The House Church Movement
Among the thorny problems
facing the Church were the lack of scriptures. Restrictions on the distribution
and the circulation of Bibles and religious literature intensified. The
propagation of the faith was strictly forbidden while the Christian population
ever increased, from 160,000 in 1975 to 1.2 million in 2000. In 1994, only 25 percent of the faithful in
Saigon owned a Bible. In the Central Highlands this figure could be as low as
10 percent. Until May 1994, the State-sponsored Christian Evangelical Church
could receive approval from the Ministry of Sports and Culture to
produce its own Bibles. Nevertheless, Bibles printed under government
control must not be made available to unregistered groups. In September 1994, a
training school was projected to open. Some 60 students were allowed to
register for Bible studies, following the compromise between the authorities
and the local Church in Da Nang. However, until 2002, after 27 years under
communism, only one class for theology study with 15 students was authorized to
operate.
As the house church movement
expanded, the political regime sought to place the Christian Evangelical
Churches of the South under strict control. Nevertheless, it always met strong
opposition from most pastors who resiliently refused to come to terms with it.
They particularly refused to accept the State authorities’ proposal for the
creation of a unified State-affiliated Evangelical
Church. The house church movement came into being and spread throughout the
country, regardless of raids and instances of suppression The number of
followers of this unregistered house church
ever grew, and because of this, the Church endured serious difficulties
and harsh persecution, particularly, members of the ethnic minorities in the
Central highlands who constitute a large part of the Church population.
Arrests and Imprisonment
The report submitted by Mr.
Abdelfattah, U.N. Special Rapporteur, in accordance with the Commission on
Human Rights Resolution 1993/25, noted cases of arrests and imprisonment concerning
the Evangelical Christian clergy and believers as follows:
In 1991, there were at least 11 pastors who
were arrested on charges of conducting religious activities without a permit.
They were such personalities as Tran Mai, Dinh Thien Tu, Tran Dinh Ai, R’Mah
Luan, Phan Quang Thieu, Le Quang Trung, Vu Minh Xuan, Hoang Van Phung, Bui
Thanh Se ,Vo Van Lac, and Pham Phu
Anh. Of particular attention were the
cases of unjust prosecution of prominent leaders of the Church:
1. Pastor Vo Van Lac, the
leader of a Protestant Church in southern Vietnam, is said to have been taken
to police custody in June 1991 and questioned with regard to his relations with
foreign Christian organizations. He was released in July 1991 and believed to
be under police surveillance afterwards.
2. The Reverend Bui Thanh
Se, the leader of a Protestant church in southern Vietnam, was arrested in late
June 1991, reportedly on suspicion of having links with foreign Christian
organizations. He was released in July but was reported to be under close
police surveillance.
3. Pastor R' Mah Loan, a
pastor to the H'mong minority, was in charge of 14 congregations in the Dak Lak
region. He was arrested in June 1991 for unknown reasons and \was believed to
be held in administrative detention at a prison at Buon Me Thuot, Dak Lak
Province, reportedly without formal trial or conviction. Ha Hak, a minister
belonging to the Koho highlands minority, was reported to have been imprisoned
in December 1991.
4. The Reverend Tran Dinh
Ai, the leader of a Protestant movement in southern Vietnam, was arrested on
February 27, 1991, allegedly because of his contacts with the overseas
Pentecostal Church. Rev. Ai was reportedly sentenced to three years of
administrative detention, without going on trial or being convicted. He is said
to have been detained at Phan Dang Luu prison in Ho Chi Minh City and was not
allowed to receive family visits for four months. In November 1991, he was
moved to a labor camp in Song Be Province and was reported to be suffering from
severe headaches, back pain, and a liver infection.
5. The Reverend Tran The
Thien Phuoc, the leader of a Protestant Church in Ho Chi Minh City, was
arrested in November 1989 while on his way to a meeting with other Christians and was allegedly charged with "disturbing
the peace." He had lived in Cay
Truong II, Ben Cat, Song Be Province. Pastor Tran The Thien Phuoc was
reportedly detained in a re-education
labor camp for the third time and was serving a three-year
administrative detention sentence at a camp near Tong Le Chan, Song Be
Province, although he had never been formally tried or convicted.
6. Pastor Ya Tiem, a
minister belonging to the Koho minority from the highlands, was arrested in
June 1991 for unknown reasons. He was believed to have been held in
administrative detention in a prison in Dalat, Lam Dong Province, although he
had reportedly not been formally tried or convicted.
