William Donald McClure
TWENTIETH-CENTURY MARTYRS:
“YANKEE, GO HOME”
The twentieth century opened with the Boxer uprising in China that took the lives of more Protestant missionaries than any other such crisis in history—a crisis that in some ways was a preview of the rest of the century. As independence movements emerged in developing nations, foreigners were viewed as oppressors, with little differentiation made between diplomats or merchants or missionaries. All whites were suspected of being part of an imperialist conspiracy to exploit the weaker nations of the world.
Political turbulence, then, confronted missionaries more and more as the twentieth century progressed. No longer did the idea of martyrdom conjure up images of missionaries being eaten by cannibals, but rather images of missionaries facing hostile mobs, guerrilla warfare, and terrorist attacks. Asia, Africa, and Latin America were torn by militarist movements during the second half of the twentieth century, and missionaries and national Christians were sometimes slain in the process.
But that is not to say that much of the persecution and martyrdom of Christians in the twentieth century was not religiously oriented. Indeed, the century ended with the appalling murder and martyrdom of Graham Staines and his two sons, ten-year-old Phillip and six-year-old Timothy. Staines, a native of Australia, had gone to India in 1965, and was the director of the Leprosy Mission in Baripada, Orissa. Thirty-four years later, on the night of January 23, 1999, while ministering at a jungle outpost, he and his sons were burned alive while they slept in their jeep. Those responsible for the crime were seeking to eradicate Christianity from India.
As horrendous as such incidents have been, national Christians have paid an even higher price in their commitment to the gospel. During the Boxer Rebellion, hundreds of dedicated Chinese evangelists were martyred for their faith—none more heroically than Chang Sen. Though blind, Chang had been one of the most effective itinerant evangelists Manchuria had ever known, but his success made him the brunt of severe persecution. At the height of the Boxer uprising, he was singled out for retribution. Fearing the worst, he hid in a cave, but when word reached him that fifty Christians would be killed if his whereabouts were not disclosed, he willingly came out of hiding, knowing full well the consequences. Even in death, however, he had a vibrant testimony—one that made his executioners so fearful that they insisted his body be cremated, fearing that he, like Christ, would rise from the dead.
World War II sparked many violent attacks against missionaries, including what became known as the Hopevale massacre of 1943 that cost the lives of a dozen American missionaries. Hopevale was the name given to the makeshift mountain camp in a deeply wooded area on the island of Panay in the Philippines where the missionaries had fled to safety. Among them were Dr. Frederick Meyer, a graduate of Yale Medical School, and Dr. Francis Howard Rose, a graduate of the University of Chicago—both beloved and respected doctors among the Filipinos. For more than a year they hid themselves at the camp, continuing all the while to minister physically and spiritually to the people in the nearby villages. Then, in December of 1943, they were discovered and executed by Japanese soldiers.
Following the war, except for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, there was a relative lull in religious persecution worldwide. But beginning in the 1960s with the outbreak of violent independence movements in several areas of the world, the persecution and martyrdom of Christians once again hit the frontpage headlines.
Despite such threats, the church in these regions sometimes grows faster than in areas of the world that are free from persecution and violence. Centuries ago St. Augustine of Hippo singled out Christian martyrs for special praise—words that have provided comfort through the ages:
Martyrs are holy men of God who fought or stood for truth, even unto death, so that the Word of God may be made known and falsehood and fictions be overcome. Such a sacrifice is offered to God alone, thus the martyr is received in heavenly honor. This means that God has rewarded the faith of the martyr with so much grace that death, which seems to be the enemy of life, becomes in reality an ally that helps man enter into life.1
It is misguided, however, to presume that persecution and martyrdom have a positive effect on the Christian community. “Many contemporary authors and church leaders continue to assume,” writes Vernon Sterk, “that where there is persecution, the growth of the church will inevitably follow, reflecting Tertullian’s well-known statement ‘The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.’” Such an inference is unfounded. “The conclusion of my study and experience,” Sterk says (referring to his many years of ministry in Chiapas, Mexico), is that “persecution negatively affects the growth of the church…. Probably the most common and widely recognized negative result of persecution is that of the reversion of Christians.”2
Sometimes Christian missionaries are attacked because they are seen to be part of an opposing political regime, are caught in the crossfire, or are seen as a threat to the lives of the native people.
Persecution and martyrdom are closely connected—though the definition of martyrdom is not always precise. Sometimes Christian missionaries are attacked because they are perceived to be part of an opposing political regime or because they are caught in the crossfire or because they are seen as a threat to the lives of the native people—as in the case of those slain by the Aucas of Ecuador. So the verdict is still out as to whether the term applies only to those who are killed specifically for their professed Christian faith—as was often the case in the early church—or whether the term is applied more broadly to those who died while serving amid danger and disease.
