Peter,
After my recent email you have an idea of who I am and after finding a recent article of yours online ('The Elim Massacre' - A Child's View Of Pacifism) I've the misfortune of knowing who you are and there are one or two things that I found both insulting and troubling. After doing a little more research on your 'ministry' I found you have written a book entitled 'Character Assassins'. After further research – is this your attempt to create some immunity that will give you license to vomit slander about anything you see fit? As the son of a 30-year veteran of the Elim ministry I find it offensive that you freely trample on the graves of better human beings in such a heartless and godless fashion. In that article, you may also have tried to hide behind your children in a similar way you seem to hide behind your books, but the façade is over.
Instead of using your trip to the mission station in the Vumba to create a platform to teach your children of the "vicious hostility of communism for Christianity" – did you ever give them any kind of perspective of the true legacy of missionaries instead of your own party politics? Whether it was the Lord Jesus Christ (crucified), the Apostle Paul (beheaded), St Peter (crucified), St Luke (hung), St Stephen (stoned), William Tyndale (burnt at the stake) Patrick Hamilton (burnt at the stake), Felix Manz (drowned), Dietrich Bonhoeffer (hung in a Nazi concentration camp) Archbishop Oscar Romero (shot as he was delivering Mass), Dr. Martin Luther King (shot as he left his hotel room) the mission field never has been the safest of callings. Clearly you don't seem to know this and I feel it's my duty to pass this information onto you. To use your terminology, I'm no 'clergy killer' - but after this diatribe, you have no place in the ministry. A 27-year old massacre may seem like easy pickings to illustrate your half-deranged "praise the Lord and pass the ammo" mentality, but no more. Instead of vilifying people you never knew why don't you find the courage of your conviction and say that Jesus Christ himself was not 'Christian enough' for you? Have you read the account of Christ's arrest in the Garden of Gethsemane recently? It may do you some good to crack out the old book so you can read and inwardly digest the account of your choice… you could start at Matthew 26 v36, or Mark 14 v43, or Luke 22 v47 or maybe John 18 v1. It’s your call.
The article you spewed did put a lot of words in your children's mouths – but what would you have suggested that the Elim missionaries should have done when faced with rebel militants? Did you surmise that they were pacifists because they didn't have guns hanging off their shoulders? Here is a summary of the attack written by one of the perpetrators. He was shot seven weeks after the fact by security forces and they found the details in his notebook (not only were they cold-blooded murderers, they were meticulous too)
"On Friday 23rd June 1978 is the day and date we reached Ngue Mission on Vumba area near Matondao Camp in Zimuyna District. Time of operation from 6.30 – 9.00pm" (then there was a list of the names of the leaders in the operation) "Total number of comrades 21" (then there was a list of items that they stole from the mission) "Weapons used, axes and knobkerries. Aim: To destroy the enemy. We killed twelve whites, including four babies, as remembrance of Nyangungu Chimoyi, Zimbabwe"1
Maybe the years of ancestral racism and violence you seem to be holding in got the better of your judgment – but what would you have done? Do you feel strange sensations when you watch the final fight sequence in the Michael Caine movie 'Zulu'? Does the thought of seeing native Africans get shot do something for you? All I know is that I’m thankful that in the final and most horrific moments of their lives, the heroes of the Elim mission were living the promise in Matthew 16 v 24 and 25 If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me. For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it.
The next time you're receiving pointers from your children on this particular historical/moral issue – FYI, the missionaries absolutely did not face this in silence. The lead missionary (Phillip Evans) attempted to negotiate with the rebels… he had correctly surmised that it was an act of absolute cowardice to kill defenseless men, women and children. It's documented that Wendy White's last words to Evans were "don't worry Phil, they can't kill the soul"… (She was one of the resident nurses/teachers in the mission) While I wouldn't ordinarily place all that much on a nurse facing down a band of rebels – that statement made in the darkest of hours puts her in the 'giants of the faith' category. If you're still not convinced, you have an open invitation to meet me at the Alamo in San Antonio, Texas and start publicly expounding on making a stand to the bitter, bloody end in the same way you categorized the last stand at the Vumba mission. While your online bio is chock-full of the unverifiable, I would pay good money to see you go 'mano y mano' with a Texas patriot after you’ve publicly insulted people who had the courage to fight to the death.
It was WB Yeats who wrote of the Irish uprising - "there’s nothing but our own red blood, can make a right rose tree" and these sentiments were echoed in the words of a young African who attended the mission school and penned the following words… "The world will see that killing one Christian is actually multiplying us. The blood of the church martyrs is the seed for new Christians. In this way the church will triumph when it is oppressed and progress when it is despised. Now I believe it is my duty to spread the gospel"2 I know it might distress you to think that there were missionaries from `the western world' who grasped that they had to break the cycle of colonial hatred and come in peace to the continent of Africa – but this isn’t your license to cheapen their legacy. There’s also the minor detail that the leader of the rebels became a born-again Christian a number of years after the fact and was able to meet with Peter Griffiths (who was back in the UK at the time of the massacre) Are you saying by deduction that this guy is somehow 'undeserving' of God’s grace? Do you really not see any flaws in suggesting missionaries should be packing heat? Should they have had a shoot-to-kill policy – or should they have attempted to try and injure the rebels, perhaps then tried to witness to them and hoped that the remaining rebels didn't try and kill everyone in the mission and burn the place down?
Since I mentioned Archbishop Romero, he said the following to a reporter a number of days before he was murdered
"You can tell the people that if they succeed in killing me, that I forgive and bless those who do it. Hopefully, they will realize they are wasting their time. A bishop will die, but the church of God, which is the people, will never perish."
And though I don't know if you have taken a marker pen to all of the scriptures that suggest we aren't going to be able to shoot our way out of any and every persecution we face – but Leonard Cohen surmised that struggle beautifully with the following words…
"The imitations of his love he sponsors patiently / until you can be born with him some hopeless night in Galilee – until you lose your pride in him, until your faith objective fails – until you stretch your arms so wide you do not need these Roman nails"
Postscript: - This article was inspired by the ultimate sacrifice of a few; so to honor the fallen – here is a list of the heroes of the Elim Mission Station, June 23rd 1978
Peter & Sandra McCann
Phillip and Joy
Philip & Susanne Evans
Rebecca
Roy & Joyce Lynn
Pamela Grace
Catherine Picken
Wendy White
