Christian Terror in Southern Africa

in Southern Africa

by Rev. Arthur Lewis RHODESIA CHRISTIAN GROUP

"It must be plain that none of the activities of the World Council of Churches ‘Programme to Combat Racism’ has any connection whatever with the Christian religion. In spite of all its denials the WCC has replaced the Prince of Peace by the god of war.

Christ is crucified by those who claim to act for His Church while his people are murdered in His name.

When the Rhodesian Anglican bishops twice protested to the WCC against its support for 'acts of naked terrorism' they were simply ignored . . ."

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First Published 1978 by the Rhodesia Christian Group, Salisbury

Revised and Republished 2012 by Christian Liberty Books, Cape Town PO Box 358 Howard Place 7450 Pinelands Cape Town admin@christianlibertybooks.co.za www.christianlibertybooks.co.za

ISBN: 978-0-9870165-3-9

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by Rev. Arthur Lewis

Contents Foreword by Dr. Peter Hammond ................... vii 1 Oasis in the Dark .......................................... 11 2 Marxism and the Christian Death-Wish ....... 15 3 Terror and the Dual Morality ....................... 23 4 The Christian Somersault ............................. 27 5 Christianity - True and False ........................ 33 6 The World Council of Churches .................... 47 7 The Tally of Terror ........................................ 55 8 The Hope of Reconciliation .......................... 69 v

Foreword Rev. Arthur Lewis was a graduate of Oxford University where he trained under Professor C.S. Lewis. Ordained at the youngest possible age, Arthur Lewis joined the Church of England’s University Mission to Central Africa and in 1947 began his half century of missionary service on this continent.

Rev. Arthur Lewis spent 11 years serving at various Mission stations in Tanganyika and on the islands of Zanzibar and Pemba. He quickly learned the local language, Swahili. In 1958, Arthur Lewis married Gladys and moved to Rhodesia. For the next 21 years the Lewis’s planted churches and worked amongst the Shona people. During 9 years at St. Peters Mission, Mandea, Arthur Lewis planted 14 congregations.

It was Rev. Arthur Lewis who first exposed the insidious spread of liberation theology and the devious work of the World Council of Churches, in using church funds to advance communist terrorist movements. His book, Christian Terror, created a sensation as it documented how missionaries, pastors and other Christians were being brutally murdered in Rhodesia

by Robert Mugabe’s ZANU terrorists and Joshua Nkomo’s ZAPU. These terrorists were the recipients of generous World Council of Churches funding. As a result even Readers Digest picked up the scandalous story and the Salvation Army and Baptists withdrew from membership with the WCC in protest.

To help mobilise prayer and action on behalf of Christians suffering on the frontline of the battle for Christian civilisation, against the advance of Soviet and Red Chinese backed communism, Rev. Arthur Lewis launched the Rhodesia Christian

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Group. His regular RCG letters provided a unique insight to the war on Rhodesia and the strategies being employed by the Marxists to destroy this vibrant Christian civilisation.

Arthur Lewis’s courage in using his writing and speaking skills to expose the duplicity and treachery of the liberation theologians and the World Council of Churches, made him a major voice for Rhodesia. In 1976, he was elected to the Rhodesia Senate and the Church of England granted him temporary leave to accept this responsibility.

After the betrayal of Rhodesia in 1980, the Lewis’s moved to South Africa and he was assigned to a congregation in Phalaborwa. Rev. Arthur Lewis was also a Founder member of United Christian Action, which later became the Christian Action Network. For over 27 years, Rev. Arthur Lewis was an Honorary Member of the Board of Frontline Fellowship frequently communicating, encouraging, correcting, rebuking and advising as to how our Mission could be more effective in serving suffering Christians and advancing the Kingdom of God in Africa.

In 1987, after a half century of missionary service in Africa. The Lewis’s retired to England. There Rev. Lewis assisted in the Parish of St. Alphege and continued to write for the Rhodesian Christian Group. Arthur Lewis has many spiritual children throughout Africa and we praise God that, despite the treachery of politicians, God's work is advancing, God's people are standing firm and the Church of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ is growing in both depth and extent throughout southern and central Africa.

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Foreword

However, the same villains responsible for the terror documented in this book remain in power in Zimbabwe at the date of this re-publishing of the new edition of Christian Terror.

“Remember the prisoners as if chained with them – those who are mistreated since you yourselves are in the body also.”

Hebrews 13:3 Dr. Peter Hammond Frontline Fellowship P.O. Box 74 Newlands 7725 Cape Town South Africa Tel: 021-689-4480 Fax: 021-685-5884 Email: admin@frontline.org.za Website: www.frontline.org.za

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St. Peter's Mission Church, Mandea, in the Honde Valley on Rhodesia's border with Mozambique, where the author was priest in charge for nine years. The white cross dominated the valley symbolised the coming of Christianity and progress to one of the remotest areas of the country.

Today the mission is abandoned owing to terrorism.

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1 Oasis in the Dark The vaults of the cathedral echoed to the ethereal harmony of an ancient polyphonic chant which rolled back the Christian centuries. Time stood still. For a moment a sense of awe and wonder — of the presence of God and the worship of heaven — gripped the crowded silent congregation. It was like a glimpse of eternity.

The service ended with the hymn, "The Church's one Foundation is Jesus Christ her Lord." The swell of hundreds of uplifted voices and the mounting thunder of the organ left one with the feeling that Christian defeat is unthinkable.

It seemed best to slip away from the crowd at the cathedral door to the floodlit fountains of Cecil Square. Salisbury, Rhodesia's capital city, was ablaze with neon-lights and the streets were filled with the usual Sunday evening cosmopolitan throng. But at night in this secluded spot all was silence save for the tinkle of the water and the murmur of distant voices.

You would hardly believe you were in a beleaguered land, the victim of a world-wide persecution probably unparalleled in history. You could almost think that Christianity still had a chance. Until you thought of the hard facts.

This city after all, with its cathedrals and its fountains and its crowds, was only an oasis in the dark. Beyond its boundaries even the arterial roads were almost deserted at night-time but for the security forces: for who could know when or where terrorists would strike? Other towns and cities glittered in the darkness, but throughout the countryside night meant danger — and vigilance to withstand attack. In the farming districts and the scattered tribal areas terror stalked the land. The new barbarian invaders might have belonged to the old Dark Ages, had they not been armed with Soviet rockets, rifles and mortars.

If you have flown in broad daylight from the northern hemisphere to Rhodesia you can hardly have escaped the

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Christian Terror

impression that Rhodesia itself is an oasis. For hour after hour you see the vast emptiness of sub-Saharan Africa. Cities, towns and signs of development are few. If the uncounted millions have emerged from one darkness it is only to succumb to another, and scant advance of civilisation is to be seen. Even if you were able to fly over the "Central African Empire" you could not see the Emperor Bokassa, with his special long coat to accommodate his self-awarded medals: the tyrant reported personally to have supervised the beating of his victims to death.

Idi Amin is not unrivalled.

But once you are over the Zambezi the change is breathtaking. Towns, cities, settlements, roads, man-made lakes and huge farming and development projects have transformed primaeval Africa into what might be twentieth-century Europe.

An island of civilisation built by white and black in eighty-seven years — a single life-time. A land where more than a decade of international ostracism and boycotts has not destroyed good race-relations and twelve years of attack have failed to wreck the civilisation which white people brought and black people gladly accepted. A country, in fact, where Christianity and the initiative it brings have done something more than merely take root. The whites, after all, did not follow the example of the Americans, Canadians and Australians: so far from exterminating the "indigenous" peoples — who in fact were merely earlier immigrants, the stronger tribe slaughtering the weaker — they provided such facilities as enabled the blacks to multiply from some 400 000 to over six million.

Yet to describe Rhodesia as an island of civilisation is to give a northerner's impression rather than to state a fact. Northwards, indeed, Rhodesia is bounded by a run-down former British colony. To the east and west are the communist states of Mozambique and Angola, once prosperous food-exporting lands but now Marxist tyrannies slipping back into starvation and savagery — a savagery well-armed by the Soviets.

But to the South lies South Africa, where the white man arrived before the Bantu in an almost empty land. Here Christianity and the civilisation of the West (which are neither

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Oasis in the Dark

identical nor incompatible) go back four centuries. This makes Rhodesia a peninsula rather than an island.

The policies of the two countries are widely different, but they share the same near-universal condemnation: a condemnation virtually unrelated to the real wrongs, which are merely different from, not worse than, their critics! On examination this obloquy is found to be synthetically fabricated for political ends unconnected with morality. The biggest obstacle to reform in South Africa, as indeed in Rhodesia, is external interference.

What is actually under attack is a civilisation based on Christianity, with the relative freedom and the standards and the moral values it has built. Obviously this civilisation cannot take the same form in Africa as in the West, and it falls far short of its own ideals. The incoming tyranny, on the other hand, is frankly Marxist, and makes no claims at all to believe in any objective right or wrong. Its true aim is the world-wide enslavement of mankind in the material interests of the few, though it has taken on the guise of an ideology of human progress, and even of a godless religion — "the religion of man."

Russia, Britain and America are alike its midwives in Africa. Of these once-Christian countries, the first was catapulted into communism while the others have known the light and chosen the dark.

What is seldom realised is that among the most powerful instruments in the destruction of the Christian world and the civilisation and morality it has built are now the Christian Churches themselves, grouped together in the World Council of Churches. And foremost in the destruction of Christianity in Africa are the Christians of America and Europe, including Britain.

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Christian Terror

Another child victim of terrorism. She was one of 10 Africans killed in a single landmine blast.

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2 Marxism and the Christian Death-Wish How many of the worshippers in that magnificent cathedral, or in most churches of the "free world," spare a thought for their fellow-Christians in communist lands? Or for those who, given the chance, would have been their fellow-Christians?

The persecution and torture of Christians in communist countries today far exceeds that suffered by the early Christians.

Some idea of it can be gleaned from the writings of Pastor Wurmbrand, who himself suffered in communist prisons for fourteen years, and, of course, from Alexander Solzhenitsyn. But the Christians of the West are deaf to the agony of their coreligionists, and happily concentrate on new church bureaucracies and increasingly futile compromises aiming at "relevance" in their secularised societies. Their leaders and their press assure them that all is basically well in Eastern Europe and the African slave-states. (It was an English missionary publication which announced the Marxist takeover of Mozambique with the words: "Mozambique is free!") The several hierarchies in their public pronouncements and the religious newspapers in screaming headlines direct the attention of Christians to the supreme moral enormity of our time: the white "racist" regimes of Southern Africa, whose destruction has become the prime objective of Christian social and ethical endeavour. So the man-in-the-pew innocently (and very indirectly) finances the dismantling of the missionary work he has supported so long, the indiscriminate murder of blacks and whites in Africa and the establishment of Marxist states which flout every law of God and of civilised humanity.

Marxism has, in fact, so effectively infiltrated the Churches as to have planted a death-wish in the established Christianity of the West. What need, in fact, of such crudities as the rape of

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Christian Terror

Hungary or the tanks that rumbled through Prague if you can form a Christian suicide-squad to destroy both itself and your Christian enemy? (Finance, technology and food will come, of course, from "Christian" America.) The days are gone when, as in Russia, you had to "liquidate" the church leaders and replace them by more malleable aspirants to ecclesiastical office — if not by stool-pigeons of the secret police.