Martyrdom in the early church was often considered a death so holy that it was something to be sought after or longed for, and that perspective was expressed in more recent times when missionaries served in places where an untimely death was almost inevitable. Ann Martin Hinderer is an example. By going to Africa in the early 1850s, she proclaimed her willingness to lay down her life. “I longed to be a martyr…. When I see what is the need, I feel that if I had twenty lives, I would gladly give them.”3
That willingness—or eagerness—to lay down one’s life, however, was not the missionary mentality, especially among Protestants, as the twentieth century progressed. In fact, the focus was on safety and evacuation of mission personnel when life was in danger—sometimes leaving national Christians at a greater risk. But mission agencies drew the line at paying ransoms to free missionaries, reasoning that if by kidnapping, terrorists could reap financial rewards, they would be more likely to repeat their actions. This matter of paying a ransom was broached when Betty and John Stam were taken hostage in 1934 and would arise again and again in the decades that followed.
In 2003, after Martin and Gracia Burnham, of New Tribes Mission, were taken hostage in the Philippines, the matter came to a head with a Christianity Today cover-story entitled, “Did Martin Die Needlessly?” “Gracia Burnham is unapologetic in her support of ransom payments to free hostages,” writes Ted Olsen. To those who would argue that ransom risks the lives of other missionaries, her response was that they would feel the same way she did if they experienced what she had. Nor did she express concern about the fear that “blood money” would be used for evil purposes. She quoted her husband’s rationale: “If we can trust the Lord for a million dollar [ransom], which is something totally beyond our reach, we can trust the Lord that the million dollars never buys a weapon or blows anybody up.”4
The case of the Burnhams that drew wide media coverage might imply that religious persecution and martyrdom is so rare that it makes headlines. However, Paul Marshall strongly argues otherwise. His book Their Blood Cries Out focuses primarily on the unnamed believers who live in regions where religious freedom is unknown:
This book is about a spiritual plague. It tells of massacre, rape, torture, slavery, beatings, mutilations, and imprisonment. It also tells of the pervasive patterns of extortion, harassment, family division, and crippling discrimination in employment and education. This plague affects over two hundred million people, with an additional four hundred million suffering from discrimination and legal impediments.5
Betty and John Stam and China Martyrs
During the years following the Boxer uprising, China was anything but free from hostility toward foreigners. Missionaries were viewed with the deepest suspicion, even though their work was largely humanitarian in nature. They were blamed for spreading a cholera epidemic that swept across the northern provinces in 1902, and as a result, two CIM missionaries were killed by a mob. Another brutal attack against missionaries occurred near Hong Kong in 1905 and resulted in five deaths, including that of the greatly loved Dr. Eleanor Chestnut.
After coming to China in 1893 under the American Presbyterian Board, Chestnut built a hospital, using her own money to buy the bricks. Even before the hospital was completed, she was performing surgery—in her own bathroom for want of a better place. One such operation involved the amputation of a coolie’s leg. Complications arose and skin grafts were needed. Later, the doctor was questioned about a leg problem from which she herself was suffering. “Oh, it’s nothing,” she answered, brushing off the inquiry. But a nurse revealed that the skin graft for the “good-for-nothing coolie” had come from Dr. Chestnut’s own leg while using only a local anesthetic.6
During the Boxer Rebellion, Dr. Chestnut remained on her post longer than most missionaries, and she returned the following year. Then in 1905, while she was busy working at the hospital with four other missionaries, a mob stormed the building. Although she escaped in time to alert authorities, she returned to the scene to help rescue her colleagues. It was too late. Her colleagues had been slain. But there were others who needed her help. Her final act of service to the Chinese people whom she so loved was to rip a piece of material from her own dress to bandage the forehead of a child who had been wounded.
Despite such incidents, the early years of the twentieth century in China were relatively peaceful ones during which the Christian community greatly expanded. By the 1920s, though, the Chinese political scene was in chaos. Sun Yat-sen’s authority was being challenged on every side. There were more than a dozen “governments” centered in various cities, and military factions ruled the countryside. In 1925 Sun Yat-sen died, and the fate of foreigners in China became more tenuous than ever. The Communists, under the leadership of Mao Zedong, were gaining influence, and several missionaries were killed as a result of apparent Communist instigation. The situation only seemed to worsen when Chiang Kai-shek arose as an opposition leader. By 1927 his southern armies were sweeping across China, leaving thousands dead in the wake. Missionaries were ordered out, and during 1927 alone some fifty percent of all foreign missionaries in China left, never to return again.
