Page 4318 – Christianity Today (2024)

Religious trench warfare has broken out amid charges of anti-Catholic bigotry in choosing a new chaplain for the U.S. House of Representatives.

In the past, the dominant party’s leader simply made the selection. This time, the majority Republicans convened a search committee with nine Democrats and nine Republicans. That committee recommended three finalists.

House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), Majority Leader Dick Armey of Texas and Minority Leader Dick Gephardt of Missouri then chose among the three finalists.

“At the end of the whole process we all shook hands,” says Rep. Joe Pitts (R-Pa.), a member of the committee. “There was a tremendous camaraderie.” But the good will did not last long.

Hastert announced the choice of Charles Parker Wright, a Presbyterian and a pastor of churches for 25 years.

Some Democrats believe anti-Catholic bigotry influenced the selection (CT, Feb. 7, 2000, p. 24).

The Democrats, the Republicans say, are trying to peel away some of the GOP’s Catholic support, which might make a difference in several key House races this fall.

Democrats say that Catholic priest Timothy O’Brien had received the most votes, 14, and should have been chosen. Wright received 9.5 votes.

Republicans were incensed that the Democrats released the vote tallies. They claimed that the votes were never meant to be made public and made little sense as a final criterion. Each representative had checked off three candidates, with no final runoff vote.

“We talked about whether to make it public,” Pitts recalls. “But we all decided not to. In fact, the vote talliers didn’t tell us who got the most check marks. I didn’t know.”

The Democrats also say they were disturbed by anti-Catholic remarks during the interviews. O’Brien says Rep. Richard Shimkus (R-Ill.) asked if O’Brien could counsel families since he was single, and if he was of good moral character.

Aides to Shimkus vehemently deny O’Brien’s account. Democrats also criticize Rep. Steve Largent (R-Okla.) for asking if O’Brien’s clerical collar might be a barrier for some representatives.

Although most Republican representatives do not dispute that their colleagues asked the questions, they say the remarks were honest and friendly, if a bit naïve.

Further, they claim that Democrats actually did not want O’Brien at first but “were behind a liberal Lutheran policy-wonk type,” according to one source. When the Democrats’ first choice did not make the cut, they fell behind O’Brien. A few Republicans say they voted for O’Brien—an action they now regret.

Billy Graham, who has known Wright for years through the National Prayer Breakfast, called Hastert to express concern that the selection was bogged down in partisanship. “The House Chaplain serves all the members of the House of Representatives,” Graham said, “regardless of political party.”

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Churches and community groups across the country are hailing a decision by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) that permits up to 1,000 new low-power FM (LPFM) radio stations.

“Christian LPFM stations will make the gospel and other Christian ministries available to many who do not now listen to religious radio,” says Ken Bowles, who formerly managed several Christian radio stations in Missouri and now helps groups apply for the new licenses.

The FCC created two power classes for the small stations. One is authorized at 50 to 100 watts and will reach a radius of up to 3.5 miles. The second class will operate at up to 10 watts with a radius of one to two miles. Full-power FM stations normally range from 6,000 to 100,000 watts and can cover a radius of up to 100 miles.

“With a low-power station we can do more to serve our community,” says Ricardo Reyes, pastor of the predominately Spanish-speaking Unidos Para Cristo church in Queens, New York. “If I had a full-power station, I would be working with a wider community. But if I have a low-power station, I am more tied to my community. The audience will be smaller and we can do a better job and send people personally to help people.”

Unidos Para Cristo has trained members in broadcasting, communication, and counseling skills for five years, and is already at work on its license application.

Creating Interference?

But many religious broadcasters are not happy about the new service. “We opposed it on technical grounds,” says Brandt Gustavson, president of National Religious Broadcasters.

Gustavson expresses concern that many of the more than 1,700 stations in the country that carry Christian programming will find their coverage reduced by interference from the new stations.

“We felt that adequate studies had not been done,” Gustavson says. “The big investment that they have had in making these stations viable will be reduced by all of these encroaching stations.

“Evangelicals “have all the opportunities that they need to get their message out,” he says.

The politically influential National Association of Broadcasters, a secular organization, has asked an appeals court to set aside the FCC rule. The association has urged members to support a bill sponsored by Rep. Mike Oxley (R-Ohio), which would prevent the commission from implementing the service.

One industry source told the trade publication Radio World that passage of Oxley’s bill is doubtful. Elected officials will likely vote to please the churches, minority groups, and other LPFM supporters who make up a larger percentage of the electorate in congressional districts than the relatively small number of broadcasters, the source said.

Low Cost

Others play down concerns of interference. “We will engineer [the transmitters] to minimize that,” says James Price, vice president of the Ringgold, Georgia-based Sterling Industries. “We do not want to compete with our other Christian brothers out there, but I want to make as many different Christian formats available as possible.”

Groups can purchase the necessary transmitter antenna and minimum studio equipment for about $10,000, says Price, whose company is helping Reyes with his application. His organization’s fee for filing an application with the FCC is $2,250.

By contrast, equipment for a new full-power station can run into hundreds of thousands of dollars, and purchasing an existing facility can cost well over $20 million.

Building Community

One major denomination, the United Church of Christ (UCC), has started to assist churches and community groups with planning for the stations. LPFM “will offer a new forum for information and community-building, particularly with and among diverse cultural groups,” says Robert Chase, executive director of the UCC Office of Communication. The denomination plans a series of workshops around the country to equip interested groups with the organizational and technical skills to establish stations.

Some critics charge that the new class of stations will attract extreme groups spreading obscene content, which will be difficult for the FCC to monitor. But supporters of the new stations predict that mostly churches, schools, and service organizations will apply for the licenses.

During the first two years of eligibility, licensees will be limited to local entities that have their offices or three-fourths of their board members living within 10 miles of the station. Stations will be allowed to transmit less than full time, and will have to provide significant local programming. The FCC plans to accept initial applications during a five-day filing period in May.