The truth about Marxism (or Marxism-Leninism to give it its correct name) is demonstrated by its history. Temporary and local concessions to Christianity are irrelevant. Christianity may be tolerated in the older generation which will soon die out. The professed object is a godless society where the State is supreme and morality extinct. In Albania it has virtually been achieved.

Solzhenitsyn writes that forty years before the Russian revolution "Dostoevsky had predicted that socialism would cost Russia one hundred million victims," and quotes an analysis by Professor Kurganov showing that Dostoevsky erred on the side of understatement. "From 1917 to 1959 socialism cost the Soviet Union a hundred and ten million lives." (BBC broadcast of 24th March 1976.)

The Archpriest Michel Polsky in "Les Nouveaux Martyrs Russes" estimates Stalin's purges alone to have killed thirty million people: this figure does not include the twenty million victims of his pact with Hitler. Polsky quotes Lenin: "If for the success of communism we must exterminate nine-tenths of the population, we must not recoil from such sacrifices." (Oeuvres Completes de Ldnine, volume two, page 702.)

The Archpriest gives a grim and detailed plan of the prisons and slave-camps of the Soviet Union — what Solzhenitsyn describes as the "Gulag Archipelago." He lists and names sixteen in Moscow alone, and the archipelago straddles the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics from the Caspian Sea through Siberia to the Bering Straits. Communist prisoners world-wide are estimated today at four to six million. The official number of political detainees in the USSR is 300,000. Active members of the various religions are not included in this figure, since these are usually condemned under article 138 of the Constitution (transgression of the laws on the separation of Church and

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Marxism and the Christian Death-Wish

State). Various other classes are excluded, bringing the total to well over 800,000. Even this figure does not include dissidents undergoing "treatment" in "psychiatric hospitals" to "re-educate" them or to destroy their personalities. These perhaps number 10,000. Some of the techniques of "brain-washing" may be studied in William Sargant's "Battle for the Mind." Bernard Smith in "The Spiritual Fifth Column" states that "Russia keeps a slave population of over a million in labour camps living on starvation rations and forced to do long hours of heavy labour."

A Russian textbook on psycho politics makes no bones about the way communism secures conformity. "Any man who cannot be persuaded into communist rationale is, of course, to be regarded as somewhat less than sane, and it is therefore completely justified to use the techniques of insanity upon the non-communist." The same manual describes how to deal with key figures of alien states marked for communist takeover. The approach is through the wife and children. "By the use of various drugs it is . . . easy to bring about a state of severe neurosis or insanity in the wife or children, and thus pass them, with the full consent of the important person, and the government in which he exists, or the bureau in which he is operating, into the hands of a psycho-political operator, who then in his own laboratory, without restraint or fear of investigation, can with electric shock, surgery, sexual attack, drugs or other useful means, degrade or entirely alter the personality of a family member, and create in that person a psycho-political slave-subject who then, on command or signal, will perform outrageous actions, thus discrediting the important person, or will demand, on a more delicate level, that certain measures be taken by the important person, which measures are, of course, dictated by the psycho-political operator." ("Brainwashing," distributed by Kenneth Goff, an American convert from communism.)

In spite of such methods it took a quarter of a century to subdue Roman Catholic Lithuania. 1,300,000 people disappeared during the communist occupation. 175,000 are said still to be in Siberia. Three bishops survived out of sixteen, 700 priests out of

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Christian Terror

1,580. Half of the 1,100 churches were closed or secularised. One seminary survived, with 23 students.

The Roman Church in the Ukraine was officially liquidated by the Soviet State in 1946, and its five million members forcibly absorbed into the state-controlled Russian Orthodox Church.

Half of the two thousand priests were imprisoned and the other half driven underground. Most of the bishops died in Russian labour camps. The primate, Cardinal Slipyi, survived eighteen years of imprisonment, and after a secret deal was brought quietly — a very sick man — to Rome. At no stage did the Vatican, having abandoned its traditional stand against communism after the death of Pius XII, come to the aid of the persecuted Ukrainian Church or make public protest. In 1971 Slipyi spoke to the World Synod of Bishops in Rome. "Ukrainian Catholics have sacrificed rivers of blood and mountains of bodies because of their loyalty to the Church, and they still suffer severe persecutions. But, what is worse, there is nobody to defend them . . . We have become an obstacle to Church diplomacy."

This betrayal by the Roman Church of her own bravest defenders was again seen in 1974 when Cardinal Mindszenty, Primate of Hungary and one of the spiritual giants of the century, was demoted and humiliated by his own Church at the behest of a communist government — a government which had seized power in a bloody and brutal invasion.

The brutality of communism has in no way abated in later years. After the US abandonment of South Vietnam (with a facesaving "Peace Treaty") some two million refugees — destitute, homeless, starving — fled in vain before a communist invasion from the North of staggering ferocity. In Cambodia another two million, including hospital patients, were driven at gunpoint from the capital Pnomh Penh into the countryside, where uncounted numbers were killed off by bulldozers to save ammunition. The Reverend Michael Counsell, former chaplain in Saigon, writes (1977): "Khieu Samphan, one of the Cambodian communist leaders, stated in a recent interview with an Italian magazine that before the war the population of Cambodia was seven million; that one million had died in the war and that the

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Marxism and the Christian Death-Wish

population now is five million. When asked what had happened to the other million, he replied: 'Why are you so concerned with war criminals?' " ("Murder of a Gentle Land," by John Barron and Anthony Paul, 1977, contains the whole ghastly story.) The ecclesiastical uproar, which had been directed against the Americans before their withdrawal, was silent now.

All this, though statistics are necessarily approximate, is recent and demonstrable fact, as is the "liquidation" of some sixty million in China's "cultural revolution." By what staggering mental contortions, then, can the governments and Churches of the West pretend that the real moral problem lies in Southern Africa? A sustained and unremitting international hullabaloo is directed against South Africa and Rhodesia, complete with boycotts, "sanctions," embargoes, suppression of books and speakers, manipulation of the news media and propaganda campaigns of vicious falsehood. Every effort is made to support and finance the episodes of violence who would destroy the social order and bring communism in its place. In this the United Nations and its ecclesiastical counterpart the World Council of Churches are at one. But about the greatest scourge of human history there is only a deafening silence. Christianity, civilisation, the survival of millions, the very concept of truth: all these count for nothing provided the governments of Southern Africa can be brought to their knees.

The inescapable fact is that the governments and Church leaderships of the West are themselves substantially infiltrated and indeed riddled with communist and quasi-communist influences. They have largely lost their sense of purpose and mission. In their pitiful and often vindictive weakness they are, however, at least united in one determination: to bring down in ruin the white minorities of Southern African who have transplanted Christianity and Western civilisation to the soil of Africa and shared them with the black population. It matters nothing that millions perish and the achievements of generations crumble, provided only that the hated white man in Africa (with his countless black friends) is destroyed to make way for the African tyrant manipulated from Moscow — and the shadowy financiers without whom Moscow could not survive.

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You will hear nothing of this in church or in church circles, for the Churches themselves have been drawn, with infinite patience and ingenuity, into the overall plan to destroy Christianity and Christian civilisation. The states of Africa are marked for Marxist takeover, and effective punishments await any priest or minister who dares to raise his voice against the exponents of the new Christian death-wish. Southern Africa can still be saved: but only if the Christian laity will when necessary resist the leadership of hijacked Churches and work with the secular authorities (faulty though they be) for the preservation of Christianity, civilisation and ordered government.

A small personal reminiscence may not come amiss as a footnote to this chapter. Absurd and insignificant in retrospect, it is a pointer nevertheless.

In 1958 the present writer moved from East Africa to Rhodesia to become priest-in-charge of St. Faith's Mission, Rusape. The mission-farm proved to be a mere faรงade for the black nationalist African National Congress, and like that body was financed from outside the country. Only one of the half-dozen white "missionaries" occasionally attended church, and that only infrequently. The activities of the supposed co-operative were in English, voting was by show of hands and political conformity was secured by the threat of loss of employment.

Since as a missionary I had naturally learned something of the vernacular, villagers living on the mission came to me at night and made it abundantly plain, in their own language, that they were sick of the whole externally imposed set-up and wanted a Christian mission preaching the Christian Gospel.

These sentiments I conveyed to the diocesan authorities, to be met sometimes by a refusal to listen and more often by blank incredulity. So I put pen to paper, and a press controversy developed. Four actions followed.

1. A public interrogation, in the presence of the Bishop and the perhaps hundred-strong mission community, from eight p.m. till midnight.

2. At the suggestion of the London-based Society for the Propagation of the Gospel an episcopal ban was placed on my

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Marxism and the Christian Death-Wish

writing to the press — but not on the "missionaries" and their political followers.

3. My resignation from the diocese was requested (and declined).

4. A letter reached me on leave in Britain advising me — in vain — to remain in that country or conform with diocesan policy.

The good Bishop, God rest his soul, discovered the facts before he died and came to a different mind. But the leftist churchmen started work on his successor in Britain long before he had reached Africa.

The message to the laity is plain. Do not blame your local priest or minister if he keeps silent on the political infiltration of the Church by Marxist fellow-travellers and their well-meaning if woolly-minded camp-followers. He wants to do his job among his people, and may be faced with an intolerable dilemma.

The struggle to build a Christian Rhodesia and a Christian South Africa, and indeed for a Church which is a true instrument of the Gospel, is largely in the hands of the laity, the people of God of every race. In fact, in your hands. You who have not succumbed and will not succumb to the death-wish which the Marxists have instilled into much of the leadership of Christendom.

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"Freedom fighters" herded these men, women and children into the hut, then set fire to the thatched roof.

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3 Terror and the Dual Morality WE have all read stories of the final nuclear holocaust: of the last man or woman helplessly awaiting the drifting cloud of radiation which will extinguish human life on this planet forever.

It has not worked out like that — yet. The nuclear danger cannot, however, be said to have receded. The US and the USSR alone have 12 000 nuclear warheads. New model international missiles can fly 13 000 kilometres and land within 350 metres of their target. Each one is nineteen times more powerful than the Hiroshima bomb.

While this danger is ever-present the development of weapons too terrible to use has led instead to a return to primitive warfare, or rather to a descent to something a great deal worse. Primitive people, after all, actually fought. Today's terrorist strikes at the defenceless and melts into the city crowds or the African bush.

It is because he is more primitive than the primitives, yet armed with sophisticated weaponry, that the terrorist now represents a greater immediate danger to mankind than the hydrogen bomb. The edifice of civilisation is a fragile one, although raised painfully over the centuries. It has few defences against the sheer nihilistic urge to destroy, an urge common among fanatics everywhere intent on building brave new worlds, Marxist or otherwise. The decay of authority in what is euphemistically termed the "free world" has left the terrorist with a field-day.

The danger would be lessened if the civilised world had united in self-defence against this new monster. It has done nothing of the sort. It has preferred to contrive a moral dichotomy whereby what is wicked in Northern Ireland is believed good in Southern Africa and what is thought tolerable in Rhodesia or Soweto is roundly condemned in Munich, New

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York or London. Recent alterations in the Geneva Convention appear to be aimed at protecting certain terrorist organisations, particularly those operating in Southern Africa. Such blinkered thinking brings its own nemesis, and societies committed to dual morality totter on the brink of self-destruction. A Britain which allows a firemen's strike (complete with pickets) to endanger the lives of its own people is paying the price for its abandonment of moral standards in Africa. The Russian oligarchy need contemplate no vast invasions of such western countries which have already rotted within.