It would seem that such chaotic political turmoil would have resulted in a curtailment of missionary work for the CIM, but to the contrary, “just when the general situation was at its worst in 1929, Hoste [the general director] telegraphed to the home countries an appeal for 200 workers (the majority to be men) in the next two years.”The goal was met numerically and on schedule, but “disappointingly, only eighty-four were men.”7 Despite the dangers they knew lay ahead, young women eagerly volunteered. Among them was Betty Scott, a graduate of Moody Bible Institute and the daughter of Presbyterian missionaries to China.
While at Moody, Scott had attended the CIM weekly prayer meetings, and there she became acquainted with John Stam, who also was prepared to volunteer to be one of the two hundred called for. But although Betty and John were attracted to each other and their future ambitions were pointing in the same direction, a personal desire for marriage was seen as secondary. To his father John wrote:
Betty knows that, in all fairness and love to her, I cannot ask her to enter into an engagement with years to wait…. The China Inland Mission has appealed for men, single men, to itinerate in sections where it would be almost impossible to take a woman, until more settled work has been commenced…. Some time ago I promised the Lord that, if fitted for this forward movement, I would gladly go into it, so now I cannot back down without sufficient reason, merely upon personal considerations.8
In the fall of 1931 Betty sailed for China, while John remained at Moody to complete his senior year. As the class speaker for his graduation ceremony, he was well aware of the depressed American economy and the political crises abroad. Yet he challenged his fellow students to go forward with the task of world evangelism:
Shall we beat a retreat, and turn back from our high calling in Christ Jesus; or dare we advance at God’s command, in the face of the impossible?… Let us remind ourselves that the Great Commission was never qualified by clauses calling for advance only if funds were plentiful and [there is] no hardship or self-denial involved. On the contrary, we are told to expect tribulation and even persecution, but with it victory in Christ.9
There was reason to expect persecution. The situation in China remained grim. There were many acts of violence against missionaries in 1932, though none more shocking than the killing of eleven missionaries in Sian serving under the Scandinavian Alliance Mission (now TEAM).
Following his graduation in the fall of 1932, John Stam sailed for China, not expecting to see Betty. Just before he arrived in China, however, she had returned to Shanghai for medical reasons, and their reunion resulted in their engagement. A year later they were married at the home of Betty’s parents in Tsi-nan, and during the year that followed, they continued their language study while serving at the CIM mission compound in Süancheng.
In September of 1934, Betty gave birth to a baby girl, Helen Priscilla, and that fall they were assigned to a station in the province of Anhwei where missionaries had been evacuated two years earlier. Communist activity, they were told, had diminished, and the local magistrate personally guaranteed their safety, assuring them that there was “no danger of Communists” in the area.10 CIM officials, anxious to reopen the station, were also convinced that the area was reasonably safe. But both the Chinese and the CIM officials had seriously misjudged the situation. The Stams arrived at the end of November, and before the first week of December had passed, they had been attacked in their home by Communist soldiers. Though placed under heavy guard, John was permitted to send a letter to his superiors:
Tsingteh, An.
Dec. 6, 1934
China Inland Mission,
Shanghai.
Dear Brethren,
My wife, baby and myself are today in the hands of the Communists, in the city of Tsingteh. Their demand is twenty thousand dollars for our release.
All our possessions and stores are in their hands, but we praise God for peace in our hearts and a meal tonight. God grant you wisdom in what you do, and us fortitude, courage and peace of heart. He is able—and a wonderful Friend in such a time.
Things happened so quickly this a.m They were in the city just a few hours after the ever-persistent rumors really became alarming, so that we could not prepare to leave in time. We were just too late.
The Lord bless and guide you, and as for us, may God be glorified whether by life or by death.
In Him,
John C. Stam11
The day after the letter was written, the Stams were forced to make a grueling march to another town. Not only were their own lives at stake, but they could overhear their guards discussing plans to kill their baby girl to avoid the bother of bringing her along. Little Helen’s life was spared, but no such fortune awaited them. After they arrived at their destination, they were stripped of their outer clothes, paraded through the streets, and publicly ridiculed while the communist guerrilla leaders urged the townspeople to come out in full force to view the execution.
A week after the execution, baby Helen was delivered in a rice basket to the home of another missionary family a hundred miles across the dangerous mountain terrain. A Chinese evangelist had found her abandoned in a house some thirty hours after the execution and took the responsibility of bringing her to safety.
The execution of the Stams was a distressing blow to the CIM, but many young people, inspired by their sacrifice, dedicated their lives to missions, and the year 1935 saw the greatest amount of money come into the mission since the stock market crash in 1929.
