Interview with Dr Herbert Money (5)

It would appear that you are of the opinion that Liberation Theology is strongly influenced by Marxist Theology. Is this so?

Yes, that is so. The official organ of Church and Society in Latin America is “Christianismo y Sociedad”, in its issue No 13 of 1966 bears this out. This publication which is octavo in size and about ¼” thick makes no mention of any Bible basis for its doctrine and does not mention God or Christ but quotes Che Guevara, Fidel Castro and Marx as its authorities. Che Guevarra is quoted as advocating Agrarian Reform by violence, condemned all United States aid to Latin America is pernicious and had nothing but praise for Cuba and Russia. This is characteristic of WCC sponsored agencies in Latin America.

Interview with Dr Herbert Money (4)

Could you outline your experience with the advocates of Liberation Theology in South America?

As Secretary of the National Evangelical Council of Peru I read all the news releases of the Information Service of the WCC and took note of the development of its revolutionary theology. I also kept myself informed of the activities of the Student Christian Movement, Church and Society, and the Committee for Evangelical Laity in Latin America. By 1966 it was abundantly clear that these bodies were decidedly leftist in tendency and their ideology fundamentally different from what the National Evangelical Council represented. I therefore kept a file of all this information and at the Annual Assembly of the Council in January 1966 presented a report on the Communistic infiltration in the Evangelical movement of Latin America. This caused quite a stir and met with a hostile reception from the Methodists. However with the single contrary vote of this body it was decided to pursue the matter further and appoint a committee to investigate the charges. At the following Assembly these were amply sustained and the situation found to have grown worse in the meantime.

At the same assembly in 1967 the council was invited to send a delegate to take part in the arrangements for the Third Latin American Evangelical Conference. I was unanimously elected to represent Peru at this meeting, which was held in Sao Paulo, Brazil. The Chairman was Emilio Castro, coordinator of the Committee for Evangelical Unity. He outlined the programme, which was to be focused on social action, his slogan being “Doctrine divides, Social Action unites”. I immediately challenged this and was amply supported by the Chileans and Brazilians. When it became evident that the representative bodies of these countries were not prepared to follow the WCC line, the Committee for Unity did nothing but hinder plans for a genuinely evangelical conference. The final upshot was the Castro’s committee held a relatively small conference in Buenos Aires while the Conference on Evangelism held in Bogata later the same year drew three times as many delegates. It is alleged that the Bogata conference was the result of North American engineering. In part this is true but it was the result of a definite appeal from Latin America. As for the WCC engineered conference in Buenos Aires, the WCC butted in without any invitation from Latin America and gratuitously thrust itself upon the evangelical movement through the intermediary of the Committee for Evangelical Unity which it had itself spawned. It was through the National Evangelical Council of Peru that the National Association of Evangelicals was appealed to and I personally carried the request to the States.

I should add that in the mid 60’s Peru was subjected to guerrilla attacks under the leadership of Che Guevara and with the tacit approval of “Church and Society”. Much bloodshed and damage resulted till the movement was eventually put down by the armed forces. As for the Indians on whose behalf the invasion was launched, they failed to rally around the banner of their pretended “liberator”.

Interview with Dr Herbert Money (2)

In what shape did you find the evangelical movement upon your arrival in Peru and what significant changes have you witnessed in the attitude of the Western World towards missionary work in Latin America?

When I arrived in Peru in 1927 the evangelical cause was only 36 years old and many of the earliest converts and workers were still active. Prior to my arrival comity arrangements had been arrived at whereby the Evangelical Union of South America occupied the southern part of Peru, the Methodist Episcopal Church of America the central highland region, the Free Church of Scotland Cajamarca and the territory to the east, and the Church of the Nazarene and the Holiness Church of California the northern coastal region. The recently arrived Assemblies of God were allotted the Callejon de Huaylas which is a large valley between the Black Range and the White Range which includes the highest peak in Peru, Mt Huascaran, which is 22,200 feet high. The capital city of Lima was regarded as free for all.

As for the changes I have witnessed in the attitude of the countries of the Western world toward missionary work in Latin America I think the most notable would be the increasing liberalism in theology of the Methodists and Presbyterians of North America, the adoption by these churches of the recommendations of the Jerusalem International Missionary Conference of 1928, the proliferation of small denominational and faith missiones (sic) since that time, and finally the attempts of the World Council of Churches to infiltrate the evangelical churches, especially during the 60s.

Following the Jerusalem Conference of 1928, which was a victory for Humanism, a commission of laymen visited the principal mission fields and published its findings and recommendations in a book entitled “Rethinking Missions”. Its principal recommendations were: 1) Emphasize the Social Gospel; 2) Remove Evangelism from Schools and Hospitals; 3) Recruit only liberal candidates; 4) Regard non-Christian religions as fellow seekers; and 5) Form one central Board of Foreign Missions in the U.S.A to ensure the carrying out of this policy.

In the missions which subscribed to this policy the result was stagnation. On the other hand the proliferation of conservative missions resulted in the spread of Biblical evangelism throughout the continent so that it would not be far wrong to estimate the present strength of his segment at 90% of the whole Protestant population.

Especially during the 60’s the WCC has endeavored to infiltrate these groups through agencies such as the Student Christian Movement, Church and Society and the Committee for Evangelical Unity in Latin America. These agencies have been welcomed by the mainstream denominations, which constitute an insignificant minority but so far they have made little headway among Biblical evangelicals.