The Restructuration of the Evangelical Christian Churches in the South

The same problem posed for the the authorities in the South where the actual leader, aged 98, had serious health problems. The authorities insisted that the prospective successor should meet preconditions to work with the authorities to regularize the Church's activities and  restructure the Church's organization. This subjugation of the Evangelical Christian Churches to State control was nevertheless a complex process and was thus proceeded  through complicated series of negotiations between the administration and  leaders of various denomination of Evangelical Christian Churches. The authorities applied the same method of assimilation they had in 1985 when the Buddhist Church of Vietnam was placed under the patronage of the Fatherland Front. By this method, they had given Islam, various denominations of Caodaism and independent sects of Hoa Hao Buddhism official recognition. As a result, the religions faced internal division. Many among these denominations or sects  were then controlled by the State and functioned in its terms; others were outlawed and survived under repression or persecution. Only can the Roman Catholic Church be spared from undergoing this process of normalization.

In the beginning, the normalization of Evangelical Christian Churches proceeded without friction. The State Bureau of Religious Affairs predisposed stages to activate processes of assimilation, first, by convincing leaders of various Evangelical Christian Churches in South Vietnam to integrate their congregations into a single organization. The stage after next, it officially granted them legal status and began to “normalize” the relations between it and the various denominations, intergrating them into the "United Church," and gradually placed them under its control, to operate within the orbit of the Fatherland Front, like any other satellite Communist-oriented organizations. This process of the normalization started on January 28, 2000.  .

      

 The Obstacles

For a long time, certain leaders of the Evangelical Christian Churches in the South, in reality, had initiated negotiation with the Bureau of Religious Affairs. The World Commission of Evangelical Union on Religious Freedom. in Singapore, on February 16, 2000, announced that the authotities would approved of a constitution draft following a proposal for  the normalization of three phases of the Evangelical Christian Churches in the South. Still, there was doubt among the Evangelicals over a propitious time for the start of the negotiation. The difficulty, in the first place, was the fact that the Evangelical Christian Churches of the South were then in disaray. Some 300 communities had practically had no universality so far as the direction the Church should take. The Bureau of Religious Affairs, by arbitrary decision, came to terms with certain leaders who willingly took side with the authorities, This conduct of affairs of the Bureau of Religious Affairs became the object of doubts to other leaders that had for a long time had little confidence in the regime. According to the agency UCANEWS, a pastor in Ho Chi Minh City who asked anonimity might have declared out of  fear that the new Bureau of Mobilization, directed by a pastor of the Center-Vietnam, the Reverend Duong Thanh, would hardly find a common ground with which he was capaable of unifying the Evangelical Christian Churches of South Vietnam (UCANEWS, October 25, 2000).

     The Negotiations

In January 2000, the Vice-director of the Bureau of Religious Affairs, Nguyen Van Chinh led the delegation of the administration to negotiate with several leaders of the Evangelical Christian Churches of South Vietnam.  Previously, negotiations between the two parties always prolonged and came to a standstill. However, the authorities thought that they would gain better results this time as the Church leaders agreeably came to the negotiation table. On January 28, 2000, a three-phase negotiation agenda was agreed on by the two parties. A general congress of Church leaders would be held, and twenty-five pastors would be delegated to the convention to discuss the processes of unification of the Church in the presence of the officials of the Bureau of Religious Affairs. The second phase would see the enlargement of the second convention with 25 pastors. There should necessarily be the participation in a convention of 65 members to prepare work for a constitution that could be acceptable to the government. If no inconvenience to the authorities occurred, authorization to convene a congress at the national level would be granted. The Bureau of Religious Affairs would engage in this affair. It would have a final say on the approval of the candidacy to the would-be Committee of Direction of the Church. The third phase would complete the task with the nomination of certain pastors to the  new leadership of the Church.

The authorities were optimistic about the results. They declared that this was a great achievement in the year 2000.  Le Quang Vinh, the director of the Bureau of Religious Affairs, during a ceremony, declared before the representatives of the government and leaders of Evangelical Christian Churches of the province of Quang Tri  that “ the Prime Minister granted admission to the Committee of Religious Affairs the nomination of 25 pastors.” The official daily Saigon Giai Phong, on October 23, 2000, praised the creation of the Committee of Mobilization, considering this the first step towards achieving great reunion of various denominations of Evangelical Christianity, and a significant move towards the creation of an Association of Protestants of Vietnam. The Vietnamese Information Agency (VNI) also spoke highly of  the task

For its part, the new Committee called on Evangelical Christians to contribute to work on the Church’s primary task, to institute a constitution for the new Church. In its communique to members of the Church, it stressed that the stipulations in constitution must comply with the principles of the faith and be in agreement with the traditions of the Church, namely, the respect for national traditions and the values social life. These tenets must be performed in conformity with the political lines of the government as indicated in the motto of the Church: “For God, for the country, and for the nation and the Fatherland.” In reality, the Committee failed to dissimulate iembarrassment. Evangelical Christian communities in South Vietnam were largely indifferent to all works of "normalization" of the State. That is a process of assimilation through which the State tied the Church to the Syate-affiliated Fatherland Front, circulating under its control and within its orbit.

A New Charter

Long before, the official journal Nhan Dan had affirmed that a charter for Evangelical Christianity “should respect the national tradition and social life and be in conformity with the Constitution and the laws of the country.” On December 28, 2000, by the time disagreement between members in the committee for elaboration of the project of the charter occured, there had already existed two versions. One was the primeval version of the project that had been adopted by the majority of leaders of the Church, and that the other one that had been amended, first, by the presidium of the committee then by the Bureau of Religious Affairs. The members of the committee, in a motion affirmed that the two versions were attached to the first draft for preference. Texts of orientations were circulated within the Evangelical Christian circles for suggestions.

Speculations circulated in some congregations. Some members of the Church expcted that the creation of a charter would generate a positive effort that would facilitate more religious services and activities. Others nevertheless  saw in the official recognition of the Church a strategy by the authorities destined to control the Christians more restrictively. Evangelicals were  primarily considered by the State the most antagonistic elements to the regime. They boggled at the intervention of the State not only because of  its strict control but largely because of repression befalling them. Local Evangeal Christians in the Central Highlands mostly suffered severe persecutions, and unrest was likely to happen at any time. A charter for the Church was a only move towards "normalization," placing recalcitrant Evangelicals under strict totalitarian control.