There were other missionary martyrs in China in the years that followed. Among them was John Birch, a man whose tireless work as a missionary has long been lost to the political society that was named after him. Birch began his missionary career in Hangchow under a Baptist mission organization in 1940 when China was at war on all fronts with the Japanese invaders. Almost immediately he was recognized for his courage as he traveled about the war-torn countryside, “slipping through Japanese occupation lines and preaching in villages where missionaries had not dared to go since the war began.”12 Later he became involved in evacuating missionaries and Chinese evangelists from the war zone, conducting a one-man rescue operation that defied all risks, bringing out as many as sixty at a time. Following the war, he remained in China despite the growing threat of communist guerillas. He continued his widespread evangelistic activity, knowing full well the risks, and it was on one such trip north that he was ambushed and killed by communist forces.
John and Betty Stam, martyred in China in 1934.
Another well-known name inscribed on the missionary death registry for China was Eric Liddell, the great Olympic athlete of 1924 whose story was portrayed in the award-winning film Chariots of Fire. Liddell grew up in China, the son of missionaries, and in 1925, only a year after his momentous Olympic victory, he returned to serve as a missionary in his own right. His ministry there spanned the period of the Sino-Japanese War, and he and his family knew firsthand the hardships and danger of missionary life. With the outbreak of World War II the political situation in China worsened, and in 1941 Liddell decided to send his wife and two children to his wife’s home in Canada until the worst of the dangers was over. Later that year, along with six other members of the London Missionary Society, he was placed under house arrest by the Japanese, and there he remained until his death early in 1945.
Though Liddell’s death was not a direct result of his imprisonment, the malnutrition and lack of adequate medical care may have contributed to it. After an extended illness and what was thought to be a nervous breakdown, later complicated by a stroke, he died. The autopsy report, however, revealed that he had suffered from a massive hemorrhage on the brain caused by a tumor. His sudden death came as a shock to his family and friends and to his fans the world over, but it was also a testimony of the sacrifice of a man who had so consistently put his faith in God above personal ambition and fame.
Paul Carlson and the Congo Martyrs
Not since the Boxer Rebellion of 1900 had so many missionaries been killed in a single year as in the Simba Rebellion in 1964 and 1965. The terror unleashed on innocent Congolese Christians and Western missionaries left thousands dead and even more to suffer from physical and emotional scars that would stay with them the rest of their lives. Dr. Helen Roseveare, beaten and raped and held captive for months, and Dr. Carl Becker later returned to serve in the Congo, but many others had their lives cut short by the very people they had come to serve. Among them was another doctor, Paul Carlson, who had served in the Congo less than two years. Most of the thirty other Protestant missionaries and nearly two hundred Catholic missionaries who were slain had served considerably longer than he and in some instances with greater distinction, but it was his story that became the most published of the Congo martyrs.
Born in California in 1928, Carlson dedicated his life for missionary service as a teenager. Following a semester at UCLA and a short stint in the navy, he enrolled in North Park College in Chicago for premed studies. While there he met Lois Lindblom, a nurse from Menominee, Michigan, and after their engagement in 1949 he returned to California to continue his medical course at Stanford University. Eight years later, with a wife, two babies, and an M.D. degree, he was ready to begin his residency. It was a hectic time, and according to Lois, “the subject of medical missions was mentioned less and less” until “eventually it disappeared completely from our discussions.” Spiritually, he was going through a difficult period in his life, questioning “the very existence of a Triune God.”13
But his repressed commitment to missions was suddenly reawakened in 1961 when he received a letter from the Christian Medical Society presenting an urgent need for medical doctors in the Congo. What caught his attention was that it was not a request for lifetime service. In fact, a follow-up letter indicated that a four-month term would be welcomed. Perhaps subconsciously hoping to fulfill his teenage commitment in four months, he accepted the call, and in June of 1961 he left Lois and the two children in Michigan and flew to the Congo.
Just one year earlier—with little warning—the Congo had been granted independence from Belgium, and the political situation was highly volatile. The new premier, Patrice Lumumba, ordered Belgians to leave, and many other foreigners followed. The government was in chaos, stripped of its leaders and civil servants. Bands of soldiers and teenage gangs roamed the cities and countryside. Professional and technical personnel were in short supply. This was the atmosphere Paul encountered when he stepped off the plane in Leopoldville in 1961.