The UCC cites a New Jersey church composed mostly of Asian Indians as an example of the need for the new stations. Pastor Anand Veeraraj says that thousands of Indians live within ten miles of his church. “Local broadcasters don’t even know we exist. I want to be first in line for a license.”

Related Elsewhere

The FCC‘s site on LPFM includes a fact sheet, a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) page, and the entire text of the commission’s report and order.

The NRB’s statement against LPFM is online, though you’ll have to scroll past many other press releases to find it.

LPFM.com has more legal and technical information about future of low-power radio.

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Egypt’s state security prosecutors filed attempted murder charges against a Coptic village priest, accusing him of provoking the violence that killed 21 Christians in Al-Kosheh village during the New Year weekend (CT, Feb. 7, p. 31).

Father Gabriel Abdul Masih, 35, was booked in a Cairo court in February on charges of attempted murder, conspiracy to commit murder, leading a mob attack, looting and damaging property, and possession of unlicensed weapons and ammunition.

After 10 hours of interrogations culminating in formal criminal charges, the priest was released on bail and allowed to return to his parish at the Angel Michael Church in Al-Kosheh.

According to an article in the London-based Al Hayat newspaper, Prosecutor General Hisham Saraya’s order to arrest was based on testimony taken from Muslims in Awlad Toq, a village adjacent to Al-Kosheh.

“It never happened that I fired a gun,” Gabriel told an Egyptian newspaper. “I am a religious man, not a terrorist.”

According to government figures, 59 suspects have been ordered arrested for their alleged role in the rampage. Officials say 19 of those in custody are Muslims and two are Christians. Local church sources told Compass that 21 Copts were known to be under arrest, 15 detained in Al-Kosheh and another six arrested in Cairo.

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“This morning, I received details of the bombing of a school in the Nuba Mountains of Sudan and the killing of 14 and their teacher,” Roman Catholic Bishop Macram Max Gassis said on February 15. “It is truly a slaughter of the innocents.”

The bishop’s impassioned testimony set the stage for the newly formed U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom’s first public hearing in Washington, D.C.

Gassis, who is Sudanese, described what he called a religious war of genocide against Christians and other opponents of Sudan’s fundamentalist Islamic government.

“We have walked for miles amongst human and cattle corpses with systematic burning of homes, churches, mosques, animist shrines, clinics, schools, and crops,” testified Baroness Caroline Cox of Christian Solidarity Worldwide.

Cox described how the Khartoum government has driven moderate Muslims into the desert to die, and enslaved Christians as a method of forced conversion.

She also testified about Sudanese concentration camps—called “peace camps”—with high rates of executions, death by starvation, and rapes.

Sudan is “the hell of the world,” says Dan Eiffe of Norwegian People’s Aid. Eiffe escorted representatives of the commission through southern Sudan in January.

Denouncing the Clinton Administration’s inaction, Roger Winter of the U.S. Committee for Refugees estimated more than 1.9 million southern Sudanese and Nuba Mountain peoples have perished since 1983. Another 4 million or more have been driven into absolute poverty. Another 50,000 Sudanese have been enslaved. The U.S. Commission was established last spring to monitor progress and make recommendations on eliminating religious persecution.

Fueling the War

The hearing devoted much attention to Sudan’s Nuba Mountain and Blue Nile regions. The Khartoum government has battled rebels in those regions to gain access to untapped oil resources and finance its internal war. Witnesses and commissioners particularly criticized Canadian and Chinese involvement in developing the oil fields and aiding Khartoum’s war machine.

The oil regions have become killing fields as pro-Khartoum troops create a buffer zone to protect the now-functioning pipeline from rebel attacks, according to reports from Faith in Action’s Derek Hammond. Eyewitness accounts of severe vomiting, along with eye and breathing problems, suggest the illicit use of poison gas in the bombings of civilians.

Hammond recounted miles of burned-out villages, tales of slow killings, and gang rapes. A Canadian government special report released the day before the U.S. hearing concluded that Canadian oil company Talisman Energy had materially aided Khartoum’s war effort. In addition, according to a high-level Sudanese defector, shiploads from China labeled “oil equipment” have in reality contained rifles, rockets, aircraft, and mines.

Wall Street Ties

The commission has pressed the Clinton administration since last summer to sanction Talisman Energy, which owns 25 percent of Sudan’s Greater Nile Oil Project in the Blue Nile region, and China National Petroleum Corporation, which owns a 40 percent stake. China National, under the name of PetroChina, plans to raise $5-7 billion through the New York Stock Exchange with help from the investment banking firm Goldman Sachs International.

Within days of the commission hearing, the U.S. Treasury Department announced that it would impose sanctions on Sudan’s oil companies. The department decided, however, not to take action against Talisman or to block China National from U.S. markets. The sanctions prohibit U.S. companies and citizens from doing business with the Sudanese oil companies.

“From the beginning, we sought to ensure compliance with the U.S. sanctions,” says Talisman president Jim Buckee.

“No one is saying there aren’t problems [in Sudan],” says Robert Hormats, vice chairman of Goldman Sachs International. “But this particular transaction [of China National] should not be affected by concerns about Sudan or other parts of the world.”

Allowing China National to list on the New York Stock Exchange is like letting a Nazi-affiliated company raise money on Wall Street, says Congressman Frank R. Wolf (R-Va.), who has led trips to Sudan to verify atrocities. “The poor people in southern Sudan are being told their value is not as important as open markets and the free flow of capital.”

At the end of February, a coalition of religious and human rights leaders launched emergency efforts to block China National’s stock-exchange listing. Nina Shea of Freedom House, Diane Knippers of the Institute on Religion and Democracy, and others wrote 200 of the largest U.S. investors, asking them not to buy shares in China National.

