The Anti-Manichaeist

Operation World’s country for today is Nicaragua. Apparently Evangelicals in Nicaragua have gone from 1.8% in 1960 to 13.7% in 1990. But there are many serious divisions and problems facing the evangelicals in Nicaragua and many of them are economic and political in nature.

1 Nicaragua remains a deeply divided nation. The traumatic events of 1979-1998 have divided politicians (Sandinista, Contra and democrats), communities (the Hispanic-Mestizo west and Creole-Amerindian east), trade unions, churches and families. Pray the government would gain the authority and respect of all communities to institute the needed structural, sociological and economic changes.

2 Hurricane Mitch traumatized the nation with massive destruction of roads, housing and farmland. Over 9,000 perished and 2 million were made homeless. It will take 15 years or more to repair the estimated $15 billion damage caused. International aid quickly dried up after the initial effort, and little has been done to alleviate the massive foreign debt. Pray for emotional healing, wise, long-term economic aid and spiritual fruit. Many national, denominational and interdenominational economic uplift programmes have been launched — CEPAD (The Evangelical Committee for Relief and Development), AoG, Verbo Church, etc. Pray also for spiritual needs to be met and churches to multiply.

3 Rapid growth of Evangelicals in an impoverished and dysfunctional society has exposed weaknesses and problems. Pray for resolution to:

a) The deep trauma suffered by so many who are coming to the churches — bereavement, family break-ups, material losses, etc. About 70% of church members are jobless.

b) The divisions among the churches — on Liberation Theology, the work of the Holy Spirit, and interpersonal conflicts.

c) Involvement in politics. Evangelicals are now one-fifth of the population, but do not agree on how to be effective and prophetic — inside the present corrupt political system, or outside it?

It seems that resolving how Christians should relate to the state today is a crucial question for the future of the gospel in Nicaragua. I would like to hope that a clear and simple exposition, perhaps based on Yoder’s work, of how Jesus and the early church understood the state would go a long way to build consensuses among these Christians.

I would also recommend for more of them to learn the sort of non-marxist, institutional economics of the sort taught by A. Allan Schmid in his book, “Property, Power and Public Choice“, which I know has been partially translated into Spanish and could be easily finished if the funds were made available. Institutional Economics is a by far more faith-friendly alternative to the mainstream economics commonly exported from the US to the rest of the world. I know because I taught three semesters of it in Mexico and had opportunities to bring up the importance of faith a number of times during the classes. Although, I was careful not to come even close to proselytizing during the courses. But I do believe the reality of my faith and how it affected me and gave me hope for the future showed through as I taught the courses. Hopefully I’ll be able to teach courses like that again in the future.

dlw