Iglesia celebra ordenación en comunidad quechua

Pastor Cruz a la izquierda, con Pastor Zhulleima y su esposa y hijos.
Capture from video at BBC RI media

En mi iglesia de Rhode Island el domingo, fuimos testigos de la ordenación de Gabriel Zhulleima.

Barrington Baptist Church (BBC) dio la bienvenida a la gente de varias iglesias, de Massachusetts y el estado Nueva York, tan lejos como Albany. Las iglesias que se unieron con nosotros incluyen en particular la gente Quechua que viven en esta región. Un grupo de mujeres quechuas honró el evento con una actuación musical en la tradición indígena.

Nuestro propio pastor y misionero Aurelino Cruz, de origen brasileño, sirvió como maestro de ceremonias y traductor del español al inglés. El pastor y misionero Antonio DeLaZerda dío el mensaje, o sermón, a la iglesia en español. Cruz y DeLaZerda ambos sirven con la organización Missions Door.

En el mensaje, Pastor DeLaZerda dijo que lo que describrió como la forma en que América está "cambiando" el mundo crea un problema para cristianos. No dio más detalles, y no quiero atribuirle mi propia interpretación. Pero yo también he tenido inquietudes sobre la incompatibilidad entre la política exterior estadounidense y las enseñanzas de Jesús.

Esto no significa que la religión deba dictar políticas. Pero la ayuda exterior es el motor del "evangelismo" estadounidense sobre la democracia y el estado de derecho. Terminación arbitraria de la ayuda está diezmando nuestros objetivos políticos, a la vez que cobra un precio horrendo en sufrimiento humano. A veces, lo que enseña la Biblia es simplemente bueno juicio.

Dios bendiga el ministerio de Pastor Zhulleima. Una grabación del servicio y la ordenación en la BBC estará disponible en línea esta semana. (UPDATE, May 20: Video publicado.)

Daggett discovered higher ed, world in senior life

Olive Daggett, 1927-2023
Legacy.com

Olive Daggett died on December 21, 2023, at the age of 96.

Olive was a friend, a leader in my church, and an astounding human being. Her passing was marked at Legacy.com and by The Providence Journal. Her memorial service last weekend at Barrington Baptist Church in Rhode Island is posted at Vimeo.

I memorialize Olive here at The Savory Tort because she was inspiriting in ways especially relevant to my personal and professional interests in education and internationalism.

For 40 years, Olive had a full life and worked a career in accounting for AT&T in New Jersey. Yet she had another life ahead, even before the eternal one. After retiring, she moved to Rhode Island. And then she enrolled at the University of Rhode Island and earned a four-year bachelor's degree.

Moreover, in the course of her university studies, as a senior, Olive studied abroad. She discovered a love for the world, twice studying in England and traveling on the continent. At Barrington Baptist Church, Olive gravitated to foreign missions. She became the church's missions secretary and coordinated missionary efforts globally for decades.

Faintly visible in the ProJo photograph, a pink- or purple-dyed streak ran through Olive's silver hair. Pastor Scotty Neasbitt recounted that Olive adopted the color in part to help her relate to youth in the church. Either it worked or she never needed any help; she was adored by all ages. Something about her genial character and zest for life made her transcendent of generations.

My wife and I were fortunate to have been able to visit with Olive when she was in hospice care in December. She was her usual jovial self. Secure in her faith, she had no fear of her mortal end. In so many ways, she was, and for all who remember her will remain, an inspiration.

Missionaries kidnapped in Haiti reach freedom, but murky U.S. policy generally fails ransomed abductees

Haitian child in 2012 (photo by Feed My Starving Children CC BY 2.0).

News came last week that the last 12 of 17 Christian missionaries abducted for ransom in Haiti in October either escaped or were released, reports vary, and walked miles to freedom. The circumstances of their liberation raise questions about the ongoing apparent lack of any clear U.S. policy on abductions abroad.

Less well reported than the story of the missionaries, Haitian lawyer and university professor Patrice Dérénoncourt was shot and killed on October 31 by the kidnappers who abducted him in October.  Dérénoncourt taught crimonology and constitutional law in the Economic, Social and Political Sciences Department of the Université Notre-Dame d'Haiti.

Dérénoncourt and the missionaries are typical of the some 800 kidnappings in Haiti just this year. Economic desperation and political turmoil have resulted in flourishing gang violence, and kidnappers seeking ransom have targeted aid workers and the education sector, children included.  Struggling to maintain rule of law, the Haitian government has not been able to get a handle on the problem.  Foreign governments seem either habitually disinterested or similarly impotent.

In the Dérénoncourt case, some of the $900,000 ransom demanded had been paid.  It is unclear whether any ransom was paid for the missionaries.  Representatives of the families and, apparently, the U.S. government through the FBI, were involved in negotiation over kidnappers' outrageous demand for $1 million per person.  Whatever reports are accurate, and whether or not a ransom was paid or the pressure simply became untenable, I find it difficult to believe that the last 12 missionaries surmounted a concerted effort by the kidnappers to keep them.

The Biden Administration was understandably tight-lipped about how it was dealing with the kidnapping crisis while it was going on.  Now that the event is over, it's time for an open conversation about what U.S. policy should be, both with regard to kidnappings and to the social and economic catastrophe unfolding less than 700 miles from Miami.

In the broader picture, U.S. policy on abductions for ransom seems at best inconsistent and at worst incoherent.  In late October, families of Americans still detained abroad, in China, Egypt, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Venezuela, called on the Biden Administration to do better.  "When we do meet with ... officials," the families wrote, "we feel we are being kept in the dark about what the U.S. government intends to do to free our loved ones."

The murder of an educator such as Dérénoncourt sets back rule of law in Haiti not by just one mind, but by a generation of students he would have taught.  Persistent instability in Haiti meanwhile is contributing to a burgeoning refugee crisis in the Americas and threatens to destabilize democracy in the Caribbean.  Even an isolationist American administration can ignore Haiti for only so long.