Freedom House’s Paul Marshall and other Canadian evangelical leaders met with Canadian Foreign Minister Lloyd Axworthy about his tepid response to Talisman’s involvement with Sudan’s regime.

The commission plans to develop an evaluation tool for portfolio managers and other investors. The tool would evaluate the risk a company or its capital fundraising face as violations of religious freedom and human rights prompt international protests against certain investments.

Atrocities Persist

After a vigorous call by evangelical leaders and others for a selloff of Talisman stock, the stock price has plummeted. But divestment and eyewitness testimonies of the atrocities have not stopped the war.

Gassis believes the government targeted the Upper Kaouda Holy Cross School, which he built—four small buildings with thatched roofs—as a warning against him testifying.

“The message of the bombing is for me to keep quiet,” says Gassis, who recently received the Wilberforce Award from Prison Fellowship. “The Khartoum government knows that I am here. ‘Bishop,’ they are saying, ‘keep your mouth shut.’ “

Gassis says he is in the United States because of the desires of his Christian brothers and sisters in Sudan. With an evangelical mother and a Catholic father, the bishop feels he exemplifies the church’s unified voice. “Come and save us,” he says. “And pray for me.”Tony Carnes is Senior News Writer for Christianity Today.

Related Elsewhere

Our earlier coverage of this subject includes:

Protest Begins as White House Rethinks Policy on Sudan Regime | Religious leaders urge Clinton administration to act against oppression (Feb. 10, 2000)

Oil Exports Draw Protests | Christians urge divestment from Canadian company (Nov. 15, 1999)

Religious Freedom Panel in Place (June 14, 1999)

The U.S. Department of State Annual Report on International Religious Freedom for 1999 has an extensive entry on religious liberty abuses in Sudan, and the Department of State 1999 Country Report on Human Rights Practices (Released February 25, 2000) also includes considerable information on religious freedom.

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It is Saturday in Nepal, and hundreds of people dressed in their best churchgoing clothes crowd together outside a large hall in the capital city of Katmandu.

Saluting each other with folded hands and saying “Jai Masih” (the Nepali expression for “Praise the Lord”), they take off their shoes, making their way inside to squat on a carpeted floor just before 10:30 a.m. Except for a handful of expatriates, the Nepali Isai Mandali (Gyaneshwor) Church is filled with first-generation Nepali Christians who have braved social and religious constraints to follow Jesus Christ. Every inch of space is taken and those who are late reluctantly sit outside. At the first strains of a Nepali song, all 2,000 hands, young and old, lift in praise to God. This amazing sight brings tears to my eyes. Ten years ago an open church meeting of this nature would have been impossible. The days when government agents infiltrated churches as spies, and Christians were persecuted or imprisoned, are also long gone. Three decades ago, two Nepali Christians, Robert Karthak and Laxmi Prasad Neupane, climbed the Himalayan Mountains, crossed rivers, and walked 15 miles a day to visit inaccessible villages across this nation of 23.2 million people. Each time they stumbled across a village, they stopped to sing a few songs, share their testimony, and hand out gospel tracts to those who could read. They journeyed for 45 days, sleeping under the stars and wearing out five pairs of shoes, ever aware that they could be arrested by the police and jailed on charges of breaking the law and proselytizing.

It was not until many years had passed that Karthak and Neupane began to meet new Christians from some of the villages they had visited. “No one remembered us,” says Neupane, an upper-caste Brahmin Hindu convert and director of the Inter national Bible Society in Nepal. “We did our work secretly as we could be arrested at any time, and prayed that God would pour out his Spirit. We are now seeing the fruit of the seeds which we sowed many years ago. God’s Word never returns void.”

“I was often called in by the police, and had to move several times as we were not allowed to have worship services,” says Karthak, senior pastor of Gyaneshwor Church in Katmandu. “We could not declare ourselves as Christians openly, so we started in a small way as the constitution prevented us from preaching.”

LOW-KEY CHRISTIAN PRESENCE

From 15,000 in 1970 to an estimated 400,000 Christians today, Nepal has one of the fastest-growing Christian populations among the 3.6 billion people throughout Asia’s 51 countries, according to scholars in Christian missions.

“It is very encouraging to note that in about 45 years two percent of the population became followers of Christ,” says Thirtha Thapa, president of the National Christian Society.

Nepal has always considered itself in a unique but precarious situation. Land locked, Nepal is situated between the world’s two most populated countries, India and China. With a per capita income of $210 annually, it is one of the ten poorest countries in the world and has virtually no middle class. The majority of Nepalis are Hindus and Buddhists. In many areas, the two religions blend into folk rituals, festivals, and worship.

Katmandu rests in the shadows of the Himalayas and is densely populated; its streets are narrow and crowded. Life here is unhurried and most people are easygoing and leisure-loving. Tourists and trekkers come to Kat mandu to visit the innumerable shrines and temples that dot the landscape.

Although there are thousands of Christians in Katmandu, their presence is barely discernible. The sole traditional churchlike structure in Katmandu is Catholic and lies secluded off a main road set among houses. After meeting informally for five decades in the Jesuit-run St. Xavier’s School, the Catholics registered as a nonreligious, nongovernment organization in 1993, calling it the Nepal Catholic Society. This gave them the right to buy property for the community.

The Catholic organization bought a piece of property from another Christian who ran an orphanage and Bible school. Work on the Assumption Church complex started in 1993 and a cathedral was completed four years later in 1997.

Other believers meet in homes and rented halls, but there are no signboards to announce the Christian presence. For example, Gyaneshwor Church is identified by a small sign at the gate, while Christian offices and bookshops are not identified at all. Christian groups are not allowed to register with the government as openly Christian.

