Travel Letter . . .

IMPRESSIONS FROM SOUTH AMERICA

If you read John Gunther’s Inside South America back in the 1960’s, you will remember that he laid on the reader many surprising facts about the continent underneath us, such as the eastern coast of South America being closer to Africa than to the eastern coast of the United States. And how Brazil, the largest of the ten independent nations of South America, is not only the fourth largest nation in the world but that it has two states within it that are larger than Texas. He also challenged the reader to name the one country on that continent whose language is not Spanish. But he was not referring to the three Guyannas, one of which is now called Surinam, where you have English, Dutch, and French spoken, side by side. Gunther charged that most Americans do not know that Brazil speaks Portugese.

That happens to be the thing that impresses me most in all my world travels, the confusion of tongues, which remains with me as a theological problem, one that I cannot solve simply by referring to the Old Testament story of the tower of Babel. Why would God, who has placed us in an environment that is increasingly becoming “a global village” and apparently destined to be “One World” (to quote Wendell Wilkie), fix it so that we cannot even talk to each other, except a rather small percentage of our fellow earthlings?

Since I am a “people person” and delight in being with people the world over, it frustrates me to sit beside someone on an airplane and not be able to communicate with him. I find myself, like Job, complaining to God, Why did you do this to us? Even if one learns several languages, he is still severely limited in his ability to communicate. I have flown with Chinese, Koreans, Japanese, Russians, Thais, Cambodians, Burmese, Vietnamese, to name a few that reside in only one part of the world, and not one of these, who live in approximation to each other can understand any of the others. Moreover, within these cultures there are hundreds of dialects that further compound the problem of communication. Many missionaries spend much of their time learning and translating these languages.

It also frustrates me to preach to foreigners through a translator, even though I have often done it. If the Holy Spirit bestows such a gift as foreign languages, apart from the long ordeal of learning them, I would desire such a gift. Think of it, being able to communicate in any tongue, language, or dialect anywhere in the world! I do not know of anyone who claims such a gift. Surely in heaven, or maybe even in the millennium, we will be able to understand each other in that there will be but one language. English of course!

In my travel diary of April 7, while flying PanAm from Miami to Buenos Aires (4,440 miles), I made a note of other things that impressed me. One was the crowded skies. The pilot explained that the rough ride was due to his not being able to go up to 37,000 feet — too crowded! Here we earthlings are, rising far above the snail-like pace of our forebears into the “far blue yonder” of apparent limitless space, and we are crowded!

I also made note of a phenomenon that persists in awing me: huge jets that carry hundreds of passengers to the other side of the world in a matter of hours. Our covered-wagon pioneers, who spent weeks going a few hundred miles, would view our way of life as a dream world. Such progress draws upon a great pool of knowledge that goes back to primitive man. Millions of people have contributed to what goes into the building of a giant jet airplane. No one man, and probably not even a thousand, could build such a machine or have the knowhow, just as a few drops of water cannot account for an ocean. When those giant jets take off I am still like a child even though I have often experienced it. It remains unbelievable! But a friend of mine, the late Leonard Read, could be awed by things far humbler than a jumbo jet. He undertook to explore the intricacies of a simple wooden pencil that can be purchased for a dime. He at last wrote to Mr. Eberhardt of the pencil company by that name, who conceded that he had no one man or even a few men who knew all that was involved in manufacturing an item so “simple” as a yellow pencil. Whether it be a lowly pencil or a giant monarch of the sky I am not as yet prepared for the dictum of Sherlock Holmes, who could calmly insist, “Elementary, Watson, elementary!”

I also noted in my diary my impression of how difficult life remains in spite of all our advantages. Regardless of language, culture, or nationality human nature remains the same, as does sin. Man’s problems are mostly of his own making, stemming from his own choices, and his life is not all that different whether he travels in a jet or in a gig. It is a fact that we are slow to accept, that life is difficult. I ventured the thought that every soul on that plane had a bundle of problems, and that if we had a way of exchanging our problems for someone else’s we’d all be reluctant to do so, once we saw the magnitude of the other person’s problems. Yet we seek to live life as if it were a dream. We do well if we can do as Oliver Wendell Holmes, the jurist who was the son of the poet, put it: “If we can but give the world a sample of our best.”