The nuclear cloud may never annihilate humanity. The danger is rather that civilisation will crumble and disintegrate before the onslaughts of anarchy, leaving a new Dark Age from which it could take centuries to climb. Cost what it may, it is better to defend now the hard-won fruits of civilisation than face the collapse of order and the onset of starvation and barbarism.

Who knows what ages it may otherwise take to bring the remnant of mankind back even to the point we have reached today? And as for our dreams of the future, have they not a better chance now than then?

South Africa and Rhodesia are striving to maintain ordered society in the face of systematically manufactured communist agitation, disguised, of course, as popular discontent about a host of grievances. Far worse grievances in neighbouring countries are ignored by the communists and therefore by the rest of the world. It is, of course, the communists who set a match to the grievances, real or imagined. We in Southern Africa are not in the least surprised by Russain-backed terrorism aimed at our destruction. That America and Britain have joined the enemies of civilised order has, however, shocked and dismayed us. But it has increased our resolve neither to crumble with the crumbling West nor submit to the Marxist tyranny which threatens us from East and West alike.

Our chief crime is that we do not swim with the stream. But when the stream is rushing to the abyss, the future belongs to those who battle against the current. Not for a moment do we deny that our countries are as riddled with wrongs as those of our Western critics. What we dispute is that the way to right

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Terror and the Dual Morality

wrongs is to bring down the fabric of society in ruins. We challenge our Christian brethren in the West — those whose minds are not wholly captured by Marxist thought — to put their own house in order first; and then, if they have energy to spare, to help us with ours. With God's help we would have managed already were it not for their self-righteous meddling.

To pour fuel on the flames of terrorism is not the way to build peace on earth: and those who practise this depravity will inevitably themselves become its prey.

The major Western Churches have done much — spurred on by the WCC — to pioneer the dual morality. They can survive and recapture moral leadership only if they change course, returning to their historic Faith before they try to lead the way into the future.

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Sister Anna Regel (75) escaped being shot with seven other missionaries, because she was so crippled with arthritis the terrorists could not drag her to the massacre site.

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4 The Christian Somersault In the fourth century A.D. the Roman Emperor Constantine threw the cat among the Christian pigeons. He became one of them. This presented the Christians with a problem, for hitherto they had taken the State — the Roman Empire — for granted. It was harsh and oppressive, but it more or less kept the peace and was part of the order of things. If Christians could only regard it as evil, having been so bitterly persecuted by it, it was nevertheless better than anarchy. Indeed with St. Paul they still regarded it as in principle instituted by God. Moreover, it absolved them from involvement in the practical problems of organising society.

The main concern of the early Christians was (as it should be of Christians today) the kingdom of the spirit which is not of this world. In the workaday world their compassion was for the poor, the unfortunate, the oppressed and the sick. Christian charity still shows itself chiefly in this kind of compassion, and rightly so.

But with the conversion of Constantine and many of his people it became apparent that Christians themselves would have to take part in government. For this they were unprepared.

Indeed down the ages there has been an uneasiness and a tension between Christianity and secular government. The one just cannot be directly and practically translated into the other.

In effect the consequence has been a tendency by the Church usually to support established authority, even when it has been oppressive, as being a lesser evil than chaos. Throughout Christian history attempts have been made to soften the rigours of the secular power with Christian compassion, but these have at best met with only partial success. The reason is not merely that power corrupts. Any government (even a Christian one) has to deal with fallen and unregenerate human nature. Selfless, converted Christians are relatively few in any age, and even they are not free from the human weaknesses which make government necessary. In all governments duress is

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unavoidable, and the contemporary fashion of describing it as "violence" (or "police brutality"!) is nonsense.

However, when this is said, and the horrors condoned or committed in the name of religion admitted, it remains true that of all the great world-civilisations of history the one built by Christians after Christianity had entered the lives of the millions has been and still is by far the greatest. It inherited, of course, the treasures of Greece and Rome as well as of Judaism. But the qualities of integrity and mercy and courage and self-sacrifice which grew to be revered over the centuries came literally from beyond this world. The lives of the great heroes and saints of Christendom have left an almost indelible imprint on our ideals if not always on our characters. And these lives — literally superhuman and supernatural in their power — derived from the irruption of God Himself into our world in Jesus Christ.

Sceptics may pooh-pooh this whole idea: but they cannot explain away the moral greatness attained by so many or the acceptance by whole societies of values and norms which demand the highest degree of self-control and self-sacrifice. Man has indeed raised himself — or rather been raised by God — far above the beasts.

Into this highest of civilisations some of us were born and others have been adopted. It is the apex of human attainment because it contains elements which are more than human.

Christian civilisation is to a large extent based on the monogamous Christian family, which at its best is a little mirror of heaven on earth. Here selflessness and joy find their highest normal human expression. If Christian marriage demands great sacrifices — too great for man or woman unaided — its rewards are greater. It took the Church long centuries of struggle to establish the institution of Christian marriage, but the victory was won. It was being won too in the mission-field until the missionary enterprise was virtually abandoned. Today the destruction of the Christian family is a prime objective of all Marxist governments, and Western societies are being "softened up" for it by ever laxer legislation promoted by humanists and "trendy" ecclesiastics. Neither South Africa nor Rhodesia has any

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proud record in this field, the tendency being unwittingly to move in the direction of the very enemy we fight.

In Victorian times and later many — Julian Huxley among them — argued that Christian morality could and would survive independently of Christian belief. History has proved them wrong. It has proved too that what was built by centuries of sacrifice and unthinkingly taken for granted by later generations can be destroyed in a single lifetime. Standards of morality which seemed impregnable a few short decades ago are laughed at in the post-Christian countries of today as well as in the communist world.

It is the indifference of Christians themselves which has brought this state of affairs about, by leaving the door open to those who long have worked like beavers to destroy Christianity.

The switch from a Christian civilisation with rising standards to the new inhuman barbarism epitomised in Marxism is being compassed in many ways. The most brutal and overt is the practice of terrorism, the forerunner of the new Dark Age. What would be incredible if it were not manifest is the fact that it is the white man, the main inheritor of Christian civilisation, who has embraced the terrorism which destroys all civilisation. Maybe the majority of its practitioners are now of other races. But Marxism-Leninism is the white man's invention.

The final irony is that the Marxism which destroys all that Christianity has built up has infiltrated not only political parties and trades unions and places of learning: it struts the corridors of power in the Churches themselves.

The Church of England was once (long ago) described as the Tory party at prayer. Today's ecumenical movement may with equal truth be called the leftist establishment in conference. The leadership of institutional Christianity is, in fact, in the process of standing on its head. Having in the past backed authority and order — sometimes excessively — it now, most of it, gives comfort to the exponents of revolution, violence and terror. It is paving the way for the destruction of Christianity itself.

Nowhere in Scripture do we read: "Blessed are the persecutors, for they shall do good." But this is now a primary principle of

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church leadership. Conformity to it is the key to ecclesiastical preferment, and only occasionally does the courageous lonely voice call from the ranks of the hierarchy for a return to historical Christianity and the Gospel of the New Testament. But without this going back to truth there can be no going forward to a better world.

Thus the tension between Church and State in Southern Africa is not, as is popularly believed, between Christianity standing for freedom and governments representing oppression.

There has been and still is plenty of oppression in both camps.

But the conflict is between church leaderships breaking down order — motivated by confused idealism and hidden Marxism — and secular authority defending order and sometimes resorting to unacceptable excesses. This much at least may be said for the vilified governments: they carry actual responsibility for keeping the peace. The churchmen wield power — power over their subject clergy and power in the national and international community — with no human responsibility at all for the local consequences of their actions and pronouncements.

It is not unknown for an ecclesiastic who has been little more than a political agitator to hasten, when his chickens come home to roost, to some distant continent where he is hailed as a hero if not a martyr. He sleeps soundly while the white Christian farmer is gunned down returning to his homestead and the black tribesman screams in midnight agony as his hut goes up in flames and the terrorist's bayonet rips his tortured flesh.

The wolf has donned sheep's clothing. Ostensibly a man of peace, this sort of Christian leader is as much a man of blood as the invader with rifle and rockets.

It is an odd phenomenon of the Rhodesian war that hundreds of innocent black and white people have been savagely murdered by terrorists with hardly more than a perfunctory comment and prayer from many of the Churches. When in November 1977 the Rhodesian security forces knocked out two of the Mozambique base camps from which the terrorists came — pinpointing their targets precisely — wails of horror rose to the heavens, days of mourning were declared, statements of condemnation issued, special services were held and press

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pictures appeared showing black faces raised in supplication. In fact the usual apparatus of leftist ecclesiastical protest was put into top gear, almost by reflex action.

It is true that some women and children were killed: they were being trained in terrorist warfare.

Nobody recollected that if in the first place the Churches had spoken out resolutely against terrorism there would not have been any war. The churchmen would then have had the opportunity to act as peacemakers, telling other countries to stay out and appealing for reconciliation and recognition on the basis of the overwhelming measure of agreement already reached between Rhodesian blacks and whites in 1961. But how many people remember that agreement was achieved at that time, only to be sabotaged by the intransigence of British governments backed by the British Council of Churches?

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Thousands of black Rhodesians have died or been maimed in busses attacked by terrorists.

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5 Christianity - True and False To understand both Christian civilisation and the hijacking of the Churches it is first necessary to know what Christianity is.

It is the answer to the mystery of the universe.

From the dawn of history men have wondered on the meaning of things. And still today we gaze at the vastness of interstellar space and ask ourselves: Who made it all? And why?

Can this immensity be only for us? Are there other intelligent beings in the remote recesses of space? Scientists tell us the right conditions are there, and send out radio signals in hope. No certain reply has ever returned, and we are left with only tantalising speculation. Perhaps it is beyond the limitations of our minds to understand.

But some understanding we must have if we are to order our lives intelligently and purposefully: if our existence is to be anything more than

"a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing."(Shakespeare) Christianity is the picture which tells us all we need to know for the fulfilment of our destiny.

In popular thought, of course, Christianity is a "myth" or "legend:" a story which is not true. People who believe this are remote from reality and have missed the key to life's meaning.

The fact is that Christianity is a unique God-given unveiling of as much of the truth about God and man as our human minds can grasp. It is the expression in human terms of what, in its fulness, must ever defeat our understanding. The Christian revelation is the reflection of the shadow of a fragment of the ultimate reality: but it is the fragment that matters to us and is enough to lead us to a personal knowledge of the Creator. Were we given more we would be dazzled and blinded by a radiance so bright that we should shrivel into helpless impotence.

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We are, in fact, looking through the telescope from the other end.

To attempt to explain God fully to humans would be like teaching calculus to kittens: it cannot be done.

And what are we told, through an act of divine self-revealing, is this. It fits all the facts.

Our universe is the work of a non-material spiritual Creator who is personal (in the sense that he is more, not less, than a person). He is self-sufficient and in no way dependent upon his creatures. This is expressed in Christian language by the concept of three Persons in one God, i.e. the doctrine of the Trinity.

Out of pure love God created three differing types of living and sentient beings.