QUEST FOR RELIGIOUS FREEDOM

The pursuit of religious freedom, outside of Hinduism or Buddhism, has had a painful history in Nepal. Hindu and Buddhist traditions formed a historic bulwark against the growth of Christianity. Eighteenth-century Jesuit missionaries were the first to enter Nepal as they found varying routes through the Himalayas to Tibet. They established a small mission, and a community of 57 Christian converts lived in the Nepal valley until they were banished from the kingdom. Ever since King Prithvi Narayan Shah expelled Catholic Capuchin priests in 1760, the policy of the Nepali government had been to prevent Christians from entering the country and to mistreat those who managed to do so. For centuries, Nepal was unusually isolated.

But as natural disasters or epidemics hit the land, many Nepalis crossed the border into India in pursuit of a better life. Some were drawn into India’s Christian enclaves, beginning a vibrant ethnic Nepali church within India.

William Carey, the legendary British missionary who spent a lifetime in India, was the first to recognize the need for a Nepali Bible. He started translating the New Testament in 1812 in Serampore, India, completing the New Testament in 1821. Ganga Prasad Pradhan, a Nepali pastor, translated the entire Bible into Nepali in 1914. Until Nepalis published Bibles within the country, they imported Bibles from India—but those were often seized by customs officials. Today, the New Testament has been translated into colloquial Nepali and 10,000 copies of the Gospel of Mark designed especially for children have been distributed in recent months.

The year 1990 is often referred to as a defining moment in Nepal’s history, when democracy and religious freedom gained new ground. Since 1961, King Mahendra had exercised autocratic control of the country—in part by banning political parties and introducing Panchayat, a traditional Hindu form of local governing councils.

Under Panchayat, Christians (as well as other distrusted groups) were persecuted and at least 300 pastors and Christians were jailed. Many Christians suffered police brutality, and at least one died because of it. Through this difficult time, the church was driven underground and Nepali Christians practiced secret lives of prayer.

As repressions grew more commonplace, resistance to the monarchy gained strength. In 1990, pent-up demands for reform triggered civil unrest on a massive scale. Eventually, the Nepali Congress Party gained majority control of the new parliament, leading to many other democratic reforms and setting the stage for a significant growth of Christianity in Nepal.

The primary responsibility of taking the gospel to the people has rested on the Nepali church from the very beginning.

Women played a key role in establishing the church in Nepal and continue to do so. Two women, Gyani Shah (an early Nepali convert) and Elizabeth Franklin (a missionary with Regions Beyond Missionary Union), were instrumental in establishing two of the oldest churches in Katmandu: Putali Sadak Church and Nepali Isai Mandali (Gyaneshwor) Church.

Their example has multiplied many times during the last 50 years.

Since most Nepali congregations are the result of work by Nepalis themselves, Christians from Nepal are evangelists at heart. Nepali Christians—many of whom are illiterate—share the gospel frequently and informally, sometimes over a cup of hot tea. Crusade-style evangelism is unknown to them.

Silas Bogati, a Catholic deacon in Katmandu preparing to enter the priesthood in August, says he became a Christian after a man gave him a gospel tract. “I was born and raised as a Hindu till I was 19. The Christian message of love really appealed to me when a man on the street shared with me John 3:16. Then I started attending Bible courses and became a Christian.”

The zeal of Christians has been infectious. Nepali Christians attribute church growth to miracles, prayers, and Jesus’ continuing acts of healing and deliverance. Nepali Christians say their neighbors often call them to pray because sick people are healed and the demon-possessed are set free. Gopaljee Adhikari of the Lord’s Church recounts a miracle in his congregation: “A man brought his brother who was paralyzed. We prayed for him, and two weeks later he was healed and came on his own to church.”

Miracles are a powerful testimony to the community. “At least 40 to 60 percent of the Nepali church became Christians as a direct result of a miracle,” says Sandy Anderson of the Sowers Ministry. “Most times the people do not know what we are talking about when we preach the gospel. That’s why it is very important to demonstrate the gospel. We preach. Then God heals the sick when we pray. The gospel is not only preached but demonstrated in Nepal.”

CHANGING RELIGION, NOT CULTURE

Even though Nepal is a parliamentary monarchy and democratic reforms are in place, the old feudal caste system remains influential.

The Nepalis are highly religious and consider Hinduism their cultural wellspring. Nepali Hindus see Christianity as a foreign, cow-eating religion. (In Hinduism, the cow is revered as a god.) Public criticism of Christianity is accepted and vitriolic. For the past year, Nepal’s mass media have launched an extensive campaign against Christians, accusing them of destroying the Nepalese culture.

A Nepali Hindu who becomes a Christian “breaks caste”—an action that has dramatic personal, family, and social consequences. Chirendra Satyal’s grandfather was a Brahmin priest to rulers of the country. “When I became a Christian, I tried to tell people that I was only changing my religion and not my culture,” says Satyal, now an active Catholic journalist. “But they were skeptical.” The media also describe believers as terrorists or illegal residents. Most Christians tend to ignore such accusations. “[The media] are putting psychological pressure on us,” says Adhikari. “We just have to pray and face the situation.”

To counter the criticism, the people of Siabru, near Helembu Mountain, decided to express their faith in sync with their culture. Historically Buddhist, they once followed the age-old custom of flying Buddhist prayer flags around their village for protection from evil. When they became Christians, they decided to maintain their culture and style of worship and still follow the traditional Buddhist style of singing, but substituted Christian words. They also kept the prayer flags but instead of having Buddhist scriptures they inscribed Bible verses.

As more foreigners visit Nepal, more Christian groups, mostly Protestant and from the wealthy West, are trying to initiate ministry within the country.

“Nepal has become a mission tourist center,” says Narayan Sharma of Gospel for Asia. But some Protestant groups have maintained a successful presence in the country for decades. TEAM, an interdenominational agency, dates its presence in Nepal to 1892. Today, more than a dozen American mission groups have more than 100 personnel in Nepal. In most cases, the Nepali government requires outside agencies to agree not to proselytize.