7. The Reverend Dinh Thien
Tu, the minister of the largest independent Protestant movement in Vietnam
which reportedly comprised several thousand worshippers, was arrested on
February 22, 1991 in Ho Chi Minh City, shortly after midday, allegedly for
operating a social work program without the approval of the government and for
alleged unauthorized contacts with foreign Christian groups. The arrest warrant
presented to his wife in the afternoon, allegedly charged him with "using
religion as a pretext for disturbing peace." His house was searched, and
documents were confiscated. He was believed to be under a three-year administrative
detention sentence, although he had not been formally tried or convicted.
According to the information received, the Reverend Dinh Thien Tu was initially
detained at the Phan Dang Luu prison, Gia Dinh, Ho Chi Minh City and was not
allowed to receive family visits for four months. He was believed to have been
moved at the end of November 1991 to a labor camp in the Song Be Province. The Reverend Dinh Thien Tu,
according to sources, had been accused of "teaching false theories and not
observing the rules and regulations of the Church," and consequently was
suspended from all pastoral duties and evicted from the Church parsonage.
8. The Tran Xuan Tu, a
minister from Vo Dat, Duc Linh District of Thuan Hai Province, was reportedly forced
to remove the cross from his church, which was subsequently occupied by the
authorities. He was initially arrested in 1985 during a church meeting held in
his home and reportedly served a three-year administrative detention sentence
at the same camp in Vo Dat.
10. The dignitary Tran Mai,
the leader of a Gospel Church in southern Vietnam, was arrested in Ho Chi Minh
City on October 31, 1991 and alleged to have been charged with using religious
activities to fight the government. He was reportedly serving a three-year
administrative detention sentence in a labor camp at Tong Le Chan, Song Be
Province. According to sources, he had not been formally tried or convicted. Ha
Wan, a minister belonging to the Koho minority, had reportedly been detained in
a prison in Lam Dong Province since December 1991.
10. The Reverend Nguyen Ngoc
Anh had been detained since December 1989, allegedly without having been formally
tried or convicted. He was reportedly to have been beaten on several occasions.
Sources also indicated cases
of arrest in Saigon. The pastors
Phan Quang Thieu, Le Quang Trung, Vu Minh Xuan, and Hoang Minh Phung were
alleged to have been arrested in 1991 in Ho Chi Minh City and in the central
highlands on charges of "pursuing religious activities without
permission" and were reportedly detained on the basis of a People's
Committee administrative order.
Control
Hanoi never loosened its r grip on independent
religious groups. House Church leaders in Saigon said that the religious
atmosphere throughout southern and central Vietnam fluctuated between periods
of police harassment and seasons of relative religious freedom. The Christian
communities in the city still resisted the unification of the Vietnamese
Christians under the patronage of the Fatherland Front. The difficulties facing
them were the formation of pastors, the slow development of the religion, and
the closing of Christian worship places, and the arrest of pastors.
Tension between the police
and unregistered Christian groups in southern Vietnam ever persisted as
security forces carried out raids on rallies of the members of the House Church
Movement in Saigon, beginning in February 1994. In early April 1994, the Ho Chi
Minh City police in Binh Thanh Precinct launched a raid on an unregistered
church associated with the Pastor Tran Dinh Ai' s House Church Movement. While
there were no reports of arrests during the raid, the security officials were
reported to have threatened the church members with further police action if
they continued using their pretexts for "illegal assemblies." The church group was fined 400,000 “dong”
(US$ 38), and the authorities were reportedly to have placed the Church under
police surveillance. The pastor was dismissed from his pastoral functions. Security forces, also raided a Ho Chi
Minh printing house that was allegedly being used to print clandestine religious literature for
distribution among the house churches. Arrests made in connection with that
raid were not known. The leader of another large House Church movement said
that the police had detained eleven of the group's members throughout southern
Vietnam during the Easter weekend and launched ten raids against the movement's
meeting places. There were no further details available regarding these arrests
and raids.
Discrimination
In 1999, a sociological research sponsored by a
foreign embassy was conducted within the
Stieng ethnic minority in the commune Bu Gia Map, Phuoc Long District, Binh Phuoc Province. Independent researchers
noted that 41% of the population said they were the adherents to Evangelical
Christianity. The researchers also mentioned that the mode of life of the
Christians was spiritually improved owing to the abandonment of practices of traditional
animism. According to the researchers, animist practices blocked the
development of social life. The
Christians seemed to have a better spiritual life than other people. Nevertheless,
they were targeted with discrimination.
A Koho missionary deplored the this suffering. The young Christians of his
ethnic group were the object of jeers and derision in their schools simply
because of their religious faith..
Converts to Evangelical
Christianity grew in great numbers, regardless of interdiction and repression.