But despite the unsettled political environment, Carlson’s five-month term in the Ubangi Province convinced him of the critical need for medical missionaries. The need was greater than he could have imagined, and the opportunities of presenting the gospel were endless. His call to missions was coming into focus. “The Paul Carlson who had returned from Congo was a new person,” Lois discovered. “His attitudes had changed, his ideals shone forth again, his purposes in life were well defined, his outlook on the future was confident. I knew that Paul had come back to himself and back to his God.”14
Despite his renewed commitment to medical missions, leaving the United States and returning to the Congo with his family was not an easy move. During the year following his five-month term in Africa, he joined a practice with doctors with whom he had worked during his residency. The security of a comfortable income was something he and Lois had never before enjoyed, as she recalled:
It was so easy to look to the undemanding side of life, to look forward to a comfortable existence, to expect the things that all women and families would like to have. It was easy to look forward with our medical colleagues to a better standard of living, as we Americans term it, in that we have all the comforts money can buy. We were on the verge of attaining that kind of life, and now we were faced with the decision that had to be made, that we had known would have to be made—and it had to be made by both of us.15
In the summer of 1963 the Carlsons arrived in the Congo as full-fledged medical missionaries—this time serving under their own denomination, the Evangelical Covenant Church of America. They were assigned to Wasolo, a mission station in a remote section of the Ubangi Province where Paul had worked before and where there were only three other medical doctors in the entire province. Almost immediately he was consumed with routine hospital work, attending to an average of two hundred patients a day, while Lois was adjusting to running a household with no modern conveniences.
The first year went by quickly and relatively uneventfully, but by the beginning of their second year at Wasolo the scene began to change. Though Wasolo was often referred to as the “forgotten corner” of the Congo, it was not immune to rebel infiltration, and by August of 1964 the Simbas were threatening the government defenses in that area. Not wanting to take unnecessary risks, Paul escorted Lois and the children across the border to the Central African Republic and then returned to the hospital to make final preparations before he himself would evacuate.
During the days that followed, he was busy handling routine cases as well as combat casualties. He crossed the river on Sunday to visit his family, promising to return the following Wednesday. But the visit never took place. The Simbas moved in, and before he could escape, he was taken into captivity. He would endure three months of mental and physical torture before his life would be taken.
The publicity surrounding Carlson’s death in some ways overshadowed the heroic sacrifices made by other missionaries in the Congo—particularly American missionaries, who were identified as tools of American imperialism. Some, though, were killed indiscriminately by Simba guerrillas. Irene Ferred and Ruth Hege, single Baptist missionaries, were attacked in their house out in the Kwilu bush by drunken teenage rebels, and only Ruth survived to tell the story.
Hector McMillan, a Canadian, was another missionary to die at the hands of the Simbas. He, his wife Ione, and his six sons, along with several other UFM (Unevangelized Fields Mission) missionaries, were trapped at Kilometer Eight, their mission station just outside Stanleyville. Escape routes were closed, and there was no place to go. For Ione the trauma of those harrowing days was ironic. Her own call to missions had been influenced by the deaths of John and Betty Stam. She felt God wanted her to go to China to help fill the void they had left behind. But China closed its doors, and Ione went to serve in the Congo instead, where she met and married Hector McMillan. Now in 1964 and six sons later, she found herself and her family in the midst of violent conflict no less terrifying than what the Stams had faced.
The attack on Kilometer Eight came suddenly. Hector was gunned down point-blank by a Simba rebel, and two of the McMillan boys were wounded. It was a day of infamy, but for Ione and the other missionaries there was no time to grieve. They had to get out as soon as possible. Al Larson, the senior UFM missionary in the area, arrived with government mercenaries soon after the attack to help evacuate the survivors. Space on the trucks was limited. There was no room for baggage, the mercenaries insisted—only room for “living” people. Hector’s body would have to remain behind.
What might have been the ultimate devastation for Ione turned into a testimony of God’s grace—a testimony she had been strangely prepared for by reading a biography of Adoniram Judson. Judson’s mental breakdown following the death of Ann had been exacerbated by morbid thoughts of her decaying body, and that account made a deep impression on her. The day before the tragedy, she had vowed that she would never allow the same to happen to her: “If a member of my family is ever taken in death, by God’s help I am not going to waste time and the energies He gave me worrying over a body of clay.” “Why this decision just yesterday?” writes Homer Dowdy. “Why had she read so recently about Adoniram Judson’s bitter experience? Why had someone once bought this book, perhaps put it aside, only for her to pick it up years later? Why had the great missionary struggled through this grievous vale? It was part of God’s plan—God’s perfect will—for her at this precise moment.”16
Another North American missionary brutally murdered by the Simbas was Jay Tucker, who grew up in Arkansas. Like the McMillans, Jay and his wife were married after coming to the Congo, and for twenty-five years they carried out a fruitful ministry under the auspices of the Assemblies of God. In early November of 1964, Jay was arrested by the Simbas; and some three weeks later, when the rebels realized the government troops were closing in on them, they retaliated and turned their vengeance on their captives. An Italian priest was the first to be singled out for execution. Jay Tucker was next.