“If you want to help the church in Nepal, don’t just pour in money,” Anderson says. “Build relationships before you support anyone. Give money and resources to men and women of credibility.”

According to Nepali church leaders, a troubling offshoot of the growth in missions spending is that a few Nepali church leaders live “like millionaires and drive fancy cars.” Local leaders say giving money to individuals rather than to church groups has done much harm and brought disgrace to Christians.

“We have tried to talk to our friends and yet they get their support from outside,” Karthak says ruefully. “I tried to help some of the church leaders by asking them why they don’t teach their people to give to the Lord’s work.” Karthak himself has taken a cautious approach and is not dependent on outside funding.

Despite differences over money or doctrine, Nepali Christians find that their status as a religious minority gives a strong incentive to stick together because discrimination and official harassment still take place. According to Thapa of the National Christian Society, Christians experience discrimination within their families.

“I came from a strong Hindu family and belonged to the Kshatriyas, the second-highest caste family in Nepal,” says Bogati. “When I went back to my village after I became a Christian, one of my uncles would not allow me into the house. I had become an untouchable.”

Additional discrimination takes place within the community. Neighbors consider a change in religion as tantamount to deserting the community and showing contempt for their culture. Peter, a worker with the International Bible Society, and his family were banished from their village when he refused to follow Hindu traditions at his father’s death.

The third level of discrimination is subtle but legal, having a chilling effect on Christian outreach. Christian organizations are not allowed to register as religious entities, giving them no official legal standing. “Even though people are aware of us, the government does not want to register us,” Neupane says. “They ask us to change our names and remove any association with the Bible, but we do not want to lose our identity.”

A HOME, NOT A HOTEL

A common accusation made against churches in Nepal is that Christians are converting the poor by offering financial inducement.

Yet every Saturday at church services, a few more Nepalis make a commitment to Christianity. No one is called to the front to make a public declaration of faith. Instead, converts sign a document affirming that their choice is of their own free will. Christian leaders do not see false charges of financial enticement as a central worry about church growth. They are more inclined to see the fate of new Christians in biblical terms, akin to Jesus’ parable of seeds that grow but are choked by worldly cares and concerns.

“Our approach has been lopsided,” Karthak admits, saying an emphasis on outreach is sometimes out of balance with teaching Christian doctrine to new disciples. “Our churches are like transit camps. We don’t want people to treat the church like a hotel, but a home.”

But Adhikari, while noting the drop out problem, adds: “Not more than 10 percent leave the church. In Nepal, those who make a decision to follow Christ are genuine, and they stick to their newfound faith.” Christians are encouraged to join small groups after their baptism. Nearly 300 such fellowships have mushroomed in Katmandu. But over the years, those fellowships have led to denominational association (which was unknown before 1990) and, in a few cases, splintered congregations.

Such fragmentation has at times cooled religious commitments. “We are neither hot nor cold but lukewarm Christians,” Karthak says. Gospel for Asia’s Sharma is blunt: “We need faithful people. I believe that healings will continue only if there is holiness and godliness in the church.”

After suffering for years, the church in Nepal has found strength in spite of persecution. Now that overt religious persecution has declined, Christians in Nepal are reassessing their purpose and overall mission. One enduring realization is that Christians in Nepal remain vulnerable. There were several incidents of official harassment in 1999. If Nepali law is strictly enforced, severe restrictions on Christians could again be in effect. Faced with this dilemma, Nepali Christians ask themselves: Does the church in Nepal fear persecution in the future? It is a question that many do not want to consider.

“I feel there will be persecution, but there are people within Nepali society who believe in human rights and will stand up for us,” Satyal says.

Another church leader says he is not worried. He just reprises Saint Paul’s words: “I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes: first the Jew, then also the Gentile and the Nepali Christian.”

In 1986, Gyani Shah challenged Nepali men and women never to be proud while serving the Lord, for pride causes loss of opportunity. The church in Nepal now heeds that advice as it prepares for the twenty-first century. In this newfound freedom, churches are springing up all over the country representing most ethnic groups and castes in this movement to Christ.

The Nepali church is no longer solely focused on itself, but is starting churches in Dubai, India, and other Asian countries. It is a big step of faith.

Nepali missions leaders say their goal is to “remain faceless” to be of use to Christians throughout Asia. That unusual quality is something Nepali Christians possess in abundance.

Related Elsewhere

For more on Nepal, see Britannica.com, Info-Nepal, and the Library of Congress.

Nepali Around the World: Emphasizing Nepali Christians of the Himalayas (Ekta Books, 1997) is a very hard to find book. But for those truly interested in the subject, Cindy L. Perry’s book is apparently the only major work on the subject. A review is available at the Web site of Studies in Nepali History and Society (SINHAS).

Adherents.com offers statistics on religion in Nepal.

CBN aired a report in 1998 on Christianity in Nepal.

The Nepal Bible Society offers a few statistics and information about the organization and country.

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Dara Singh—lean, tanned, and stubble-faced—sits in police custody with a religious book about a Hindu god and personal items such as soap, sugar, and medicine just seized from his bag.

Evading police for more than a year, Singh was arrested in February for the murder of Australian Baptist missionary Graham Staines and his two sons in India’s eastern Orissa state (CT, Sept. 6, 1999, p. 26).

Staines and his wife Gladys worked for more than three decades with leprosy patients in the Mayurbhanj area, where Gladys Staines continues that ministry (CT, Jan. 10, 2000, p. 32).Singh, whose real name is Rabindra Kumar Pal, is a petty criminal and self-proclaimed fundamentalist Hindu who moved from the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh to Orissa in 1996. He would loot the minority Christian community and distribute the spoils—cattle and money—to the people who shared his beliefs.

“He is confessing to all the crimes,” says Orissa’s deputy inspector general. According to local authorities, Singh said he did not intend to kill Staines and the boys, but wanted to frighten Christian missionaries into curbing their conversions. Christian organizations in India, although relieved at the arrest, are concerned about continuing violence.