I also reminded myself of how overwhelming mankind is in terms of sheer numbers. I have traversed the length of Mexico City, Tokyo, Buenos Aires — the world’s largest cities — and it is the masses of people that impress me most. In a few more years these three cities alone will total upwards of 100 million souls! I took a lowly bus through the asphalt jungle of downtown Buenos Aires (but downtown is everywhere!), and having conned the driver into letting me sit up front beside him where I had a sort of balcony view, I marveled over the masses of people as we slowly wound our way through the narrow one-way streets. At one point we stopped alongside a pub with a completely open front. The sidewalk was so narrow that I could almost reach out and touch those who were sitting at the bar drinking. The driver got out and joined in the conversation for a time, so there I was a part of the pub. As I studied the crowd, all men, I thought of how we are all so much alike and yet so different, and how God knows the thoughts of everyone and loves every soul. In my childish way I sometimes wonder how he can keep up with them all!

On another occasion as I walked through a shopping area of Buenos Aires I asked the Church of Christ missionary who accompanied me, “Do we have to believe that the great masses of mankind, most of whom have had little opportunity to know God’s truths, are destined to spend an endless eternity in a devil’s hell?” He seemed to consider the question reasonable, and he certainly did not contend that heaven will be restricted to members of Churches of Christ, who are something like one-hundredth of one-percent of the world’s population.

My visit was primarily with Andrew and Kathleen Fuller, who are associated with the U.S. Embassy in Montevideo, Uruguay and longtime supporters of this journal. I. also visited with them two years ago in San Salvador in Central America. They arranged for me to speak at Christ’s Church where they are members, a union church that can make claims of being simply Christian, and its services are in English. Once with this kind of church, people of our background can see the wisdom of this approach, which is general Christianity, with little emphasis given to any peculiar denominational doctrine. We studied the Scriptures together, preached the gospel, broke bread, and afterwards enjoyed social fellowship. In their case a distinction would have to be drawn between Christ’s Church and the Church of Christ, the former in this case being strictly non-denominational.

The evening of the same Sunday I addressed through an interpreter a Christian Church mission congregation in a poor section of Montevideo on the beginnings of the Christian faith, all very simply set forth. They were responsive, with a lot of Spanish amens.

During the week I had lunch with a roomful of missionaries of several persuasions, including a number of Pentecostals, and I addressed them on “The Sun of Righteousness” in Mal. 4, which enabled me to draw distinctions between the various dispensations, a lesson I sometimes call Alexander Campbell’s favorite. What I had to say was well received, especially by some of the Pentecostals, who were prepared to make bookings for me if and when I had the time.

The ecumenical gathering enabled me to meet an elegant British gentleman and his engaging wife, who had recently come from England to serve as rector of the Episcopal Church in that city. When we had dinner together at the Fuller home he related to us how he had installed a baptistery for “complete immersion,” as he described it, in his church back home, for he found sprinkling to be an inadequate symbol. He told the touching story of how his parishioners were moved to tears when they witnessed for the first time the immersion of a dozen or so people, in what was probably the only such baptistery in all of British Anglicanism. This minister remains fixed in my heart as one of the humblest and committed Christians I have ever met, one wholly devoted to God’s will.

If I were to go to South America on a permanent basis, my method would be as it was on this visit: work within the existing structures. It is both frustrating and futile to try to create a little ecclesiastical island known as “Church of Christ” or “Christian Church,” which is the usual approach of our people, which largely separates them from the more effective missionary efforts. I would work among the Pentecostals, the Baptists, the Anglicans, and various non-denominational ministries such as the Full Gospel Men’s Fellowship. But I would be my own man under God, always bearing witness to the truth as I understand it. I would work for renewal within the existing churches and for gospel outreach to the masses who are increasingly becoming pagan in spite of their Roman Catholic heritage.