In the near darkness someone swung a bottle across the missionary’s face. With a dull thump the bottle broke; blood covered the face that in agony turned to grovel in the dirt. In the glassy-eyed glee that their hemp afforded, the Simbas began to whoop as they searched for sticks to finish the job. Those finding sticks made use of them, others their rifle butts. They took turns at hitting the missionary. Starting at the neck, they worked slowly down his back, striking again each time their victim squirmed.17
The nearly three months of captivity had been ones of mental and physical torture for Paul Carlson. Even before his captivity, articles had surfaced in American newspapers telling of his courageous and sacrificial medical work, and after his capture more articles appeared, giving him publicity that may very well have complicated his situation in the Congo. The Simbas did not want the world to think they were persecuting a saintly hero, so they twisted the facts; and by late October, Radio Stanleyville was broadcasting reports of the upcoming trial of “Major Carlson,” an American mercenary who was charged with being a spy. For more than two weeks there was no further news, but then in mid-November, the news flashed over the wires that he had been tried and was facing execution.
Realizing his value as a hostage, the rebels postponed his execution when negotiations seemed imminent.
On November 24, 1964, only hours before Hector McMillan was slain at Kilometer Eight and Jay Tucker was murdered at Paulis, Paul Carlson was shot down in the streets of Stanleyville. After two days of relative peace, the hostages had awakened that morning to the sound of planes overhead and tense confusion all around them. The rescue operation had begun. Belgian paratroopers were filling the streets, and the sound of machine guns was coming closer. The prisoners were herded outside, where they fell flat on the street, hoping to avoid the crossfire. After a time the shooting stopped. It was an eerie silence—no comfort to the exposed prisoners lying in the street. They were sitting ducks. They had to run for cover—or so they thought. In an act of desperation, Paul and several others raced to the closest building. It was a fatal mistake. The other prisoners made it, but Paul, who was behind and had difficulty scaling the wall after helping another missionary get over it, was riddled with bullets. In a matter of minutes, the rescue operation was over, but for Paul it was too late.
The funeral, conducted by Congolese pastors, was a moving scene. Hundreds of Congolese Christians, carrying flowers and palm branches, poured into the village of Karawa where the service was held. It was their way of showing appreciation to a man who had sacrificed all for them—a man whose life’s creed was summed up in the verse on his grave marker, written in the Lingala tongue: “Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.”18
Betty Olsen and the Vietnam Martyrs
While missionaries were flooding into China during the nineteenth century, little attention was being paid to what was then referred to as Indo-China—the three small Buddhist countries to the south:Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. Not until the twentieth century did Protestant missionaries enter that region, and even then the work was conducted primarily by one mission, the Christian and Missionary Alliance—until the missionaries were expelled in the 1970s. From the outset, the region had been a very difficult area for Christian missions. In many instances the nationals themselves were receptive to the gospel, but there was opposition from the ruling powers. During the French colonial regime, evangelistic work was severely curtailed, and when the Japanese moved in during World War II, the missionaries who refused to leave were confined to internment camps.
The defeat of the Japanese in 1945 that brought an end to the war in Asia brought no lasting peace to Indo-China. For eight years, beginning in 1946, Ho Chi Minh and his communist guerrillas fought the French colonial regime in Vietnam until the French withdrew and left the country divided along the seventeenth parallel. But still there was no peace, and when Vietnamese civilians began fleeing from the communist-controlled North to the South, pressures from the North increased. Communist guerrillas began terrorizing villagers, and the government in Saigon retaliated. Then, with the introduction of the American soldiers, the conflict developed into a full-scale war, and American missionaries were in danger as never before.
Even before full-scale American military involvement, missionaries had been the brunt of guerrilla hostility. The very fact that the United States was assisting South Vietnam militarily outraged the Viet Cong and Hanoi officials, and missionaries were viewed as part of a capitalist-imperialist conspiracy to control the region. Some missionaries were evacuated, especially from areas known to be heavily infiltrated with Viet Cong. Nevertheless, it came as a shock when three American missionaries were taken captive in 1962. That they were serving at a leprosy hospital had given them a false sense of security. Dr. Ardel Vietti, a medical doctor; Archie Mitchell, the hospital director; and Dan Gerber, a Mennonite staff worker, were taken at gun-point into the dense jungle, never to be heard from again. Rumors of their whereabouts surfaced periodically, but no word as to their fate at the hands of their captors.