“The arrest does not end the campaign of hate and calumny,” says John Dayal of the United Christian Forum for Human Rights (UCFHR) in New Delhi. “Dara is a product of a particular political ideology that preaches communal hatred.”

In Punjab state, Vijay Bhardwaj—chief publicity manager of the Hindu nationalist organization Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP)—blames the recent violence on missionaries, claiming they trap innocent, poor people into converting. “Dara worked for a good cause, but he shouldn’t have killed. We will expose missionaries’ international conspiracy to malign the Hindu organizations like Bajrang Dal and VHP.”

Some Christians believe Singh was a pawn in a conspiracy of intimidation, according to Sajan K. George of the Bangalore-based United Christian Voice, an ecumenical group of lay leaders.

Now behind bars, Dara Singh—along with 17 others charged as accomplices in the Staines murders—awaits justice in the court of law. He also faces charges for the murder of Catholic priest Arul Doss. If proven guilty, Singh may receive life imprisonment or the death penalty.

But UCFHR’s Dayal is worried about the ongoing threat to Christians. “There are many elements like Dara still at large. The terror is still there. It’s the mentality which breeds criminals like Dara and makes them heroes [that] needs to be checked.”

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Joerg Haider, the leader of Austria’s far-right Freedom Party (FPO), has stepped down amid protests condemning his party as xenophobic, racist, and pro-Nazi.

But Austrian Protestants and Roman Catholics see Haider as an opportunist who gains power from voter resentment of Austrian politicians rather than from public hatred of foreigners.

“Austrians are no more anti-foreigner than [people] in other countries,” says Helmut Rabenau, a Baptist Union of Austria leader. “Haider is no fascist, but rather a cunning opportunist.”

In spite of his resignation, Haider has publicly reaffirmed his intention to stay involved in national politics, even acknowledging his ambition to become chancellor.

Some political observers see Haider’s resignation as a concession to the European Union, which moved to isolate Austria politically after the People’s Party invited Haider’s Freedom Party to form a new power-sharing government in February.

Numerous European Christian leaders have declared that foreign criticism of Austria’s new government was premature. Austrian church leaders welcomed a pledge of support from the Conference of European Churches (CEC), Europe’s leading ecumenical organization.

CEC General Secretary Keith Clements expressed “deepest solidarity” with Austria’s churches in their stand against “racism, xenophobia, and anti-semitism,” according to Ecumenical News International.

“It’s vitally important that the churches aren’t cold-shouldering us, as governments are,” says Erich Leichtenberger of the nation’s Roman Catholic archdiocese, which claims 70 percent of Austria’s 7.8 million citizens as members.

Churches both within Austria and across the globe have been careful not to express direct criticism of the democratically elected government in Austria. Instead they have repeated earlier warnings of the need for openness and tolerance.

“The support [among the electorate] for the FPO is a protest against the current political situation, rather than a sign of hostility to foreigners,” says Herwit Sturn, bishop of Austria’s 340,000-member Evangelical Lutheran church.

Foreign commentators have criticized the Austrian churches’ stance. The religion writer for Le Monde in Paris compared the “timidity” of Roman Catholic leaders to the silence of church officials in pre-war Nazi Germany.

Leichtenberger says the Catholic Church does not interfere with politics, but will speak out against human-rights violations.

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Radio broadcasts using novel technology and pioneering partnerships are bringing the gospel into unexpected places in Africa. Trans World Radio (TWR), for example, reports that in Zambia a witch doctor became a believer through listening to its radio programs. Now the new convert has built a church and many are becoming Christians through his testimony.

The use of new resources and new methods for religious programming is bringing new people into African churches. “I have come to realize that radio is the unique and wonderful tool to bring the gospel to our people in Africa,” admits Michael Cassidy, executive director of Africa Enterprise. “Radio is the tool for evangelism.”

Compact Studios, Windup Radios

Christian broadcasters have applied state-of-the-art broadcasting technology in specialized ways, bringing more programs to even the remotest areas of Africa.

Recent innovations have addressed two long-standing problems: a scarcity of broadcast-quality studios and a lack of reliable power for radio receivers.

Focusing on the need for studios, TWR in Mozambique converts surplus oceangoing shipping containers into small broadcast studios. The need arose to get staff into remote areas to produce programming for the nearly 5 million Makhuwa people, the largest animistic unreached people group in Africa.

TWR outfitted the shipping containers with studio equipment in South Africa and transported them to the northern Mozambican village of Mocuba. The studios save construction costs and extensive commuting time for radio producers traveling to and from the southern capital city of Maputo.

In Angola, TWR partner churches and organizations distribute windup radios, which have come on the market in recent years. These receivers are small hand-held units powered by a hand crank (60 turns of the crank give 30 minutes of power). In parts of Africa where electricity is unavailable, unreliable, or an expensive luxury, these receivers—which last for thousands of hours—provide a needed link to Christian programming.

‘Radio Church-Planting’

As Christian broadcasters have strategized their efforts, they have consciously focused on programming for “megalanguages,” which are spoken by the greatest number of people globally.World By Radio estimates that only 91 of the world’s 372 megalanguages now lack Christian radio programming or adequate Christian influence from other sources. This is a significant increase since 1985, when 279 languages lacked Christian programming.

These new linguistic efforts are bearing fruit in Africa. TWR-Africa now broadcasts in more than 55 languages. Though determining audience sizes for missionary broadcasting is an inexact science, one survey reported that TWR listeners in the East African nation of Malawi surpassed 25 percent of the population.

Cooperation among international broadcasters and with local churches and stations is on the rise. Two of the largest Christian broadcasters, HCJB and TWR, signed a partnership agreement to cooperate in African radio ministry. Initial hopes include establishing a transmitting site in Burkina Faso.

