Moral Minority: The Evangelical Left in an Age of Conservatism

6. Samuel Escobar and the Global Reflex

CHAPTER 6 Samuel Escobar and the Global Reflex Christians in the Third World who contemplate the so-called West expect from their brethren a word of identification with demands for justice. —Samuel Escobar at the International Congress on World Evangelization in Lausanne, Switzerland As the Thanksgiving Workshop of 1973 approached, the progressive evangelical coalition consisted primarily of Americans with roots in Billy Grahamstyle revivalism. Sharon Gallagher’s communitarianism, Mark Hatfield’s electoral savvy, Jim Wallis’s antiwar activism, John Alexander’s civil rights advocacy, and Carl Henry’s social engagement formed the basic architecture of an emerging evangelical left. But it took the contributions of people from non-American contexts previously on the margins of neo-evangelicalism to launch the movement. Non-Anglo ethnic groups—including Dutch Reformed , Swiss-German Anabaptists, Latin American Christians, and other third-world evangelicals—added trenchant critiques of social passivity and shaped the course of evangelical politicization. These international encounters forced American evangelicals to think more critically about their own heritage and assumptions. If travel to Marxist countries by SDS leaders in the 1960s encouraged radicalization of the New Left, exposure to the third world pervaded the evangelical left even more. C. Peter Wagner, a scholar of missions, noted in 1966 that “on mission fields such as Latin America, where people are deeply involved in one of the most explosive and widespread social revolutions in history, the relation of the Church to society is a top-priority issue. There is no pulling back. 114 Chapter 6 Christians, like everyone else in Latin America, are caught in a whirlpool of rapid social change, and they demand to know what the Bible has to say to them in this situation.” Interpreting the Bible for themselves—and increasingly for American evangelicals—substantial numbers of non-Western converts and missionaries offered sharp criticisms of American politics, culture, and capitalism. These critiques turned many on the emerging evangelical left toward Vietnam protests, civil rights, and a more tempered nationalism. By the 1970s, these progressive interests—and a more resolute global concern generally—had become important markers of the evangelical left. The story of Peruvian evangelical Samuel Escobar exemplifies this global reflex. Escobar was one of the founders of the Latin American Theological Fraternity and served as its first president. He also shaped moderate evangelical politics in North America as a key figure in InterVarsity Christian Fellowship. Escobar represents a significant evangelical stream in Latin America that has been obscured by a preoccupation with liberation theologians and right-wing Pentecostals. The strident ethos of campus radicalism may have turned evangelical students toward the left, but many were already being primed by progressive evangelicals from around the world. I Samuel Escobar, perhaps the staunchest critic of American evangelical social conservatism, was born in Arequipa, Peru, a city noted for its colonialera Spanish architecture and spectacular snow-capped Andes mountain peaks. While the number of Latin American Protestants would increase at mid-century, in the 1930s Escobar’s hometown (called the “Rome of Peru” for its spectacular religious processions) was still dominated by Roman Catholicism . Escobar’s parents, affiliated with Iglesia Evangélica Peruana, were religious minorities much more concerned with biblical fluency and spiritual piety than with politics. In fact, Peruvian evangelicals, often branded by their opponents as conspirators with communists, liberals, Masons, and the CIA, were politically marginalized in this era. Escobar grew up deeply aware of the cost of being a minority evangelical. As a child, he worried about martyrdom by fire and stones. Escobar’s turn away from apolitical piety began during high school in the late 1940s. He began to drink deeply from the wells of Peruvian literature Samuel Escobar and the Global Reflex 115 and political activism. One of his favorite authors, Manuel González Prada, known for his striking critique of the Catholic Church—which he said “preached the Sermon on the Mount and practiced the morals of Judas”— called for Indians, workers, and students to join together in reforming Peru. Escobar also read Ciro Alegría, an advocate for Peruvian Indians; César Vallejo, whose poetry and novels depicted Peruvian “democracy” as a farcical pawn of international corporations; and Víctor Raúl Haya de la Torre, founder of the Pan-Latin American reform movement Aprismo. Escobar also learned that the earliest evangelical believers in Latin America were not politically indifferent or conservative. In the late nineteenth century they had...