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LOUISVILLE – With a word of prayer, the General Assembly Council (GAC) voted unanimously to begin sending U.S. Christians to Colombia immediately to work with the Presbyterian Church of Colombia (PCC), a 150-year-old denomination that is being terrorized by armed factions.
The program will be jointly administered by the Worldwide Ministries Division (WMD) and the Presbyterian Peacemaking Program of the Congregational Ministries Division. According to WMD’s Ecumenical Partnerships Coordinator, Will Browne, the PC(USA) will begin by sending small delegations of two or three trained North American Christians.
WMD intends to place a full-time mission worker in Colombia in January to accompany the church and to begin arranging travel seminars so that U.S. Christians may gain some expertise in the region.
Elder Rick Ufford-Chase, the moderator of the 216th General Assembly, just returned from Colombia, where he accompanied the PCC’s executive secretary Milton Mejia, whose life has been threatened by paramilitary groups in Barranquilla, who are systematically killing individuals in the region suspected of guerrilla sympathies, real or imagined.
He pushed both WMD and the GAC to make a program of accompaniment operational immediately, and he worked with Mejia to help define specific needs in order to develop a job description for a mission worker.
Mejia has been asking for accompaniment now for more than six months.
The church office is reportedly under government surveillance and church workers have been harassed, detained and intimidated while attempting to minister to displaced persons.
The Rev. Cruz Negron, a PC(USA) pastor from Puerto Rico, represented the Latin American Council of Churches on the delegation.
The men spent three days visiting government officials in Bogotá and in Barranquilla, stressing the Presbyterian Church (USA)’s concern for its sister-denomination. They paid particular attention to the case of Mauricio Avilez Alvarez, a law student volunteer in a church human rights office who is currently jailed in Barranquilla, accused of guerrilla activity.
A university professor – who was also accused of guerrilla sympathies – was shot dead on the street shortly before Ufford-Chase returned to the U.S.
The Rev. Judy Angleberger of Beaver-Butler Presbytery told the GAC that it needs to be cognizant of the “tremendous danger” facing U.S. accompaniers in Colombia, where armed factions finance their operations by holding hostages for ransom and where human rights activists are gunned down in the streets. “This is really very precarious,” she said.
Angleberger led the GAC in prayer, asking, that the wider church keep accompaniers in prayer. “We come to you … afraid for others,” she prayed. “And we seek strength and the power of your presence: When your Body is called to witness, to stand in solidarity with those who are working for human rights. We need your Holy Spirit to strengthen us …
“Help us to be present with them. Let us, in Spirit, be at their sides.”
During the WMD Committee meeting, Browne confirmed the risk. He said that is why WMD is trying to recruit accompaniers who are already trained for now, like Ufford-Chase, who has accompanied foreign nationals in both Central America and in Palestine as a member of the pacifist U.S. Christian Peacemaker Teams, based in Chicago.
“Anyone who goes to Colombia needs to be knowledgeable of the risk. A bodyguard was shot at the side of the university professor who was killed last week … so (the armed factions) will not hesitate to kill other people,” he said.
“The U.S. Embassy will do what it can to help U.S. citizens there in crisis, but what they can do may be limited,” said Browne. And with what kind of enthusiasm they will do it -- when someone has deliberately inserted themselves in a dangerous situation -- is not clear.”
Ufford-Chase told the committee that the church might be called upon to help Colombians seek political asylum in the U.S. when their lives are in jeopardy. He said the denomination needs to be prepared to go to the U.S. State Department and embassy on behalf of individuals whose names appear on hit lists.
Browne also emphasized that the ecumenical community may be tapped to compose delegations of accompaniers. “This involves more than the PC(USA),” he said. “Roman Catholic people are as at risk.”
In other business, the WMD report:
- Acknowledged news of an agreement reached between the Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC), the Mount Olive Pickle Company and the North Carolina Growers Association which will increase wages to workers picking cucumbers and establish protections for “guest workers” who come to North Carolina to harvest crops. Three years ago, the GAC helped fund FLOC’s organizing drive.
- Provisionally granted a $350,000 grant to the Coalition of Immokalee Workers contingent upon the Presbyterian Foundation’s finding that the investment is in line with the denomination’s Creative Investment Program guidelines. The Florida-based coalition represents farm workers who have launched a boycott against Taco Bell, protesting the wages and working conditions of farm workers who pick the tomatoes that are used in Taco Bell’s products. The PC(USA) has endorsed the boycott.
- Authorized Ufford-Chase to appoint a committee to plan the 2005 missionary commissioning service to be held during the meeting of the 100th New Wilmington Missionary Conference, July 23-30, 2005. Missionaries have historically been commissioned at the denomination’s annual General Assemblies. The PC(USA) now meets bi-annually. A second task force will be formed to make recommendations for future commissioning during the years when the General Assembly does not meet.
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