Lee Sonius, HCJB’s sub-Saharan Africa regional director, expresses optimism for the alliance. “Our strength is radio church-planting through establishing local FM stations, and TWR is known for its strong shortwave ministry throughout Africa,” Sonius says. “Doing together what each one of us does best will be strategic for proclaiming the gospel.”

In “radio planting,” HCJB works with local partners to establish Christian radio ministries by providing training, technical support, and equipment. Local partners produce programs, run stations and handle operating costs. The strategy recognizes the importance of local broadcasts in reaching nationals. HCJB says cooperative radio-planting ministries took root in nearly 40 nations during the 1990s.

Addressing Human Needs

In addition to traditional programming in Africa including Bible studies, sermons, and spiritual guidance, some media partnerships also are breaking new ground on social and cultural issues.

Turning Point, the flagship TV program of Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN) throughout Africa, recently aired a special, “AIDS: Breaking the Silence,” examining the epidemic that ravages the continent. Some African nations may lose 20 percent of their populations to the disease in the coming decades.

CBN regional director Keith Strugnell reports that in Zambia, the minister of health contacted the local counseling center to thank CBN for joining Zambians in their fight against AIDS. CBN says research surveys suggest an estimated 6.5 million viewers watched the related weeklong block of family-oriented Christian programming in Zambia and Zimbabwe.

Strugnell, a South African, has organized media blitzes—special radio and television outreaches in cooperation with African churches—for the past several years. He reports that in Tanzania, Muslims have watched programs, and converted to Christianity, in the privacy of their homes.

Related Elsewhere

Listen to some of HCJB‘s programming on the station’s Web site while you read about the station.

Trans World Radio‘s Web site offers news, promotional material, and frequency schedules, but no sound clips.

Read more about “AIDS: Breaking the Silence” and Turning Point at CBN’s site.

Past Christianity Today articles on radio include: “Hispanic Christian Radio Grows by Blocks and Blends” (May 18, 1998).

Copyright © 2000 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

Population of the United States in 1850: 23,191,876 Center of population: 23 miles southeast of Parkersburg, western Virginia

Population of the United States in 1890: 62,947,714 Center of population: 20 miles east of Columbus, Indiana

Population of western states and territories in 1850 (including present-day Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Washington, Wyoming, and Utah): 179,000

Population of western states and territories in 1890: 3,134,000

Land area of the United States and its territories in square miles, 1840: 1,753,588 1860: 2,973,965

Miles of railroad 1840: 2,808 1890: 163,597

Timeline

1833 Four Flathead and Nez Percé Indians journey to St. Louis to inquire about Christian missionaries

1836 Missionaries Marcus and Narcissa Whitman arrive in Walla Walla River valley, Washington

1837 Cherokees forcibly removed from Georgia to Oklahoma by U. S. government

1841 Migration begins along the Oregon Trail

1846 Mexican-American War begins; the first stage coach line west of the Missouri, Oregon’s “Telegraph Line,” established

1847 Mormons begin trek to Salt Lake City

1847 Cayuse Indians massacre the Whitmans and 12 others

1848 Gold discovered at Sutter’s Mill in California

1856 Methodist bishop William Taylor publishes Seven Years’ Street Preaching in San Francisco

1857 Dred Scott Decision prohibits banning of slavery in U. S. territories

1861 Civil War begins; completion of the first transcontintal telegraph makes the Pony Express obselete

1862 Homestead Act offers 160 acres of land to anyone who will live on it for five years

1866 Episcopalian Daniel Tuttle named missionary bishop of Montana

1867 U. S. purchases Alaska

1869 First transcontinental railroad completed when east and west meet in Promontory Point, Utah

1871 Indian Appropriation Act makes tribes subject to federal law

1872 Itinerant preacher “Brother Van” (William Wesley Van Orsdel) arrives in Montana

1873 Jesse James robs his first train

1878 Taylor F. Ealy and his wife, Mary, attempt to conduct school and organize a church in the midst of the Lincoln County (N. M.) War

1881 Earps and McLaurys shoot it out near the O. K. Corral

1882 Endicott Peabody arrives to minister in Tombstone, Arizona

1883 Buffalo Bill Cody opens his Wild West show

1885 Sheldon Jackson named general agent of education in Alaska

1889 Oklahoma land rush begins

1890 Mormon “Manifesto” officially ends polygamy

1890 Army chaplain William D. Bloys starts camp meetings outside Fort Davis, Texas

1895 Federal Council of Churches in America founded

1896 Klondike gold strike attracts nearly 100,000 miners to Alaska

1897 Congregational minister Charles Sheldon publishes In His Steps

1900 Western temperance crusader Carry Nation begins attacks on Kansas saloons

1905 Sheldon Jackson investigated for mismanagement of Alaska’s schools and reindeer program

1906 Azusa Street Revival in Los Angeles, led by William Seymour, sparks worldwide Pentecostalism

1909 Henry Ford manufactures the Model T

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So far we’ve focused primarily on how the Christian church came to the American West in the nineteenth century, but what has it been up to since then? To find out, we talked to Richard Etulain, a historian and literary scholar at the University of New Mexico who wrote on western religious history in The American West: A Twentieth Century History (University of Nebraska, 1989), which he co-authored with Michael P. Malone. He’s also interested in how the West has been perceived, a topic he explored in Reimagining the Modern American West: A Century of Fiction, History, and Art (University of Arizona, 1996). He helped us see how the region has changed during the past decades, often in surprising ways, and how the church has responded.

What forces have been most important in shaping the culture of the West?

It’s been said that if you were to choose two remarkable turning points in western history in the last 200 years, they would be two events a hundred years apart—the Gold Rush and the Second World War, one in the 1840s and one in the 1940s. They each brought large numbers of people into the American West, new people with religious affiliations, new people who could be converted to religious affiliations.