First — but here we use picture-language, for time belongs to our universe and not to God's eternity — first He created beings of pure spirit, oriented to Himself and endowed with the gift of free-will in order that they might choose and love Him and so find the acme of bliss.

But not even God can do what is impossible in the sense of being self-contradictory. He cannot make a round square. No more could He create a spiritual being free to choose Him but not free to reject Him. These beings are in Christian language called "angels" or, in the case of those who chose evil, "devils" or "demons." The popular rejection of belief in them is based on mediaeval and Renaissance paintings. Since, however, you cannot paint an invisible spirit the popular rejection can carry no intellectual weight.

The revolt of the forces of personal evil — in that world which we can only call "eternity," "before" the creation of our universe — is called the "pre-mundane fall." It explains the evil in our universe which is not of human origin: what the insurance people tend to call 'acts of God"! You can read about it in the twelfth chapter of the Book of Revelation.

The second category of creature made by God in the exuberance of His love consists of the animals. As far as we know thay have no spiritual nature, no freedom of choice and no soul that survives death. If they have any of these things we are not told so in the Christian revelation.

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Thirdly God created that strange hybrid man: an animal with a spiritual nature, sufficient freedom of choice to accept or reject Him and a soul capable of surviving death. God's purpose in creating man was that He might attain to the knowledge and love of Himself, what is known as the "beatific vision." Life on earth is the school in which the choice is made. (Put crudely, God wanted no more "war in heaven"!) The Bible's description of the creation of man is of course pre-scientific and is concerned with religious truth, which is unchanging: it is unrelated to the scientific hypotheses of succeeding generations. It speaks alike to the most primitive child and the most advanced intellectual.

The story of man's first disobedience is told in the book of Genesis, Chapter 3: again for the child and the intellectual of every race and age. To argue about its historicity is totally to miss the point — like studying the skeleton of the woman you love or making a scientific analysis of the Venus of Milo. The varying views of Christians do not affect the point, though he would be blind indeed who cannot see in the early chapters of Genesis both a foreshadowing of the scientists' story of the earth and clear manifestations of its spiritual realities. Man's disobedience (following the pre-mundane fall) is the truest, most palpable and demonstrable fact of history. Man has seen the good and chosen the evil, and this state of affairs has become the overriding factor in his inherited nature. Its consequences are written in letters of blood across the human story and in our contemporary world. The "fall of man" and "original sin" are the religious terms used to describe this manifest truth. "Original sin" is the inborn tendency to evil, as distinct from the "actual sin" to which it leads. You probably cannot help wanting to punch your impossible companion on the nose: you can, if you make the effort, keep your hands in your pockets.

It will be seen, of course, that Christianity provides an overall explanation of things as they are. It does this because it is objectively true. No greater mistake can be made than to dismiss its truth because it is wrapped in archaic or timeless language or imagery. The language of today will be meaningless tomorrow.

To attempt to express spiritual reality in a terminology designed

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for contemporary secularism is like trying to describe the beauty of a sunset in the vocabulary of astro-physics.

With the fall of man, God was faced with the frustration of His plan to bring men to the eternal joy of the vision of Himself.

(This, of course, is what we mean by "heaven.") Man faced — and faces — the loss of the only true and permanent joy that exists or ever can exist. The loss of God and the total misery to which it leads is what we call "hell."

Not even God can force men to be good: that would be to take away their limited freedom, to reduce them to the status of the beasts and to deprive them of the opportunity to change course and ultimately to find Him. There is no such thing as compelled love.

But winning man was another matter. No easy one, as the long line of Old Testament teachers and prophets found to their cost.

Teaching seldom makes men good.

The divine answer was the irruption of God into human history in the person of Jesus Christ. "The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us." Of course, this was a miracle — the supreme miracle — and secular preconceptions cause many to rule out the very possibility of miracles. But secular preconceptions are not necessarily sensible: and to deny that the Creator can enter His creation is manifest nonsense.

Our Lord is described in the Epistle to the Hebrews (Chapter 1, verse 3) as "the brightness of God's glory, and the express image of his person." The Nicene Creed says He is

"God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God: begotten, not made, of one being with the Father."

Jesus Himself said: "He who hath seen me hath seen the Father" (John 1 4 , 9 ) — a sufficient answer to the theory that He was "just another good man." Good men do not claim to be God. The claim is true or Jesus was mad: and two thousand years of history and Christian experience, as well as the Gospels and the consensus of mankind, would disprove any idea of insanity had it ever been made.

What our Lord did was to live the perfect human life, in union with the Father, as it would have been lived had the Fall of Man never occurred: the only life that can lead to God and to

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joy. It was in utter contrast to the comfortable but highly unsuccessful lifestyle adopted by mankind. It was a challenge to abandon the "primrose path to the everlasting bonfire" and struggle uphill — against our fallen nature — to the Celestial City.

This is in fact a practical proposition. Man can know God through prayer, and so receive the help which makes the unthinkable possible. But he had not the remotest intention of altering his habits in order to do so. Better muddle on in the frail vessel with the others, even though you know it will be swept away by the torrent and the time to jump is now. "Away with this man," shouted mankind. "Crucify him!"

But in all the history of human agony never had man suffered in the way this man suffered, without thought of self and with love in his heart and forgiveness on his lips. "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." He is saying that to Southern Africa and to mankind now. And in all the intervening centuries millions throughout the world have loved Him back.

His sacrifice has done what no teaching could ever do: through the sheer power of love it has won men back to God and the costly upward path to joy. The Easter miracle — which changed a dozen broken peasants into a force that turned the course of history — was God's seal on the victory won on Calvary.

Pseudo-scientists may argue it was impossible. But what is impossible with men is possible with God: and the rise of Christendom, the experience of millions and the triumph of the saints suffice to show that the impossible actually happened.

The acceptance of the way back to God through Christ — the loving Him as He loved us — is called "conversion" or being "born again." It can only take place in the heart of the individual, who is "filled with the Spirit," as it is the individual alone who can be forgiven and can experience the "salvation from sin" and the "redemption" (being bought back) which lead to the beatific vision of God, the ultimate purpose of man's creation. Human nature can be changed — by God, in the individual. The experience takes place within the corporate body of the Church, and Christians, Catholic and Protestant, stress the importance of the Christian community. But no corporate body can be saved en

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masse: only as its members repent (change course) and become Spirit-filled can they together tread the path of salvation. Society as such can never be saved. If a sufficient number of its members are converted, however, it can be radically transformed.

The nature of conversion and salvation is summed up in an ancient Latin hymn: Thou, O my Jesus, thou didst me Upon the Cross embrace; For me didst bear the nails and spear, And manifold disgrace.

And griefs and torments numberless And sweat of agony; E'en death itself; and all for one Who was thine enemy.

E'en so I'll love thee, and will love, And in thy praise will sing, Solely because thou art my God, And my eternal King.

This Gospel ("good news") has proved itself throughout the world and throughout the ages. But the Marxist infiltrators into the Churches are striving radically and fundamentally to alter it.

"Salvation" is re-interpreted as "political liberation" and Christianity changed into a struggle for social justice which involves the revolutionary destruction of the existing unjust order so that a new and better world may rise phoenix-like from the ashes. "The Kingdom of God" — of God's building, not man's — is replaced by the vision of a man-built Utopia to be attained by human effort. The practical consequences are disaster and misery of cataclysmic proportions, for both man's fallen nature and his need for God are wholly disregarded.

The World Council of Churches and its ancillary bodies are the main instruments by which the historical Gospel is perverted

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into the revolutionary politics of Marxism. But, as we have seen, comparable influences are at work in the Roman Church which does not yet belong to the WCC. A major turning-point was the WCC's conference on "Salvation Today" held at Bangkok, Thailand, at the beginning of 1973. Here the traditional theological terminology of Christianity was evacuated of its content and old words given new meanings. "Salvation" became "liberation." A "moratorium" on Christian missionary work was proposed and the suggestion was even made that funds formerly given for such work should in future be diverted to "freedom fighters"! The seal was set on the support for terrorists which the WCC had in fact been practising since its fourth World Assembly at Uppsala in 1968.

Our Lord Jesus Christ said: "Go into all the world, and preach the Gospel to every creature." Even before Bangkok the WCCsponsored "Declaration of Barbados" (1971) cited missionary abuses and said of Christian missions in Latin America :"We

conclude that the suspension of all missionary activities is the most appropriate policy ..."

Essential reading on this subject is Professor Peter Beyerhaus's "Bangkok '73" (Zondervan, Grand Rapids, Michigan). Here are exposed the techniques of sensitivity training and group dynamics by which the conferences and "consultations" of the WCC reach the conclusions predetermined by Marxist-orientated policy-makers at the Council's headquarters in Geneva. Also revealed are the means used by the conference-goers to get their message across back home, so weaning their local churches away from the historical Gospel to the new "social gospel." Stress is placed on the fact that no merely rational or intellectual case will suffice. The devotees must have a corporate experience which they in turn share with their local groups.

The World Council of Churches and its subsidiary councils have influenced and often re-directed the thought of the great majority of Christian gatherings, be they interdenominational assemblies or the synods and conventions of the major Churches. The policies of missionary societies have gone into reverse and the character of Christian literature and education

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has been transformed and secularised almost overnight. The proven, orthodox Christianity of two millennia can only with the utmost difficulty be maintained and defended in the teeth of hierarchies and governing bodies which have largely gone over to the new "social gospel."

The central dogma of the new religion is "One Church for one world" — and that Church and that world are to be virtually Marxist. "Christo-Marxism" is the term now used: a term which makes as much sense as "boiling ice."

A second dogma — proclaimed by hierarchies and "Councils of Churches," trumpeted from thousands of pulpits, preached by missionary agencies and expounded in ever-increasing tons of "Christian literature" — is the wickedness of the peaceful and ordered societies which Christians (unhappily white) have founded in Southern Africa and the moral necessity of backing the "freedom fighters" who would overthrow them. At all cost these must be replaced by yet more chaotic and starving Angolas and Mozambiques where the rulers of the darkness of this world may build their new Utopias. Thus to a large extent the leaders of Christianity itself are digging the grave of the faith once delivered to the saints — leaving it to the laity to fight back for that very Faith. In Southern Africa the struggle is not only for the Faith, but for the very survival of white and black alike.

It is worth remembering Hilaire Belloc's dictum: "They fought

to save their country, and only saved the world."

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Joy is the chief characteristics of African Christian worship. Mandea choir with drums and tambourines. Since Marxist invasion the choir has been silent. It is not known how many of its members are still alive.

African women first weep and wail and then sit in stunned silence after the murder of one of their menfolk by terrorists.

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The Honde tea-estate massacre of Sunday December 19th, 1976. Twentyseven workers were bayoneted and shot in front of their families by terrorists of Robert Mugabe's ZANU, which receives financial support from the World Council of Churches.

After the massacre at St Paul's mission, Musami, a catechist Mr Cuthbert Chiviso, weeps as the bodies of the murdered white missionaries are carried away. Father Myerscough, the sole surviving missionary, is with him.

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The scene of desolation among the smouldering huts near Odzani Junction after terrorists had murdered sixteen men, women and children.

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Father Arthur Lewis flew down to the Honde massacre with a group of journalists. After praying with the widows and survivors he comforted the wounded in their own language, surrounded by news-men but helped by a horror-stricken black soldier.