Left unscathed from the attack at the leprosy compound were Betty Mitchell and her children, and a nurse, Ruth Wilting, who on the day of the attack was sewing her wedding dress for her upcoming marriage to Dan Gerber. They escaped the following morning to the nearby provincial capital of Banmethuot and continued in their mission duties, hoping every day for news of their loved ones.
It was in Banmethuot, six years later, that the greatest loss of missionary lives occurred. On January 30, 1968, the day of Tet (the Vietnamese year of the monkey), the Viet Cong moved into the mission compound, killing five American missionaries (including Ruth Wilting) and a four-year-old child. Less fortunate than the dead were Betty Olsen and Hank Blood, who were taken captive, along with Mike Benge, an American AID officer. For several months they suffered indescribable torture and humiliation before Olsen and Blood also died.
Betty Olsen did not fit the profile for a missionary hero. Many of those who had known her in earlier years doubted her usefulness in missionary service altogether. Yet in the early hours of Tet, she risked her life as she nursed the critical wounds of little Carolyn Griswold (who later died), and in the grueling months of suffering that followed, she served faithfully.
Olsen, a “self-possessed, trim redhead,” was thirty-four years old at the time of the Banmethuot killings.19 She was a registered nurse who had served for less than three years with the Alliance in Vietnam. Missionary work, however, was not new to her. She had been raised in Africa, the daughter of missionaries, and some of her happiest memories were of her time spent there. But her childhood days were also filled with turmoil. Her earliest recollections were of her parents consumed in the work of the mission, often away for days at a time visiting African churches. When she was eight years old, she was sent away to school for eight months each year, where she spent many homesick nights crying herself to sleep. For her, boarding school was not a pleasant experience. She rebelled against the rules and resisted close relationships with others, fearing the hurt that would inevitably come when separations occurred. Her insecurities as a teenager were only exacerbated when, just before her seventeenth birthday, she lost her mother to cancer.
She completed high school in the United States and then returned to Africa, still struggling with emotional insecurities and craving love and attention from her father, whose attention was focused on his hectic schedule and plans for remarriage. After he remarried, she returned to the United States and took nurses training at a hospital in Brooklyn before enrolling at Nyack Missionary College to prepare for a missionary career.
Yet there was no real happiness. She desperately wanted marriage and a family of her own, but the relationship she hoped for never developed. After graduating in 1962, she was convinced that the Alliance would not accept her as a candidate on her own merits, so she went to Africa on her own to work with her father and stepmother. It was difficult, however, for her to suppress her anger, and after a time she became so difficult to work with that she was asked to leave.
At the age of twenty-nine she found herself in Chicago working as a nurse and thoroughly defeated in her Christian life. So depressed was she that she contemplated suicide. But after sessions with her church youth counselor, she was prepared to move ahead. The counselor was Bill Gothard, who went on to develop a seminar known as Institute in Basic Youth Conflicts, “based largely on the questions Betty Olsen asked.”20
If ever principles of Christian living were desperately needed, it was during the months that Olsen endured mental and physical torment at the hands of her Viet Cong captors in the steamy insect-infested jungle. For days and weeks at a time she, along with Hank Blood and Mike Benge, was forced to march twelve to fourteen hours a day, sustained only by meager rice rations. All three suffered from dengue fever that caused high fever and chills. Parasitic skin diseases brought on extreme discomfort; and for Olsen, who remained clothed in the dress she was captured in, bloodsucking leeches by the dozens clung to her legs as she was prodded on without stopping to rest.
Awful as her ordeal was, she was the healthiest of the three during most of those agonizing months of the jungle death march. Benge contracted a severe case of malaria and for more than a month was delirious. Blood, however, suffered the most during the early months of captivity. A middle-aged man and father of three whose eight years in Vietnam as a Wycliffe Bible translator had involved sedentary work, he simply could not withstand the rigors and deprivations of the debilitating marches. Kidney stones, painful boils, and finally pneumonia that was left untreated during days of drenching rain led to his death in mid-July after more than five months of agony.
By September, after nearly eight months on the jungle trails, the end seemed near for Olsen and Benge as well. “Their hair turned gray. They lost their body hair, their nails stopped growing. Their teeth were loose with bleeding gums”—all signs of malnutrition.21 Olsen’s legs began swelling, making it extremely difficult for her to walk, especially at the pace the guards insisted on. When she fell down, she was beaten. She pleaded with her captors to go on and let her die on the jungle path, but her cries were ignored. Her final days defy description. Suffering from dysentery that caused severe diarrhea, she “became so weak she couldn’t get out of her hammock” and “she had to lie in her own defecation.”22Benge nursed her the best he could, but her condition only deteriorated. Her thirty-fifth birthday found her moaning in pain in her filthy hammock, and two days later she was dead.