The district of Back Lieu in the province of Minh Hai is the southernmost region of Vietnam is a case
in evidence. Many new settlers were the military personnel and civil servants
of the government. They were given land and accorded other privileges from the
government. Nevertheless, they experienced the least confidence in it and
turned to other systems of faith, particularly, Christianity, instead. A
movement of domestic Churches in the district saw a rapid progress, from 2 to
102 congregations, were formed only within a period of 10 years. Among the new
converts to the faith was Tran Ngoc An,
a captain and hero of the People’s Army.
He benefited an invalid retirement pension for diverse wounds of war.
During an operation in the Soviet Union,
a part of his cranial stature was replaced by a metallic plate. His suffering
was such that it led him to seek consolation in alcohol and drug. However,
intoxicated, ill-tempered, and neglected, An realized in despair he still had a
way out. He had glimpse of a message of Christianity he had heard from certain
new converts. He came to reason and believed in the message of redemption
and experienced himself a miraculous
liberation from his intoxication. Excited by a new and hopeless for confidence
in life, he studied with much assiduity his new faith and sooner became a
missionary.
On December 22, 1999, Tran
Van An and two other missionaries, Nguyen Khanh Tung and Tran Van Chinh
accepted the invitation of a widowed lady of an officer killed during the war and considered as a martyr of
the “Revolution.” The lady had equally heard the Christian Good News and became
a believer. which is for her an easy decision to abandon the cult of spirits of
her spouse. To give testimony of the abandonment of her ancient beliefs, she
invited the three missionaries to help her to put away the alter for the
spirits. When they left the house, the three missionaries were arrested, kept
in, and interrogated after that. Brutal
treatment of the security police worsened the wounds of Tran Van An, and he
fainted. Fearing that An would die, the
police released him the night before the
Lunar New Year's Day. Having recovered his health, he related the story to the
two other missionaries, who had also been maltreated during interrogation.
The Formation
A number of Christian
denominations of Evangelical Christianity are members in the sanctioned
Evangelical Churches of Vietnam. Pastor Huynh Thien Buu, the editor of the
Yearbook of the Evangelical Churches in 1999, noted that 119 pastors practicing
their ministry in the mountainous region were nor registered by the government.
It is also the case of the majority of 1,500 preachers formed after 1975, and
most of them are from the ethnic minorities. The yearbook cited as proof 282
regional communities are recognized by the authorities, but 283 others are non-official. These
congregations are implanted in the regions inhabited by the ethnic minorities.
In all, the Evangelical communities until the year 2000 totaled one million
adepts. The State estimated the Christian population at 500,000 only.
Among serious difficulties
facing the Churches of Evangelical Christianity is the shortage of ministers
and pastors.. Until the 1990’s, 20 years after the reunification of the
country, the Communist authorities in the South had authorized only 13 students
to receive pastoral formation. No theological school could be opened, and no
ordination was allowed. The replacement of pastors was very difficult. There
existed only a clandestine formation of pastors thanks to which the needs for
the religious life of the Christians were partly met.
Other Obstacles
The Church has faced with
numerous obstacles. Evangelical leaders are all concerned about the formation
of leaders for a great member of ever-growing congregations in various areas of
the country. It was not until September 1994 could the pastors Duong Tanh and
Le Cao Quy of Da Nang receive permission to start a Bible training school for
60 students. Constraints placed on the training of new clergy ever remained. To
this disadvantage,, there existed only one seminary in the country. The number
of graduates, therefore, would never match the spiritual needs of the fast growing
Evangelical congregations throughout the country. In addition, as Bibles printed by government-run
printing houses were limited to
State-sanctioned groups, the lack of Scriptures posed a serious problem to the
preaching and religious education of the Church as a whole. Not much less
deplorable was the lack of physical facilities for religious services.
Until 1999, various
denominations of the Evangelical Christian Church of Vietnam had called for a
decision from the urban People’s Council to return to it its property in An
Dong. Worse still, dispossession of worship houses prevailed in the provinces.
In July 1999, the local authorities of the district of Bu Dang in the province
of Binh Phuoc voluntarily destroyed three modest churches of the H’nong ethnic
minority and threatened to destroy seven more other churches. The information
was quickly communicated to overseas Vietnamese Evangelical Christian congregations.
The Vietnamese Foreign Ministry spokesman in the news conference belied the
information, speculating that such
things could not occur in Vietnam. However, the investigators from Hanoi who had come to the region and the
destruction was stopped. It was the president of the People's Council of the
district, Ba Chia, who had given the order to destroy the worship places. He
was dismissed from his functions in December 1999.
No comments:
Post a Comment