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Terrorist landmines are a constant threat to civilians going about their daily lives in the Tribal Trust Lands.

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6 The World Council of Churches The World Council of Churches began in 1948 as a genuine attempt to bring the separated Christian Churches together. It was unthinkable then that it could be used for the promotion of Marxist revolution and the overthrow of Christian governments.

Yet this is precisely what is happening now, with a momentum which has increased since the admission of the state-controlled East European Churches at the Third Assembly at New Delhi in 1961.

The progressive transformation of Christianity into its opposite, leaving the word "Christianity" to describe its own denial, ought not to surprise us. It is typical Marxist sleight-ofhand. In the WCC's "Study Encounter" (No. 3 of 1975) we are told of the "ideological nature of Christianity." Missionary work does not consist of expressing the old Gospel in the language and thought-forms of the area served. The communication of the Gospel in a particular cultural context means that "the content of the Gospel changes too." It would be hard to put the WCC's outlook more plainly than that.

Thus an English missionary magazine, faithfully following the WCC's policy, promotes the idea of a "moratorium on mission" and sings the virtues of Maoism. It does not matter how many Christian churches have been closed in China. The magazine extols "black theology" (without ever saying what it is) and African nationalism. "Black theology accepts that doing theology is a dangerous political activity: there is no such thing as a-political theology." The Magnificat is compared with the Communist Manifesto and re-interpreted: "Sing we a Song of high Revolt." (What the Blessed Virgin Mary actually said, of course, was that God "hath put down the mighty from their seat and hath exalted the humble and meek." She did not instruct us to take over His job — nor are today's revolutionaries noticeably either humble or meek!). The instances are taken from 1973 and

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1974 editions of "Network," journal of the Church of England's largest and oldest missionary society, the United Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. The summer 1977 issue of the same magazine continues to whitewash Mozambique and FRELIMO, dismissing "Western hang-ups about communism." The autumn edition goes further. Under the headline "The Church flourishes in Mozambique" it quotes a black bishop: "I go to FRELIMO meetings as a Christian leader in order to hear what the Spirit is saying to the Church."

The WCC's youth magazine "Risk" contains poems based on real inequalities designed to stir up undiluted racial hatred. "Just you wait!" is a typical anti-white theme (No.l of 1976).

After the Fourth World Assembly at Uppsala in 1968 the Central Committee of the WCC initiated, in 1969, the mis-named "Programme to Combat Racism." In practice, and in spite of much talk about "humanitarian aid," it has proved a programme to promote Marxism and terror, especially in Southern Africa. It has nothing whatever to do with racialism, except insofar as it promotes "black power." (The word "racism" is, of course, not English. It is a term of abuse manufactured to obscure thought.)

Contrary to the protestations that no church moneys are used for the Programme except those specially given for it, the PCR was launched by transfers from the general and other funds of the WCC to the tune of US$200,000. ("Background Paper to the Recommendation to Extend the Special Fund to Combat Racism," WCC, Utrecht, 1972.) The staff of the PCR is presumably paid by the WCC. The "Background Paper" makes the real objects of the Programme clear, while stating categorically that the grants to "liberation movements" are made "without control of the manner in which they are spent." "The basic underlying concept of the Special Fund is that of a redistribution of power, economic, political, social, cultural, ecclesiastical." "There can be no justice in our world without a transfer of economic resources to undergird the redistribution of political power." The paper goes on to describe the grants as a "leverage" to secure much greater financial and moral support for the "liberation movements" from governments and voluntary agencies. Here the WCC has

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succeeded beyond its wildest dreams. The results may be seen in the tyranny, turmoil and loss of religious freedom in Mozambique and Angola today and in the misery of the voiceless millions in a score of other African countries from which news seldom percolates to the outside world.

A Dutch Roman Catholic mission priest, Father Gottfried de Kinderen, recently returned to his Order in Germany after visiting Angola. He expressed bitter disappointment at what the communist government and its Cuban allies had done to Angola. He accused the Cubans of systematically plundering the country, the hospitals included. This re-distribution of power and transfer of resources has produced no noticeable ecclesiastical condemnation.

From 1970 to 1974 the PCR disbursed US$ 1,050,000, of which $656,000 went to Southern Africa. (The figures are taken from "A Small Beginning" by Elisabeth Adler, published by the WCC.) "Liberation movements" benefited in South Africa, South West Africa, Rhodesia and all the then Portuguese territories.

In 1975 some of the figures (in US dollars) were as follows.

African National Council, South Africa, 45,000. Pan-Africanist Congress of Azania, South Africa, 45,000. African National Council, Rhodesia, 83,500. South West African People's Organisation 83,500.

The 1976 figures include ANC, South Africa, 50,000: PanAfricanist Congress, South Africa, 50,000: Zimbabwe Liberation Struggle (perhaps a euphemism for the pro-Marxist organisations?) 85,000. SWAPO 85,000.

Figures for 1977 are ANC, South Africa, 25,000: PAC, South Africa, 25,000: South African Congress of Trade Unions 5,000: Zimbabwe Liberation Struggle 85,000: SWAPO 125,000. The lion's share of the gift to Rhodesian "liberation movements" went to the "barrel of a gun" Nkomo-Mugabe alliance called the "Patriotic Front," which was treated as the two organisations which in fact it is (the Zimbabwe African People's Union and the Zimbabwe African National Union, both banned in Rhodesia).

(See the Church Times, April 3rd 1977, but for "refugees" read "terrorists.")

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When one considers the murderous internecine feuds among Rhodesian black nationalist factions, some with "armies" fighting each other, together with the fact that the WCC grants have indeed acted as a "leverage" on a vast international scale, one is left in little doubt as to the origin of many if not most of the troubles in Southern Africa. A state of affairs has been created in which Russia and the West must impose "peace" through "majority rule." The Russian plan envisages votes for no one, the Western votes for everyone — even if in practice there is no choice of parties and the vote is exercised only once!

(It must be added that in Rhodesia at least there exist moderate and peace-loving African nationalists. They are the least encouraged by the WCC.)

It must be plain that none of these listed activities of the so-called Programme to Combat Racism has any connection whatever with the Christian religion. In spite of all its denials the WCC has replaced the Prince of Peace by the god of war. Christ is crucified by those who claim to act for His Church while His people are murdered in His name. When the Rhodesian Anglican bishops twice protested to the WCC against its support of "naked terrorism" they were simply ignored.

In accomplishing its ends the WCC works through a number of ancillary Councils such as the National Council of Churches in the USA and the British Council of Churches. The policies of this latter reach church leaders and ordinary churchpeople both directly and through such bodies as the Conference of British Missionary Societies, which exerts a powerful influence on the once-independent missionary agencies. The funds of the WCC and the PCR derive from most of the main Churches apart from the Roman Catholic. Major sources of income are the USA, West Germany and the Netherlands.

The WCC's ancillary councils are alive and active in Southern Africa itself. Both the South African Council of Churches and the Christian Council of Rhodesia are described as "National Councils in Association with the WCC." These councils are bound by the WCC's constitution to further "the plans and policies which the Central Committee (in Geneva) has laid

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down, including the "Programme to Combat Racism." At the WCC's Assemblies their representatives "shall have the right to speak but not to vote." ("Constitution and Rules of the WCC," Section XI.) The Christian Council of Rhodesia, of which the writer has personal knowledge, is a strange mixture. Predominately black, it contains members who are sincerely Christian and others whose vision is limited to the political arena. It is overwhelmingly black nationalist and it held an emergency meeting in November 1977 (without the notice required in its constitution) to consider its president's switch of allegiance from Abel Muzorewa's faction to that of Ndabaningi Sithole.

Sometimes its proceedings are conducted with good humour and tolerance. On occasions, however, one has encountered a bitter hatred of white people seldom paralleled in intensity.

Attempts to condemn terrorism were systematically voted down years ago and have been abandoned.

At the 1976 Annual General Meeting of the CCR it transpired that more than 97% of the Council's income in 1975 came from outside the country, chiefly from the WCC's headquarters at Geneva. Only two local Churches contributed anything! (The Anglican Church's contribution is disguised under another, innocuous item in the only published accounts seen by the writer.) It was acknowledged that PCR funds sometimes inadvertently ended up at "communist arms factories."

At the 1977 Annual General Meeting no local contributions were specified. It would appear therefore that the professed representative nature of the Council is in doubt. Income from the WCC was R$71,033, of which more than half was devoted to African scholarships. It was admitted that the scholarship funds, mostly for university candidates, helped only borderline cases, since very considerable provision is made by the Rhodesian Government. A side-effect of these scholarships, whether intended or not, is to convince the black Rhodesians that the WCC is their friend. Another is to ensure solid black opposition, to the point of schism, in any church where withdrawal from the WCC or CCR is contemplated. To this extent the WCC holds an unseen stranglehold on Church policy in Rhodesia. The

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widespread practice of channelling the gifts of overseas churchmen through the CCR has a similar effect.

The CCR has a full-time staff of twelve, and salaries in 1976 amounted to R$6,319. The General Secretary spent R$6,251 on travel, most of it outside the country. It is not, of course, suggested that the Council undertakes no good works — this would be quite untrue — but the name of the Council and the reality differ widely.

The ramifications of the WCC in Africa include the All Africa Conference of Churches, at whose gatherings "freedom fighters" are well represented. Its General Secretary is the Liberian negro, Canon Burgess Carr, whose political activities have even got him into trouble with the government of Kenya where he has his headquarters. In January 1977 he called on the Organisation for African Unity to declare war on Rhodesia. He is responsible for the assertion that "We must give unequivocal support to the liberation movements because they have helped the Church to rediscover a new and radical appreciation of the Cross. In accepting the violence of the Cross, God in Jesus Christ sanctified violence into a redemptive instrument for bringing into being a fuller human life."

What is apparent about the WCC and the "ecumenical movement" is that, however cosmopilitan it may appear, its money is practically all derived from white people. Moreover, dedicated Marxist sympathisers have infiltrated into key positions while ordinary churchmen have been too busy preaching the Gospel even to notice the fact.

Space forbids description of the other, less publicised, "programmes" of the WCC, some of them more dangerous than the PCR. The "Dialogue with Men of Living Faiths and Ideologies" knows only one ideology, Marxism, and can lead to nothing but a syncretistic world-religion, denying the uniqueness of Christ and virtually Marxist in outlook. "One Church for one World" is the object. "One World" is the title of the WCC's monthly adult journal — and the One World envisaged knows little of historical Christianity. Indeed the WCC is now restoring to the word "ecumenical" (referring to the Christian Churches) its older meaning, "of all mankind."

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Then there is Paul Freire's educational programme, which entails the destruction of education as we know it and its replacement by Marxist indoctrination. These lesser-known programmes of the WCC are described in a recent monumental symposium by Professor Peter Beyerhaus whose "Bangkok '73" has already been referred to: "Reich Gottes oder Weltgemeinschaft" ("The Kingdom of God or World Community").

It is a sign of the times that the work of so great a scholar and theologian, though already translated from German into English, has as yet (December 1977) found no English publisher and the book remains unknown in the English-speaking world.

