Spirit strong in Angola, bishop says

For most of his adult life Bishop Emilio J.M. de Carvalho has seen his homeland engulfed in civil war, yet Christianity thrives there, the bishop said during a visit to the United Methodist Church of Old Town. Carvalho has headed the West Angolan conference of the United Methodist Church for 28 years.

De Carvalho survived the worst times during the 1961 to 1975 war when the Portuguese excluded or expelled all Protestant missionaries. Almost all of the 33 Angolan United Methodist pastors were killed, jailed or forced into exile. In 1985, the bishop said, two of the pastors in his jurisdiction were killed and the biggest mission in the nation was destroyed. “The only thing left is the cemetery where the missionaries are buried,” de Carvalho said. Despite persecution, the United Methodist Church grew underground, with membership reaching 110,000 by 1987.

“Africa — that’s where the action is for Christianity,” de Carvalho said. “Spirituality in Africa is more dynamic, more alive.”

Last year, the New England Conference of the United Methodist Church created a covenant relationship with the West Angolan Conference. Bishop Susan Hassinger, who leads New England’s United Methodists from the conference office in Lawrence, Mass., invited de Carvalho to visit Feb. 15-22.

The covenant, similar to a sister relationship, encourages sharing of resources and visits between the conferences, the Rev. Ed Grant, pastor of the Westbrook United Methodist Church and head of the conference Task Force on Africa, said.

Illustrating a covenant relationship, de Carvalho told how a church in Raleigh, N.C., brought a cement block left from the construction of their own church to Angola. In return, the Angolans sent sand to the Raleigh congregants.

Angola sits on the west coast of Southern Africa. Namibia is to the south, Zambia is to the east and the Congo, formerly Zaire, is to the north. Its Atlantic coastline is 1,000 miles long. The nation is 481,353 square miles, about the size of Texas, New Mexico, Arkansas and Louisiana combined.

Bantu-speaking peoples settled the region 2,000 years ago and the first European to visit Angola was a Portuguese navigator searching in 1482 for a passage to India. A century later, the Portuguese used the native population as a source of slave labor for their colony in Brazil.

The first Methodist missionaries came to Angola in 1885. Led by Bishop William Taylor and 45 others, the Methodists developed five self-supporting mission stations in the country. Angolan Christians worked with missionaries to spread the Gospel and build churches, hospitals and schools.

After a 15-year war involving competing liberation movements, Angola won independence in 1975. Peace lasted one year before civil war from 1976 to 1991 claimed 300,000 lives. A 1994 peace treaty gave Angolans the longest cease-fire in 30 years but fighting resumed in 1998 with government troops fighting guerrillas known as Unita — the Portuguese acronym for the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola.

The New York Times reported Feb. 14 that “the waves of war are once again lapping over Angola. Guerrillas are storming through the countryside, villagers are fleeing to refugee camps and fragile hopes … are waning.” Staff from a Doctors Without Borders-sponsored refugee clinic refused to go to the countryside, frightened by reports of violence and shelling.

Despite recent news reports, the bishop said the war is phasing out in Angola but its aftermath will live for years. Of Angola’s 12 million people, 3 million have been displaced, and orphaned children live on urban streets.

He told Maine pastors they can support churches in Angola by “trying to understand our issues. We are struggling and you can help us in many ways — with scholarships so our youth can be educated, with funds for relief workers who reach out to the street children, with school materials to help end adult illiteracy, with donations for food, clothing and medicine, and with hope. We cannot let our hope change to hopelessness.”

He invited United Methodists in New England to visit his country and experience for themselves the spirituality of the people there. “We don’t have big, nice churches,” he said, “but we have enthusiasm. The church is new in Angola. We are not yet tired of being in church.”

The United Methodist Church in the United States has been losing 4,000 to 6,000 members a year for the last 30 years. Between 1984 and 1994, the latest figures available, membership in the United Methodist Church of Angola tripled.

While their worship services may be held in the open air, de Carvalho said it takes a minimum of 100 active members to form a congregation and 200 for a church to be able to support a pastor. One church has grown to 4,000 members who must have worship services each Sunday to accommodate the large congregation. Most United Methodist churches in northern Maine average fewer than 100 active members.

The bishop said that the Jubilee, the celebration of 2,000 years of Christianity, is an opportunity to promote peace in Angola. “We are using the Jubilees to impact the search for peace,” he said. “In Angola peace is not only the absence of war, it goes deeper than that. Peace is also reconciliation.”

De Carvalho, who plans to retire in September, is the second-longest-serving United Methodist bishop in the world. He was the first bishop from Africa to preside over the Council of Bishops. His father also was a pastor who, when he learned his son had been appointed bishop, said, “The ball is now on your field.”

For the past 28 years de Carvalho has been running around that field dodging bullets, jumping over land mines and offering the hope and spirit of Jesus to the people of his war-torn nation. Still, he and many others believe the covenant between the two conferences will benefit United Methodists on both continents.

“Maybe, just maybe, by linking up with where the action is, where the spirit is, it will touch us,” said Grant.