Karla Koll on religious change in Guatemala

Our Saturday evening speaker, the Rev. Karla Koll, seminary professor and Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) mission co-worker, argued that religious change has often involved external factors (such as U.S. mission workers) combined with internal factors, such as the readiness of people in Guatemala for change.

Among the factors in the conservatism of Q’eqchi’ evangelical Presbyterians that Karla cited:

-Central American Mission, a group founded in 1890 by dissident Congregationalist-Presbyterian Cyrus Scofield (creator of the Scofield Reference Bible) whose dispensationalist interpretation of scripture saw the world as currently involved in the sixth of seven dispensations, with the end of the world near. Social reform, in this view, is unwelcome because it postpones the return of Christ. Scofield’s theology influenced all Guatemalan evangelical Protestants, all the more so when Presbyterian mission workers were interested in forming a pan-Protestant denomination. The anti-Roman Catholic, anti-Mayan theology of Guatemalan Protestantism also goes back to CAM and Scofield. (For better or worse, the geographic division of labor between different Protestant groups broke down, as did the vision of a united denomination.)

-Q’eqchi Presbyterianism in the Izabal area began when a landowner invited Presbyterians from the capital city area to start a church for his workers. Koll commented that the landowner apparently believed that Protestants made good workers.

-The 1976 earthquake that devastated Guatemala exposed the government’s lack of capacity to function. Into the void moved a number of aid groups, including one associated with the Christian Reformed Church, a somewhat conservative, Michigan-based, Reformed denomination (sibling denomination of the PC(USA)), which worked with evangelical Protesbyterians (and got involved in social concerns such as literacy training). Also jumping into the fray was the neo-Pentecostalist Gospel Outreach of Eureka, California, which started the Church of the Word megahurch, which attracted to its fold a general and future president, Rios Montt.

-A church reform effort started in 1972 called for various changes, but the biggest change was a church growth strategy: trying to double the number of evangelical Presbyterians, churches, and presbyteries within 10 years (an effort that in fact succeeded – but with a continuing church growth emphasis as a result – and a church that now had a majority of indigenous/Mayan demographic, instead of a majority of Ladinos (people culturally identified as Spanish-speaking and of European ancestry).

-The (1960-96) civil war (which peaked - ironically or not - in 1982, just as the national evangelical Presbyterian efforts reached the doubling church growth milestone) wiped out hundreds of towns with indigenous residents. Guatemalans, indigenous and not, flocked to evangelical Protestantism for several reasons: The Army viewed many Catholics as subversive while the Protestant groups – some of them aligned with the president – were seen as safer. The conservative end-of-the-world Scofield theology also seemed to make sense of the civil war situation, when the world did indeed seem to be ending. (Guatemalans may still associate a social justice emphasis, liberation theology, or ecumenism with the guerillas.)

Towards the end of the talk and in response to questions, Koll explained that the peace accords (of date?) opened up a time when Mayan spirituality is officially tolerated. Today roughly as many Guatemalans identify as Protestant (one-third) as are actively involved in the Roman Catholic Church. (Guatemala is the size of Tennessee and has about 13 mission people. There are 23 Mayan languages, plus Spanish and two other languages.)

Karla Koll might be available to visit with us in July, or perhaps even to accompany us in Coban, Guatemala. Sunday, she also said that the organization she is part of has a ministry focused on theological reflection with indigenous groups (which might be an alternative to the proposed Coban theological training effort).

-Perry