However, for most Christians, especially in Southern Africa, the so-called "Programme to Combat Racism" is sufficient to expose the radically unchristian character of the WCC. The picture is not all black, and genuinely humanitarian work is done. But the very concept of Christian Terror must condemn the WCC as overwhelmingly evil in the eyes not only of every true believer but of those too who treasure the priceless heritage of Christian civilisation.

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These tea estate workers were tied up by terrorists who mowed them down with automatic weapons.

The pitiful charred remains of a baby - one of 22 people who died agonising deaths when terrorists herded them into a hut and set it alight.

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7 The Tally of Terror In 1974 my family and I took our last holiday at Beira and the sea. We flew, for the railway from Rhodesia was still periodically being blown up and landmines and ambushes were a danger on the roads.

It was the transitional period as the new Portuguese regime (abandoning all promises of free elections) was preparing to hand over to the Marxist FRELIMO. There was an uneasy and unnatural gaiety about the city. The cinemas and street-cafes were still thronged, though there were few Rhodesian faces now and Swahili had joined the babel of languages. Tanzanians outnumbered Portuguese in our hotel. Communist slogans filled almost every available wall-space in the town. The shrill laughter of the crowds suggested apprehension as well as an obdurate hoping-against-hope.

On the sea-front I chatted with a Portuguese. Each of us had only a smattering of the other's language, but it was enough. I heard of the bitter strain on the local whites, who had known no other home, as they saw their lives' work and their families facing ruin. I heard of the nervous and mental breakdowns of many whose world was collapsing around them.

The rest of the story told itself. Those Portuguese who were able to do so were leaving as fast as they could for a Portugal most of them had never seen. The country folk, their farms pillaged, were flocking to the towns for safety. No glimmer of joy showed on the faces of the indigenous Africans for whom "freedom" waited round the corner.

A friend visited Beira a few months later, and found a different scene. There was little laughter now. He climbed to the top of his hotel and as he looked around he heard only one sound — hammering. The Portuguese who had built the modern city were packing up the few possessions they hoped to take with them if and when they could escape. Soon they would not have a roof over their heads.

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This year, 1977, another acquaintance went to Beira, via South Africa. He found a phantom city and sought out a hotel which had not yet closed or been taken over. He asked for bacon and eggs. "No eggs," was the reply. "The chickens have all been eaten." He was not shown Mozambique's packed prisons or the Soviet-style concentration camps.

I had known Mozambique as a carefree, happy-go-lucky country, albeit with the inequalities and brutalities that are all but universal in Africa. Portugal's civilising mission and colourblind policies had achieved positive results without forcing the pace. But the troops from the metropolitan country had no heart for the war. Even so, neither Mozambique nor Angola would ever have fallen to the terrorists but for the coup d'etat in Lisbon.

The communists had done their homework well.

Incidentally FRELIMO, which is backed by Moscow and the WCC, had in the first place started the revolution on the pretext that the Portuguese practised forced labour. Nobody noticed that forced labour was the first thing FRELIMO introduced on its access to power.

The story of Angola, once the jewel of the Portuguese overseas territories, was even more tragic. It had prospered and overcome terrorism, but the Lisbon coup spelt the end. Here, however, there were three WCC-backed nationalist factions to fight it out — until Russia sent in the Cubans to tilt the scales.

The WCC has had nothing to say about the Marxist schools and the abandoned churches of both Mozambique and Angola.

600,000 people, mostly white or of mixed descent, fled from Mozambique and Angola with the clothes they stood up in and the few belongings they could carry. They left behind them their lives' work and achievements, their possessions — to be looted by the terrorists — and their dead. The black had nowhere to flee, and their dead were never counted.

Christian terror had won its greatest victory to date. The Christian West yawned and tuned in to another channel on the gogglebox.

Christians should particularly note the contribution of the WCC to the Angolan affair, apart from its support of all the guerilla groups through the "Programme to Combat Racism." At

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the end of 1975 these rival groups were locked in struggle for conquest of the territory. The Soviet Union organised an airlift of an estimated 20,000 Cuban troops into Angola and communist ships unloaded hundreds of tons of arms in Luanda harbour for the Marxist, anti-Western MPLA ("People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola"), which was thus enabled to seize control.

Meanwhile the WCC passed a resolution. This called on all governments "to respect the independence and territorial integrity of Angola and to withdraw all military units and to stop the supply of arms." It declared that "South Africa's

intervention in Angola has seriously reduced prospects of a peaceful solution to the problems of the area". There was no mention of either Cuba or Soviet Russia! (See Bernard Smith, "The Fraudulent Gospel.")

A fate similar to that of Mozambique and Angola is, of course, planned for Rhodesia and South Africa. Rhodesia must go first, to complete the communist saddle across Africa. South Africa will then stand alone: indeed the international hyenas are already howling at its gates.. But it is vital for Christians to realise that disaster need befall neither country. There are two things that can thwart it. The first, on the merely human and political plane, is an early realisation of the interdependence of South Africa and Rhodesia. The second is the spiritual awakening in both our countries which will bring the will, the courage and the strength to resist. Western high finance, Russia and UNO all want to bring Southern Africa down, for otherwise not one of them can build the one-world slave-state which leads to ultimate power: to them our minerals and strategic position are vital. But thieves fall out, and God is capable of taking on the lot if He has servants who will fight His cause.

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At Matewatewa fourteen members of a funeral party died instantly in this landmine explosion. Three died later of treatment for 90% burns. The landmine is the most indiscriminate and cowardly weapon in what the terrorist call "the armed struggle".

African owned stores have been looted and burned by the doxen, depriving their owners of a living and whole areas of supplies.

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The Rhodesian debt to South Africa is universally recognised and has earned for South Africa the gratitude of Rhodesians.

Thinking South Africans appreciate too the appalling price in blood and tears Rhodesia has paid not only for her own survival but as a bulwark for the South. However, this obverse side of the coin is not so immediately evident. If the bulwark were ever allowed to fall South Africa would realise, too late, the unbelievable ferocity and intensity of the onslaught. South Africa is a small country and Rhodesia a far smaller. It is only as we realise our common calling and need for each other, as well as for God, that we and our civilisation can ultimately stand.

Differences of internal policy are of relatively minor importance.

It is worth taking a look at Rhodesia's tally of terror. To tell the whole sorry story would require a substantial book. The heroism of the Rhodesian security forces would need another.

A glance through a 1977 Rhodesian newspaper file shows items like this.

"TEN KILLED BY MINE: SCENE OF HORROR. A child's body hanging over a fence like a discarded doll, a decapitated woman's head hurled metres away from its mangled torso . . . ten shattered bodies of women and children . . ."

"MUSIC AS TERRORIST AXES HIS VICTIMS." "TERROR RAID ON MURDERED CHIEFS FUNERAL." "MINE BLAST KILLS FOURTEEN. "Fourteen Africans, including two children, died on Saturday in the worst landmine incident since the war started ..."

"CHIEF MURDERED BY TERRORISTS." "COLLEGE GUTTED IN ATTACK." "TERRORISM WRECKS SCHOOLING FOR 42,000."

"Twenty African teachers have been murdered or killed this year as a direct result of an escalating terrorist campaign . . ."

"SCHOOL RAZED BY TERRORISTS — PUPILS LEAVE." "The enforced closure of 421 primary schools and 14 secondary schools has resulted in the loss of places for 79,720 primary children and 3,685 secondary children."

"PREGNANT WIFE DIED ON TERROR MARCH." "TERRORISTS MURDER SIXTEEN ... including a pregnant woman and two children."

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These samples have been taken entirely at random, by thumbing through a file. White farmers have been and are being attacked and murdered. Travellers by the score have been ambushed. African school-superintendents have been doused with inflammable liquid and burned to death, in one case while the terrorists danced to a radiogram. Schools, churches, stores, council offices and homes have been looted and burned by the dozen. Men have been tied together and a grenade exploded between them. One had his mouth filled with explosive, which was ignited.

Black children have been blown to smithereens with their oxcarts. There has been a case of burning at the stake. Old men are beaten to death, women raped and bayoneted. Men have had their ears and lips cut off, while their wives have been compelled to cook and eat them. Urban terrorism has been attempted, but very quickly dealt with by the police.

I myself visited the scene of the first Honde massacre in December 1976, where twenty-seven tea-eastate workers were bayoneted and shot before their families by followers of Robert Mugabe who crossed the Mozambique border and fled back again. They had dared to work for whites. Like all other terrorist victims, they were called "sell-outs." I have never found it harder to pray with anyone than with the survivors. Whole families were my former parishioners.

Nobody prayed with the victims of one of the most horrific attacks of all, at lonely Chiriwa in the Rushinga area near Rhodesia's northern border. Their charred remains were not found until days later. A family of twenty-three (the head of the clan, nine women and thirteen children) were beaten, driven into a hut and burned alive.

A note was left behind by the terrorists saying that "Zimbabwe" would come through the barrel of a gun. It referred to "Smith's soldiers" as "pigs, dogs arid baboons" and added: "On this day you are going to see how bad we can be."

This attack was made by Mugabe's ZANU, which is supported by the WCC, but has occasioned no comment by officials of the "Programme to Combat Racism." The machinery

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of ecclesiastical protest, local or world-wide, was not put into motion.

Missions and missionaries have been particular objects of attack. The Roman Catholic Bishop Adolph Schmitt had said in Europe that these were immune since they worked only for the good of the black Africans. On Sunday, December 5th, 1976, after his return from leave, an Nkomo (ZAPU) terrorist, Albert Ncube, shot Bishop Schmitt dead together with Father Possenti Weggarten and Sister Maria Francis, on a road near their mission at Lupane. Captured, Ncube admitted these and other murders before escaping to Zambia.

Not to be outdone, two Sundays later Mugabe perpetrated the tea-estate massacre I have already described.

Robin Moore in "Rhodesia Alone" (a symposium published by the Council on American Affairs) stresses the ding-dong rivalry of the co-leaders of the "Patriotic Front." Following Mugabe's Honde massacre, Nkomo sent his terrorists on Sunday January 30th across the border from Botswana to the Manama Evangelical Lutheran Mission, where they abducted 400 schoolchildren and stole R$13,000 (school fees for the new term).

Teachers, boys, girls and nurses were herded away at gunpoint, though a number hid or escaped.

(It is impossible to avoid the question: If blacks are so keen to join the "freedom fighters," why do they have to be recruited by abduction? Rhodesia is often said to be fighting a "civil war."

This is untrue, since so many of the invaders, though Rhodesian, have either been physically kidnapped or psychologically conditioned by outright deception — offers of "higher education" and the like.)

The Botswana Government on February 1st confirmed the arrival of 384 schoolchildren. The Rhodesian Government appealed to the Red Cross, which in turn appealed to Botswana.

Ultimately, after many delays, parents were allowed to visit their children, accompanied by a Catholic missionary, Father Sommerreiser, in a convoy of buses organised by the Rhodesian authorities. Some of the children had already been flown to Zambia for "education." All had been told that if they returned to Rhodesia they would be killed by the security forces. The

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parents were allowed only a few minutes with their children, in the presence of Botswana police and ZAPU leaders. A small minority of the children dared opt to return with their parents. A total of 331 were transported to Zambia, the boys for terrorist training and the girls as bed-fellows for the ZAPU terrorists. No protest from the WCC was seen in the headlines and the standard ecclesiastical hullabaloo was not initiated.

On February 26th ZANU reported that fifteen of the abducted boys were executed in Lusaka for refusing to join ZAPU. It is alleged that the remainder were flown to Russia.

