Power and Identity in the Global Church: by Howell Brian M.;Zehner Edwin;

Author:Howell, Brian M.;Zehner, Edwin;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: William Carey Publishing

Missionaries and Mission Agencies

Almost all missionary efforts in the Basque Country have largely ignored Basque language and culture. Indeed, most missionaries arrived in the Basque Country with little awareness of Basque culture or the persecution this population was experiencing, or had experienced, under Franco. Of course, this ignorance of Basque culture was somewhat understandable during the Franco regime since, as previously stated, Basque culture had largely gone underground. I have Spanish friends in the town where we lived who came to the Basque Country as children and tell of how they grew up almost totally unaware of the Basque culture that was all around them. One friend told of how, as a child, she would play at a friend’s house where the parents spoke Euskara. They taught her songs in the language, as well as some Basque phrases, but she went to a different school than her friend so had limited exposure to other Basque families in the town. (Her friend went to ikastola, a semi-clandestine school movement where everything was taught in the Basque language, and where many ethnic Basques sent their children). Since at that time it was not allowed to use Euskara in public, she virtually never heard the language on the street. When she entered high school, however, things changed. She came into contact with Basque young people who befriended her, and she has since become fluent in Euskara and is now quite involved in this “other” world of Basque culture and society. If this was the experience of people who grew up in the Basque Country during the Franco regime, it is little wonder that missionaries arriving during this time might not have been too aware of the importance placed on the Basque language and culture by a large segment of the population they were trying to reach.

One of the mission organizations that has been working in the Basque Country for some time now is CAM International.69 In the early 1970s CAM was invited to send missionaries to Spain by the indigenous Christian organization Evangelismo en Acción (Evangelism in Action). First based in Barcelona, CAM missionaries, recognizing the need for evangelism in the Basque Country, began moving there in 1973. That year a CAM missionary family arrived in Donostia and took over the work of another family with a different mission that was leaving. With a list of contacts and a small group of young people who met in his home for Bible studies, the CAM missionary eventually increased the size of the group until, in 1975, they purchased and renovated a local (meeting place) and began holding church services there. The name Iglesia Evangélica (Evangelical Church) was placed above the entrance, over protests of some of the young people who felt that “Evangelical” carried too much negative baggage in the Basque Country—it was viewed as a cult by many. As a result, when the group started meeting in the building, several of these young people stopped attending. As the missionary explained to me several

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