COVER STORY
Proclaiming Christ's message in daring and disputed ways
In Zaïre, Lester Green, 45, a Protestant missionary, climbs out of his Land Rover near the village of Lolwa, deep inside the Ituri rainforest. In fluent Ki-Swahili, he asks where he might find the Walese Pygmy tribes. Soon a guide is hacking his way through the dense undergrowth. Green follows, Bible in hand.
In Botswana, Randy Ewert, 25, and his wife Roxie, 24, American Mennonites, camp under canvas for days at a time while crossing the forbidding Kalahari Desert, bringing modern farming methods to impoverished nomadic Bushmen.
In Nepal, Milwaukee-born Father John Dahlheimer, 57, a Jesuit missionary, counsels refugees fleeing Tibet in search of religious freedom. Though he and the 366 other Christian workers in this officially Hindu land obey the law against proselytizing, their example has inspired more than 3,000 Nepalese to convert since 1954.
In the Philippines, Father Brian Gore of Perth, Australia, has been charged by the Marcos government with inciting rebellion and may be accused of murder as well. His defenders argue that the charges are trumped up: Gore's only crime was organizing community-action groups among the poor. Gore admits, "I cannot help fearing for my life."
In Nicaragua, Sister Rachel Pinal, 48, walks for hours through the precipitous mountains of Nueva Segovia to help the impoverished campesinos. She spends her nights sleeping alongside mangy dogs, chickens and pigs on the hard-packed clay floors of the shacks of peasants who take her in. Despite such hardships, says Sister Rachel, "we get involved in so many wonderful things that sometimes I cry myself to sleep from joy."
In a multitude of ways, these missionaries are all obeying the injunction of Jesus Christ: "Go therefore and make disciples of all nations" (Matthew 28:19). Their numbers include Roman Catholic priests in the Himalayas who wear the maroon robes of Buddhist monks. There are born-again Protestant bush pilots coming in on a wing and a prayer to land on narrow runways in the Amazonian and Indonesian jungles. They are seeking to spread the good news of Christ in a vast variety of situations: amid revolution and civil war in Central America; in parched, famine-haunted lands in Africa; in the forests of Southeast Asia, where the demons worshiped by animistic tribes are almost a palpable presence.
In all, there are an estimated 220,000 Christian missionaries at work in the world today: 138,000 Catholics and 82,000 Protestants, including more than 6,000 Catholics and 32,000 Protestants from the U.S. The new missionary typically works with the downtrodden and despised of societies in the far stretches of Africa or Latin America or in the vast highlands of Southeast Asia.
To commemorate the birth of Jesus, 250 Lisu tribesmen in Thailand's mountainous Chiang Rai province will assemble this week for three days of prayer and movies about Christ. In Sarawak, a Malaysian province on the island of Borneo, Dyak tribesmen one generation removed from head-hunting will gather in longhouses along the turbid Rajang River for caroling. Similar scenes will take place in impoverished villages in Guatemala, Brazil, Botswana and India. In many cases, the celebrations will be organized and guided by Western missionaries. Says Timothy