In Buenos Aires I was with a young Christian Church missionary who has gone to that bewildering metropolis of eleven million people out of college. And is he expected to found a “Christian Church” after the order of those in the Midwest in that old Argentine culture that is as much European as it is Spanish? He is presently attending a Baptist Church where he is enlarging his circle of influence and hopes to serve Christ by reaching out to the masses through these believers. I commended him for his wisdom. My heart goes out to those missionaries who suppose they have to go it alone, a little island apart in an overwhelming sea. One such missionary in Buenos Aires meets with two Argentines each Lord’s day. I hope he is not the kind that writes back home and says “We now have two Christians in Buenos Aires.” But to be “supported” back home one usually has to be a sectarian even as a missionary.

My most delightful experience was to teach American history one evening to a class of college-age Uruguayans at a school conducted by the U.S. Information Agency, laid on me by folk at our Embassy. They were studying our Colonial history (in English), so I began to fire questions at them. They could name all twelve of the original colonies, and in order from north to south. They could tell me about both Plymouth and Jamestown, and with a little help they could distinguish between the Puritans and the Pilgrims. And they knew that the reason the Colonists came to the New World was more economic than it was religious, but they did not know about their rascality, such as the way they treated the Indians. The USIA text left that out! We talked about the Mayflower Compact, a little freedom document that anticipated the genius of the American republic. They even knew that Britishers sold themselves as indentured slaves in order to come to America, and once they had served their time many of them became rich and influential. Even waifs kidnaped from London streets by greedy sea captains eventually became builders of the new republic, as did some criminals who made the right choice when a British court would say “To prison or to America?”

But what interested them most was that I was from Texas, and like all foreigners they associated Dallas with the Kennedy assassination, but in their case not Dallas, which has not yet reached the TV screens in Uruguay, which is just as well.

My last night in that area (the two beautiful capitals, Montevideo and Buenos Aires are across a wide, wide river from each other) was in the home of Jacob and Marilyn Vincent, longtime readers of this journal, in Buenos Aires, who are beautiful bilingual, multi-cultured Christians and longtime missionaries. Jake and I tried to spot Halley’s Comet late that night since we were in the right part of the world for it, but it was Marilyn, who stayed up longer, who said she saw something fuzzy. But Jake did show me the “Pink House,” from the balcony of which dictator Juan Domingo Peron addressed his millions, yes millions, and from the roof of which his wife and successor, Eva, was whisked away by helicopter and held prisoner to her surprise. Politically, it has been touch and go for Argentina ever since, a common ailment among South American countries.

But Brazil is the country to watch, for it is destined to be a world power equal to Russia and the United States. So thinks an Embassy official with whom I visited. He also gave me his prescription for what ails South American countries. They must create a common market and allow for the competition and free enterprise that will allow the old family businesses to die. But most of all the thinking (or lack of it) of South Americans must change, and this will take an educational program extending for generations. Critical, analytical, innovative thinking is the only thing that will in time build political and economic stability.

Before I left Buenos Aires I was able to visit the Collecto Christianos, a handsome Church of Christ facility financed by American churches, where I met with a few missionaries, men and women, from Christian Churches as well as Churches of Christ. Contact between such missionaries has thus far been negligible. In such places one finds able, dedicated people who seem to be confronted with an impossible task. I asked one missionary what methods had he found effective. He had not found any effective methods.

But there are the Mormons with many churches in the area and an elegant temple in Buenos Aires, lighted by night and graced by the angel Moroni himself — and not a Salamander! So I suppose it is a question of what one wants for South America and the world.

The “Boston Church” Church of Christ missionaries will soon be arriving in Buenos Aires with their “Crossroads” methods, which have won thousands in Boston and already hundreds in London and Paris. They’ll show them how to do it! But it will not likely be the method used by that Christian Church brother, who moves among the denominations already there, the Baptists in particular, and says, “Let’s do it together for Jesus’ sake.” — the Editor