Murder in Colombia

Jose Noel Luna, an earnest young (25) farmer, dropped into the small Presbyterian church at Frias, in the hills of central Colombia, one day last month to do a little repair work. He was an elder of the church, and accustomed to giving some of his spare time to its upkeep.

Soon after Elder Luna finished his work and left, government police broke into the church, overturned the pulpit, dragged the Bible and all the Protestant literature they could find outside for burning. In the midst of their looting, Elder Luna returned. The police demanded to know his religion and his politics.

He acknowledged that he was a Protestant and a member of the Liberal Party. The police dragged him along with them. Minutes later, Luna crawled weakly to the house of a fellow Protestant. "Pray for me," he gasped, "give me water." The police, said Luna, had taken him a little distance down the road, and stabbed him in the chest. Shortly afterward, Presbyterian Luna died.

Inflammatory Sermons. Last week the Evangelical Confederation of Colombia* published the news of Luna's death. Elsewhere in Colombia last month, Protestant investigators checked off 20 other cases of violence against non-Catholics. In three years there have been hundreds more. Twenty-five Protestant missionaries and communicants have been killed. Wrote Presbyterian Life's Henry McCorkle, after a trip to Colombia this year to investigate: "The situation in Colombia makes the much-publicized persecutions in Spain seem mild as a May breeze."

There are 30,000 Protestants in Colombia, a predominantly Roman Catholic country with a population of 11,000,000. For almost two decades a democratic--and mildly anti-clerical--government did not molest them.

After the present ultra-conservative government came into power in 1949, however, the official attitude toward Protestants changed. Many Roman Catholic priests, worried by Protestant proselytizing, began to preach inflammatory sermons. Most of the Protestants also belonged to the overturned Liberal Party; some local government officials were happy to get at political foes under the pretext of religious fervor.

Freedom of Propaganda. The government in Bogota decided that freedom of religion, guaranteed under the Colombian constitution, does not imply "freedom of propaganda." Protestants were forbidden to distribute tracts. Last March, Protestant radio programs in Bogota were ruled off the air.

Inspired by the anti-Protestant pronouncements of leaders like Bishop Miguel Angelo Builes of Santa Rosa de Osos, village priests and police officers became more aggressive. Working on popular religious and anti-foreign prejudices, the Evangelical Confederation charges, they have incited mobs to stone or burn Protestant churches.

In Colombia schools, Roman Catholic teachers now teach children a 20-stanza song called El Protestantismo. Sample:

With a plate of food You corrupt the hungry ones;

Just wait--in the life to come

You will pay with torment.

We don't want Protestants

That come to Colombia to corrupt us;

We don't want Protestants,

Who stain our Fatherland and our faith.

* An organization representing 17 Protestant denominations with missions in Colombia.

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