groups deserve protection – unless the role of raging against government and economic systems is actually more important than simply protecting the lives of Christian brothers and sisters in peril?
A left-leaning political task has apparently supplanted the ministry of proclaiming the Gospel and making disciples. That probably explains how partner groups feel free to make a rambling, convoluted political statement against opposing FARC’s violence – and to neglect the welfare of nonpoliticized Christians who are being killed by FARC gunmen in rural areas.
If, however, truly caring for the lives of believers is the task, then why not be consistent? Why not offer equal protection and – if one must – political support for victims of leftist violence as well as victims of rightist violence?