COLOMBIA: Armistice for Protestants

Under two dictators—Laureano Gómez and Gustavo Rojas Pinilla—Protestant missionaries in the Colombian backwoods were victims of a nine-year campaign of terror and violence aimed at chasing them out of the country. They were jailed, beaten, run out of town. Their schools and churches were padlocked, sometimes burned and dynamited, and it was decreed unlawful for any Protestant missionary to minister to any Colombian citizen. Last week, with Rojas five months gone, there were signs that the anti-Protestant pressure was easing off.

In 98% Catholic Colombia, hatred of Protestants—especially the active, evangelistic denominations—has long been cultivated. Ever since 1887, when Roman Catholicism became the country’s official religion, Catholics found a lively response to whispering campaigns against the threat of Protestantism. Conservative Party Dictator Gómez was convinced that all Protestants were members of the Liberal Party and hence his mortal enemies. Just before Gómez was overthrown by Rojas in 1953, his government signed an agreement with the Vatican cutting two-thirds of the country into 18 mission territories in which only Catholic churches and schools could operate. Rojas carried on where his predecessor left off, suggesting that Protestants and Communists were indistinguishable from one another and shutting down close to 30 Protestant churches in the mission territories.

After nine years of encouraged hatred, the military junta that has replaced Rojas cannot suddenly reverse the anti-Protestant policy without stirring up stiff opposition that could cripple their aim to return Colombia to civilian control. But the junta has allowed the largest Protestant church in the country, the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel in Barrancabermeja, to open its doors again to its 1,500 worshipers. And the government has promised a new visa policy to selected Protestant missionaries, who have had difficulty entering Colombia for more than a year.