True to the rivalry between the two supposed allies, Mugabe had already retaliated on Sunday, February 6th, sending a group of twelve terrorists to St. Paul's Mission, Musami, near Salisbury, where three Jesuit priests and four nuns were brutally murdered. One priest, Father Myerscough, survived by feigning death. This time the world really was horrified, and Mugabe hastened to attribute the murders to Rhodesia's Selous Scouts.

The idea has caught on, and sections of the foreign press as well as many Rhodesian blacks now genuinely believe that the Rhodesian security forces systematically commit atrocities against missionaries. This is pure fiction. Father Myerscough emphatically testified that terrorists were guilty at Musami.

Some days after the attack, a few kilometres from St Paul's Mission, a terrorist was captured with a Soviet AK machine-gun.

It was possible to compare a bullet shot from the weapon with another extracted from the body of one of the murdered missionaries. The comparison left no doubt that the two bullets were shot from the same gun. We do not have to trust Rhodesian ballistic experts for this. An independent testimony has been published by a visiting member of the German Parliament, Count Hans Huyn, who examined all the evidence for himself.

And so the tally of terror — the ceaseless, senseless carnage — continues.

What could be more ghastly than the bayoneting to death, at the end of September, 1977, of the radiant six-months-old white baby Natasha Glenny, asleep in her cot at Chipinga? "She was lying face down," said her father. "Her back was a mass of lacerations and her flesh was white and pulpy. Before she was

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bayoneted she was thrown across the verandah." A tough security officer who saw the dead baby spent a sleepless night in tears.

But the horror of this appalling incident (the work of Mugabe's men) had one bright spot. This was the astounding heroism of the child's African nursemaid who, beaten and terrified, did everything that was humanly possible to save the child.

What could better illustrate an essential fact the world will not see? There is no problem in Rhodesia which Rhodesians, left alone, could not have solved long ago. We are so totally interdependent. Only outside interference has precipitated our crisis, by stimulating period, and over 1,500 beyond our borders.

This adds up to a tragic loss of life of more than 7,650, including less than 400 whites. By December 21st 1977, five years after the first attack, the total had risen to well over 8,000. It cannot be stressed too strongly that the chief victims of the military war (as of the economic) are black. The suffering inflicted on people of all races defies imagination or description. Yet the appalling alternative of submission to Marxism and inevitable factional and inter-tribal war would, of course, have produced a holocaust of wholly incalculable proportions, as well as physical and mental slavery.

It is worth noting, in view of official church attitudes, that of the white civilians murdered fifteen were missionaries, all but two Roman Catholic. Moreover, any idea that Rhodesia's is a racial war is totally disproved not only by the terror-tactics practised against the black civilian population but by the numbers of black volunteers to the forces. These have outstripped training facilities and made possible a reduction of military service by whites.

Needless to say, the Rhodesian security forces are themselves accused of atrocities against blacks, and it is true that no war has ever been fought without excessess being committed. Offenders are tried and punished, though no accusations have been brought even remotely comparable with the proven horrors of the terrorists. The writer has read the accusations published in the overseas press by the American photographer, J. Ross

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Baughman. If they were true, why did Baughman refuse to return to Rhodesia to give evidence? As for the charges made by the Catholic Justice and Peace Commission, their credibility is reduced by the impression clearly created that normally only security forces commit atrocities! In any case, why is there no Catholic Justice and peace Commission in Angola or Mozambique?

Mozambique and Angola yesterday, Rhodesia today, South Africa tomorrow. But it does not have to be so. It may appear that Rhodesia is strained to the breaking point: but we are called to be Christians of an older, different breed. We can and must work for reconciliation, but not give in to terror.

We do, however, urgently need the help of our Christian friends, in South Africa and throughout the world. Agreement, yes: capitulation, no. However distant you who read this may be, if we fail our fate will be yours too — sooner rather than later.

For the front line of the struggle for historical Christianity and Christian civilisation is not in the tired Old World: it is not in the USA where the Lord's Prayer cannot be taught in the schools, nor in the black African states of which so much was hoped. It is in Southern Africa, where in spite of the rulers of the darkness of this world men of differing races have to learn to live together in peace.

While these words are being written, in December 1977, Christmas lights are ablaze in Salisbury and Bulawayo, as they are in Johannesburg, Durban, Cape Town and far beyond. The shoppers crowd the streets of the cities. Christian families — with some tragic gaps — are being united. Churches will be crowded to capacity and the ancient message of peace and goodwill will be read and sung. The faces of the children will shine.

Thank God that you who read these pages live in a country where Christmas is still observed and what it stands for is still respected. Such countries are getting fewer as the darkness of Marxism spreads. Now if ever is the time to come to the defence of your Faith, your country and your fellow-Christians. Now is the time to drive the perpetrators of Christian terror from the temple of the Prince of Peace.

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No one prayed with the victims of one of the most horrific attacks, at lonely Chiriwa in the Rushinga area near Rhodesia's northern border.

Their remains were not found until days later. A family of twenty-three (the head of the clan, nine women and thirteen children) were beaten, driven into a hut and burned alive.

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What could be more ghastly than the bayoneting to death, at the end of September 1977, of the radiant six-months-old white baby, Natasha Glenny, asleep in her cot at Chipinga? Her black nursemaid showed astounding heroism in her struggle to save her charge.

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"Liberation fighters in southern Africa are motivated by love, not hate", the fifth Assembly of the World Council of Churches was told in 1975.

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8 The Hope of Reconciliation An American friend, formerly a USA army chaplain in the Vietnam war, was present at the interrogation of a young captured North Vietnamese soldier. He asked only one question.

"Do you believe in God?" After a blank look the young man replied: "I have received no instructions. If I am told to believe in God I shall do so."

We have seen what communism does to men's bodies and souls. That is what it does to men's minds. For some years a diluted derivative of it succeeded in persuading British students to ban from their platforms any speaker not conforming with the leftist establishment. These were merely dubbed "fascists," "racists" etc., and the need for the inconvenience of thought was precluded. A similar but worse tyranny still reigns in British trades unions. .

It needs to be said at once that there can be no reconciliation between the Christianity of the Bible and Marxist communism.

Christianity believes in the freedom of the individual to serve God, and the State exists to secure that freedom. Reconciliation with Marxist-infected people is a different matter.

Christianity is fundamentally about reconciliation. "If it be possible, as much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men" writes St. Paul (Romans 12, 18). He never fails to preach reconciliation among men. But he recognised that reconciliation, as distinct from capitulation, requires two parties: and that even his Master failed to achieve reconciliation with many, though on His part the perfect will to reconciliation was always present.

This is what led to the Cross. So St. Paul's emphasis is on the reconciliation which is always possible and which is of ultimate necessity.

"Be ye reconciled to God" (2 Corinthians 5, 20). For "God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself."

The fact is that the only reconciliation which is always possible is the reconciliation of the soul with God. Such are the consequences of human sin, and such the hardness of men's hearts, that there are times when the genuine Christian can only

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Christian Terror say with Luther: "Here I stand, I can no other." Anything else would mean the abandonment of his Faith and his freedom to serve God: in fact, the betrayal of truth. Further, it would mean the victory of the Enemy and the total horror of Marxism.

Marxism-Leninism means the destruction of liberty, of the human personality and the very concepts of truth and right. It is the enemy of God and of all religion. It can never be "the lesser evil."

But because Christians share the human frailty of their fellowmen we must put off till the last the stand which, at any rate for the present, precludes reconciliation with Marxist-infected people: and we must be prepared ourselves to suffer. "Detente" has been and always will be a failure just as long as the will to reconciliation exists only on one side and is interpreted as weakness by the other. Christians must avoid appeasement like the plague — the crocodile always demands more — but in the early stages the difference between genuine and spurious "detente" is not easy to recognise, and initial risks have to be taken.

A body which has worked untiringly for reconciliation among people of conflicting racial and ideological outlooks in Southern Africa is the organisation known as "Africa Enterprise."

There are, of course, other groups and countless individuals who work for the same end. That the leaders of such an organisation have on occasions brought together conservative churchmen and terrorist leaders who claim to be Christians is an outstanding achievement. The Christian Leaders' Consultation in Salisbury in November 1977 deeply impressed many who were present. It marked a step forward in the will to reconciliation. The fact that no public condemnation of terrorism could issue from the conference is the other side of the story. One can recollect no major Church in Southern Africa which has produced any such unambiguous public declaration, presumably with the exception of the Dutch Reformed Churches which are organised on an openly racial basis. In other words the approach, good and necessary though it is, excludes the outright and unconditional proclamation of the Gospel — a situation not unique in missionary work. The Churches themselves are God's chosen instruments of reconciliation, but they have done no better. The

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The Hope of Reconciliation value of such organisations within the Church will depend, inevitably, on their ability to subject politics to spiritual truth and to avoid the pitfall of identifying specific programmes as the sole and necessary will of God. Church inability to condemn terrorism is a measure of the extent to which black churchmen and politicians believe themselves the victims of an overwhelming, intended and avoidable wrong. I well remember a shiny, well-fed bespectacled African declaiming at a meeting of the Christian Council of Rhodesia: "We Africans have hung upon the Cross for over eighty years." He left the meeting in a huge and expensive car.

The truth is, of course, that whites have done vastly more good than harm in Southern Africa, that the black people often owe their very existence to them and that it is humanly impossible to make all men equal at the drop of a hat. It is also true that whites have been gravely insensitive to the aspirations and dignity of the blacks — who, however, practise racialism and injustice among themselves — and that the Marxists have jumped in, boots and all, to inflame the blacks with a sense of injustice wholly disproportionate to the reality. They have been ably assisted by the international politico-theological jet-set as well as the holders of the money-bags. It is hard indeed to find a black politician or churchman who, however little inclined to Marxism, is not indirectly — and usually unwittingly — affected by this Marxist influence. It is this that gives many of them some sympathy with the terrorists and blocks church condemnation of terrorism. The fear that the Marxists will win, leaving the moderates to unspeakable retribution, is an equally powerful if not a stronger factor.

When every allowance is made for the feelings of so many black Africans, and every encouragement given to efforts at reconciliation, it remains a fact that Christianity is concerned with truth. The amount of force needed to maintain the peace in the interests of the whole of society is neither "oppression" nor "violence:" it is the plain duty of every Christian government.

Every government, Christian or otherwise, is sometimes unjust, and the Church has the right and duty to speak out against genuine oppression. The tragedy is that it is no longer likely to be listened to in Southern Africa because of its incessant

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Christian Terror fulminations, not against gross wrongs, but against the inevitable consequences of that human sin from which its own most exalted members are not exempt. Instead of offering the remedy of conversion and forgiveness, which only Christianity has to give, it has too often fallen headlong into the Marxist trap — and indeed sometimes become a Marxist tool. This is, of course, a generalisation, and indeed a dangerous one: but so far as a generalisation can go it is true.

Incidentally, on the subject of reconciliation, how many have done more than Mr Ian Smith in Rhodesia, so often thwarted by egregious external demands and internal divisions, yet still battling on?