Let me give you an example. I live in Albuquerque. In 1940 it had 30,000 people. In 1950 it had 100,000 people. In 1960 it had 200,000 people. And now it has 500,000. That big boom in population would be the same for Tucson, Phoenix, San Diego, and Seattle. Now Las Vegas is really the growth spot.

This has led to a situation most people are unaware of: the West is the most urban part of the United States. In 1900 California was an urban state, meaning that more than 50 percent of the residents lived in incorporated areas of 2,500 and higher population. The United States as a whole was not urban until 1920. California is still the most urban state, as well as the most populous—one out of nine Americans lives in California.

That doesn’t sound much like the classic “wild West.”

People often imagine the West as an open and individualistic frontier. A lot of western historians say that’s an old-fashioned idea, more myth than reality. But it is at least part of the American intellectual landscape.

In fact, the West is a series of urban oases, meaning that we live in urban centers, but we have all that open space in between. The most excessive example is Nevada, which has a population of nearly two million, almost all of whom—probably 90 percent—live in two urban centers, the gambling towns, Reno and Las Vegas.

Though the West is urban, the open spaces have created a sense of isolation and distance, especially in the first half of the twentieth century and in more agricultural areas, like Nebraska, Kansas, and the Dakotas. Those areas had small populations and few large churches, and it was difficult for them to get pastors. But those populations are a small part of the total, so you have to make a distinction. Isolation and distance are there for the rural areas, but increasing numbers of people are living in cities.

When we think of urban areas, we usually think of ethnic populations. Is this true in the West?

Definitely. The West is the most ethnically diverse region in the country. Americans think of four main groups of minorities: African American, Hispanic or Latino, Asian American, and Native American. Most Hispanics, most Asian Americans, and certainly most Native Americans live in the West. Increasing numbers of African Americans are there, too, especially since the Second World War, when there was a gigantic influx of blacks coming to work at military installations.

How is diversity reflected in western churches?

Churches in the West haven’t been as divided by race as, say, churches in the South, especially in the first 50 years of the twentieth century. For example, large black denominations like the African Methodist Episcopal Church and some Baptist groups are not very strong west of Texas. That’s in large part because western churches weren’t divided. It’s not that there were no racists in the American West, just that many western churches were started after the divisions of the Civil War period.

Other types of diversity are present in the western church as well. To me, Southern California is probably the most exotic mix of Christianity in the American West, and maybe in the United States. Any kind of Christian group, or group that calls itself Christian, you can find in southern California. And that includes everyone from the most traditional fundamentalists to New Age churches.

Who would you say are some of the most extraordinary Christian leaders of the early twentieth century West?

Of the many I could mention, I’ll focus on just a few—some famous and some lesser-known, but all fitting the mold of larger-than-life figures with diverse and often urban-centered ministries.

Mark Matthews, for example, was pastor of the First Presbyterian Church in Seattle in the teens and ’20s, and he built it into the largest Presbyterian church in the United States at the time. The congregation topped 9,000 members, which is very unusual in that denomination. He was also an outspoken reformer, taking on bootleggers and calling for city reform.

Even more sensational was J. Frank Norris, the Baptist pastor in the Fort Worth-Dallas area. He was even too conservative for the Southern Baptists! He was involved in a controversy when he shot a man in his office. They called him the “Texas tornado.”

Bob Shuler (not the Crystal Cathedral Bob Schuller) was another feisty pastor. Somebody referred to him as the “Czar of Christendom” in Los Angeles. He was ministering there as a southern Methodist at the same time Sister Aimee Semple McPherson was there, and she was his main object of criticism.

Sister Aimee represents another tradition, Foursquare Gospel Pentecostalism. She was attractive, vivacious, and controversial, but she first became well-known because she found a wide audience among the people streaming into Los Angeles. She said she was not called to preach to the poor—The Salvation Army was. Her calling was to preach to the people who had moved from Iowa to California and were trying to find themselves in the new urban West. It was the middle class Sister Aimee appealed to, and she did a tremendously good job of it.

William Jennings Bryan was the outstanding fundamentalist layman of the early twentieth century. He was from Nebraska, and his political career reflected a lot of not only his Nebraska background but also a social conscience that evangelicals of his time often didn’t exhibit. People pick on Bryan for the Scopes Trial, when he was not at his best, but they need to think about all of the helpful reforms he sought in the United States.

What were the most significant challenges western churches faced in the twentieth century?

The largest challenge of the twentieth century was trying to keep up with the rapid, persistent change. The West as a whole was predominantly urban from 1930 on, but churches, evangelical and even mainline, tended to be rural in their outlook. A lot of churches kept this focus up to the 1960s, both in the way they preached and the types of churches they formed, even though the majority of westerners were living in cities.

More recently, too many churches have been giving up on inner-city westerners by moving to the suburbs. This is a national problem, but it’s certainly true of the West. The people and the money are in the suburbs, but if we just focus on that culture, we’re going to lose the central cities. With that, we’ll lose most of the minorities, who make up 20 to 30 percent of the American population—perhaps reaching as high as 50 percent, if we project out 50 years.

Ferenc Szasz and others who write about American religious history between about 1880 and 1920 talk a lot about what happened when evangelicals said, “You’ve got to be born again,” while proponents of the social gospel said, “You’ve got to deal with these social problems.” From the 1920s to about the 1960s, western evangelicals didn’t make a lot of effort to bridge that divide.

However, I think evangelicals are starting to do better. I’ve recently seen a lot of churches reaching out to Asian immigrants, particularly those leaving desperate situations in southeast Asia. Many of these immigrants are settling in western cities, and many churches are sponsoring them. It’s a great example of Christians responding to real needs in the diverse, rapidly growing West.

Related Links:

Read more about Richard Etulain’s work here:www.unm.edu/~hist/faculty.htm#anchor23592

Copyright © 2000 by the author or Christianity Today/Christian History magazine.Click here for reprint information on Christian History.