Christians Express Mixed Reactions to NTM Expulsion
Christian groups in Venezuela are expressing mixed reactions in response to the Venezuelan President’s order for a Christian tribal mission group to leave the country.
Christian groups in Venezuela are expressing mixed reactions in response to the Venezuelan President’s order for a Christian tribal mission group to leave the country.
Nearly three weeks ago, President Hugo Chavez publicly announced the expulsion of New Tribes Mission (NTM) from Venezuela, an order that was a “surprise” and “completely unexpected” to NTM and Christians around the world. Although many Christian organizations in Venezuela and in other countries are rallying behind New Tribes, a group of Evangelical leaders are supporting the call for NTM to leave the country.
The topics of debate between Christians in support or opposed to New Tribes are mainly centered on their impression of the mission group and the accuracy of Chavez’s accusation. The Evangelical Council and the Pentecostal Evangelical Confederation of Venezuela, for example, are native supporters of NTM and consider the work of the group “above reproach and favorable for indigenous communities in the country,” according to the Latin American and Caribbean News Agency (ALC).
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Moreover, the two groups stated in a letter sent on Nov. 4 to the president that they believe the main purpose of New Tribes missionaries in Venezuela is to share Christianity with indigenous people along with the goals to advance literacy, bilingual education (in their own language and in Spanish), civil, moral and social development and basic assistance regarding health.
On the other hand, a group of Evangelical leaders and Venezuelan service organizations support Chavez’s command for NTM to leave the country, basing their decision on “evidence” defending the accusations. On Oct. 26, the Evangelical leaders released a statement explaining their willingness to see New Tribes leave the country, “[recalling] that for more than 20 years the New Tribes organization remained distant from the national religious community,” the ALC reported.
Furthermore, the Christian leaders also noted in the released statement that the president’s announcement should not be regarded as persecution against churches because New Tribes is not a church and does not belong to any church in Venezuela.
In order to provide further evidence to defend their support of Chavez’s announcement, the statement by the Evangelical leaders noted that in the 1970s, the communities New Tribes were active in complained that NTM practiced compulsive religious proselytism. The organizations who signed the letter accused New Tribes’ actions in Venezuela as “extremely harmful for the ancestral culture of indigenous ethnic groups.”
“We claim the responsibility of all Christians to share the values of the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ with all peoples and cultures but within an attitude of creative dialogue, of recognition and appreciation of the other, stripped of all dominant, conservative, fundamentalist and colonizing ideology,” the Evangelical leaders stated in the letter.
The statement was singed by Bishop Gamaliel Lugo, president of the Venezuela Evangelical Protestant Union, leaders of the Martin Luther King Foundation,
the "Maranatha" Pentecostal Church of Zulia, the Presbyterian Collective, the Union of Christian Churches, the "Reborn" Foundation, the "Juan Vives" Ecumenical Center, Fundalatin and the Christian Movement CALEB.
The Venezuelan Armed Forces also accused the mission group of investigating the existence of strategic minerals in the Amazon zone – “an activity that is far from its evangelizing role and favorable to the interests of multinational companies.”
As Christian groups in Venezuela and around the world continue to voice their opinions on NTM and the situation, President Chavez has yet to sign documents that would officially order NTM to leave Venezuela.