What, in fact, are Christian governments to do? They should remember that church leaders have a specific job, which they may do well or ill, but that they too, the laymen in governments, are Christians. When the churchmen stick to their job and speak with the voice of Christ and the Bible Christians in secular authority should indeed listen. When, however, the voice of Marx is detected — and indeed when they are dealing with matters within their own proper competence and the churchmen are amateurs — then Christians in government should remember that their responsibility is directly to God and to the people they serve, including the poorest. Christendom has had enough spurious theocracy, and in this respect our age has been worse than most. Let the theocrats have a go at Uganda and China and give Southern Africa a breather.

The policies of South Africa and Rhodesia are far from perfect: the task of their governments is to improve them without handing over to anarchy.

The secular world (whose voice church leaders too often echo) has failed even to notice the three quite different policies of Southern Africa. A modified form of South Africa's separate development might have had a chance but for the howling of the wolves. After all people, left alone, tend to congregate in their own communities. The former Portuguese policy — colour-blind and with a very large measure of integration — ought to have been encouraged by the "liberals." Rhodesia's attempt at a practical compromise avoids the dangers of near-total social separation while allowing people to do what most want to do: to

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The Hope of Reconciliation live their own lives for the most part among their own kind. All three policies can hardly be wrong, though inevitably they have always been imperfectly administered: yet they have all met with an omnibus condemnation from the opinion-makers. The fact is these issues — together with "majority rule," "universal suffrage," "human rights," etc. — are mere smokescreens. Their proponents, incapable of keeping their own houses in order and blind to the most intolerable tyrannies, stipulate for Southern Africa a multiplicity of conditions (usually dignified with the name "principles") which have for the most part never obtained anywhere and which invariably make for worse, not better government.

The object is simply to get the white man out and the black extremist in: not for any care for black people but because black rulers will have no choice but ultimately to fall under Marxist influences, whether they want it or not, and so forward the plans of the one-world movements. (This of course would not necessarily be true of a multi-racial government in Rhodesia.) In these circumstances the task of governments is to resist insofar as the pressures will allow them, and to out-manoeuvre their opponents when the latter are too strong.

The true forces behind world politics, hidden by the smokescreens, are a mystery to most of us. We know that American and international high finance (or a part of it) made the Bolshevik Revolution possible, that it continues to feed the Russians, who otherwise would have to feed themselves, so that they can arm and foment revolutions: and that its lust for power and domination, involving the destruction of small nations and ultimately all national sovereignty, is virtually without limit. We know too the Marxist dream of a world empire and the enforcement of an ideology which denies God and dehumanises man. The nature of the tie-up between the two is best left to the experts. Suffice it to say that the arch-conspirator is Satan himself. Our problem is how to survive the onslaught.

A number of pertinent points are these: 1. No dreamer of world empire (and there have been many) has ever succeeded: and the Kingdom of God, whether on earth or in heaven, is of God's making, not man's.

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Christian Terror 2. God is a reality: and prayer, properly understood, brings into the lives and the affairs of men a power not of this world.

The prayer of a nation genuinely turning to God can change history. Wesley's England was spared the horrors of revolutionary France. Even Rhodesia's tiny beginnings of prayer seem to have dealt with Kissinger, Richard and certain more recent meddlers.

3. God cannot be used as a tool to work our purposes. He is not on our side: but if we are on His and our turning to Him is genuine then He can work His purposes through us. These purposes do not include the destruction of our homelands or the success of the seekers of power. "There is no restraint to the Lord to save by many or by few."

There can be no future without endurance. It is those who struggle through the night who live to see the dawn. What looks like a war of attrition is in fact the holding out, with God's help, till the tide turns. In human affairs it always does. Among the common people of the West the tide is already turning in favour of Southern Africa, but not yet among the governments which the people — in spite of all the trappings of democracy — are usually powerless to move. This is not to say, however, that we should hold out for anything other than Christian civilisation and standards. The selfish clinging to a way of life will not do.

4. Without a miracle (which is not to be discounted) Rhodesia can survive only with South Africa's help. The converse is also true, but in the longer term. We do not know how long the last domino could stand alone against the world psychological onslaught, its policy being — whether right or wrong — a sitting duck for universal attack. Sanity and Christianity alike suggest that we stand together.

5.

Our Christian future depends on Christian Churches which are Christian, not quasi-Marxist. It is the task of the laity to eradicate the influence of the World Council of Churches, using every legitimate means to pull the Churches of Southern Africa out of this apostate body and all its subsidiaries. If reason will not work against political pressure on synods or leadership, then as a final resort finance may have to be withheld from central funds and devoted to the local church and known charitable and missionary causes. But this should be the

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The Hope of Reconciliation ultimate resource when all else has failed: and in no circumstances should Christians abandon their Churches or their faithful ministers — and these include the minority of courageous leaders — thus playing into the hands of the Marxists. Christians must suffer to save their Churches as they suffer to save their countries.

(It is nevertheless fair to point out that the WCC itself both advocates and practises large-scale boycotts. No Church belonging to the WCC would logically have any grounds for complaint if it were dosed with the same medicine. This, however, is not to suggest that Christians should ape the tactics of the WCC except in the direst necessity.)

6.

Reconciliation with God is always possible. Reconciliation on the political level must earnestly be sought, but not at the cost of abandonment of fundamental Christian principles. There can be no capitulation to communism and no appeasement leading to anarchy.

7. Though our problems are only secondarily racial, the building of bridges between the races should be the constant and active concern of every Christian. Here again the Christian must be prepared to face disappointment and suffering. Statements by certain black politicians that "Africans can only take: we have nothing to give" are worse than untrue. They not only stifle true reconciliation. They raise the question: "What happens when all is taken?"

8.

There is an urgent need for the Christian anti-communist organisations of all kinds and throughout the world effectively to get together — in a loose federation, not a monolithic body like the WCC — and where possible to co-operate with other anti-communist groups. Organisations such as Christian Mission International, the Christian League of Southern Africa, the Rhodesia Christian Group, the Christian Affirmation Campaign (UK) and the Christian Anti-Communism Campaign (USA) have their counterparts in many landsl Practical as well as theological leadership is needed, which would best come from the US or Europe. If Roman Catholics feel that their special needs require separate organisations let them still co-operate with those of other Christians. The old ecclesiastical divisions, though not unimportant, are no longer the primary ones. The great divide

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Christian Terror today is between believers in the historical Gospel and followers of the "social gospel".

With God's help, Southern Africa can be rescued from the fate now threatening it. But there is no Utopia round the corner, here or anywhere else. Our only salvation is in the personal knowledge of God through Our Lord Jesus Christ: and the salvation of our countries can only come through the salvation of their peoples. Interim political arrangements can help and are necessary: but they are not the ultimate answer. Without intolerance towards other faiths, South Africa and Rhodesia must mean business about their Christianity — about Christ Himself.

His "one solitary life" turned history in the past. He lives today and through His people can turn history now.

"He was born in an obscure village, where he worked in a carpenter's shop till he was thirty. Then for three years he was an itinerant preacher. He never wrote a book. He never held an office. He never had a family or owned a house. He didn't go to college. He never travelled two hundred miles from where he was born. He did none of the things one usually associates with greatness. He had no credentials but himself.

"He was only thirty-three when the tide of public opinion turned against him. His friends ran away. He was turned over to his enemies and went through the mockery of a trial. He was nailed to a cross between two thieves. While he was dying, his executioners gambled for his clothing, the only property he had on earth. When he was dead, he was laid in a borrowed grave through the pity of a friend. Nineteen centuries have come and gone, and today he is the central figure of the human race and the leader of mankind's progress.

"All the armies that ever marched, all the navies that ever sailed, all the parliaments that ever sat, all the kings that ever reigned, put together, have not affected the life of man on this earth as much as that one solitary life."

The author of those words is unknown, but he tells the truth.

Christ is our hope of reconciliation. Not the politicised Christ of the "Programme to Combat Racism,"but the true Christ who can win for God both us and our enemies. In His Kingdom there will be no Christian terror — no terror at all. "And God shall

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The Hope of Reconciliation wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away" (Revelation 21:4).

Meanwhile, there is an immediate, practical and costly job for the Christians of Southern Africa: the saving of our countries from the tactics of terror and our Churches from what is nothing less than the precursor of the Anti-Christ.

"He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the Churches." For it is only the Spirit of God who has the power to accomplish through us what otherwise is humanly impossible. But, unlike the Mozambican bishop who looks for the Spirit in Marxist meetings, we shall seek Him and His strength through prayer, sacrament and the Scriptures. We shall not seek in vain. Christianity, even if chastened by suffering and persecution, will be alive in Africa when communism is dead in the ashes of history. And with Christianity the values and the truth and joy that come from God alone.

St. Paul sums up the Christian answer to Christian terror and to our world's problems in a single sentence (Ephesians 6:13): "Wherefore take unto you the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand."

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Christian Terror

Flashback. Before leaving St. Peter's Mission, Mandea, and before the terror war, Father Lewis tries to peer into the future. Christianity has brought reconciliation and peace to the land once torn by bloodshed and strife. Will reconciliation be the key to a future full of hope – or will the Enemy return to the attack?

Christian youngsters at Mandea before the reign of terror. "The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace..." (Galatians 5:22)

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Other Resources Available Books Answering Skeptics Apostles Creed - Firm Foundations for Your Faith Angola by the Back Door Biblical Principles for Africa (Also available in Afrikaans and French) Biblical Worldview Manual Character Assassins - Dealing with Ecclesiastical Tyrants & Terrorists David Livingstone - Man of Prayer and Action Discipleship Handbook Fantastic but True - A Manual for Working with Children’s Ministries Faith Under Fire in Sudan Fight for Life - A Pro-Life Handbook for Southern Africa Finding Freedom from the Pornography Plague (also in Afrikaans) Going Through - Even if the Door is Closed Great Commission Manual Greatest Century of Missions Greatest Century of Reformation Holocaust in Rwanda (also available in French and Afrikaans) In the Killing Fields of Mozambique Make a Difference - A Christian Action Handbook for Southern Africa Pink Agenda - Sexual Revolution and the Ruin of the Family Practical Discipleship Putting Feet to Your Faith Reforming Our Families Security and Survival in Unstable Times Slavery, Terrorism and Islam - The Historical Roots & Contemporary Threat South Africa - Renaissance or Reformation?

The Christian at War (also available in Afrikaans, German and Spanish) The Ten Commandments - God’s Perfect Law of Liberty War Against God DVDs 3 Days in Sudan (25min) Sudan the Hidden Holocaust (55 min) Terrorism and Persecution - Understanding Islamic Jihad (55 min) Evangelisng in the War Zones (35 min) AUDIO CDs, boxsets and MP3s Answering Skeptics Biblical Character Studies Biblical Worldview Summit Great Commission Course Heroes of the Faith Hunger for Revival Muslim Evangelism Workshop Soldiers for Christ The Great Reformation

P.O. Box 358 Howard Place 7450 Cape Town South Africa Tel & Fax: (021) 689-7478 Email: admin@christianlibertybooks.co.za Website: www.christianlibertybooks.co.za

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FRONTLINE FELLOWSHIP USA, PO BOX 728, MANITOU SPRINGS, CO 80829 Tel: 719-685-2899 Fax: 719-685-9330 FRONLINE FELLOWSHIP, PO BOX 74, NEWLANDS, CAPE TOWN, SOUTH AFRICA. Tel(021) 6894480, admin@frontline.org.za, Web: www.frontline.org.za