Shortly after she died, Benge was taken to a POW camp, where he was imprisoned with other Americans. There he endured beatings and nearly a year in solitary confinement before he was transferred to the “Hanoi Hilton,” where again he was kept in solitary for much of the time. In January of 1973, after nearly five years of captivity, he, along with most of the other POWs, was released as a condition of the American military pullout.
The exhilaration of being released was tempered by the grueling ordeal of recounting to the families of Hank Blood and Betty Olsen the grim details of their agonizing captivity. His story included more than the nightmare of the Vietnam jungle though. He told how he himself put his trust in God through their selfless witness to him, and how they hid their own meager rations to share with captured native Christians whose rations were even less. In Olsen, the once angry young woman, Mike found “the most unselfish person he had ever known.” Her love was more than he could comprehend: “She never showed any bitterness or resentment. To the end she loved the ones who mistreated her.”23
Chet Bitterman and Latin America Martyrs
In the 1970s and 1980s, terrorism periodically sent shock waves through the missionary community—often accused of plotting to overthrow revolutionary governments or of being informants for the CIA (charges that were apparently true in some instances). But missionaries were not the targets of leftist guerrillas only. In Latin America and elsewhere, missionaries (particularly Roman Catholic) were sometimes associated with leftist movements, and in several instances terrorist attacks on them were instigated and carried out by right-wing government factions. Such was apparently the case in the 1980 deaths of three American Maryknoll nuns and a lay worker in El Salvador. Though their work involved caring for homeless children displaced by the war, they were perceived as aiding the rebel cause and were brutally murdered as a result.
In December of 1981, on the anniversary of the nuns’ deaths, the Catholic Church, at the prompting of its missionaries to Latin America, began a year of commemoration called the “Year of the Martyrs.” Those commemorated were not only the “El Salvador Four” but also scores of other missionaries and lay workers whose lives had been lost in Latin American civil strife. Among them was Stanley Rother, a red-bearded Catholic priest from Okarche, Oklahoma, who only months earlier was found shot in the head in his house at a Guatemala village where he had worked among the Cakchiquel Indians for thirteen years. Though he was considered “a real low-key type,” and was the “most conservative” of the Catholic priests in the area,24 his name was nevertheless placed on a right-wing hit list, and as such he became the ninth priest in less than nine months to die as a result of Guatemala’s political turmoil.
The most publicized Protestant to be shot by Latin American terrorists during these years was Chet Bitterman, but he was not alone in being victimized by such a senseless outrage. In September of 1981, John Troyer was shot and killed in Guatemala. The twenty-eight-year-old Mennonite missionary from Michigan was gunned down in front of his wife and five children by a band of terrorists shouting anti-American slogans. His partner, Gary Miller, though shot in the chest, survived the ordeal. The gunmen were later identified as a leftist group calling themselves the Guerrilla Army of the Poor.
Acts of terrorism did not take mission leaders by surprise. They were well aware of this newest threat to their work, and some made policy decisions regarding their response in the event of such action. In 1975 Wycliffe members voted that the mission should not yield to terrorists’ demands, recognizing that while concessions might free an individual hostage, such action would only serve to jeopardize other missionaries the world over.
That statement of policy, combined with the excessive demands, prevented Wycliffe Bible Translators and the Summer Institute of Linguistics from even considering submitting to Colombian terrorist demands early in 1981 when Chet Bitterman was kidnapped and held for forty-eight days. While government and mission officials worked feverishly to secure his release, capitulating to the terrorist demands that Wycliffe leave the country was never an option.
Bitterman was new on the scene in Colombia, having arrived in the summer of 1979 with his wife Brenda, who was pregnant with their second child. He was the oldest of eight children, all born and raised in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. After high school he enrolled at Columbia Bible College, and in 1976 he married Brenda Gardner, the daughter of Wycliffe missionaries to Colombia. Although he was determined to become a missionary linguist even before he met her, linguistics did not come easy for him. He attended the Summer Institute of Linguistics for two summers but became discouraged by the slow progress he was making.
The Bittermans had initially hoped to serve as missionary linguists in Malaysia, but Wycliffe officials requested that they go to Colombia instead. Once in Colombia they encountered obstacles as they sought to become involved in the work. They had unsuccessfully attempted to begin work with three different language groups and had finally made arrangements to go to the Caryonaspeaking Indians when Chet became ill and was sent to Bogota for gall bladder surgery.
The kidnapping occurred while Chet was staying at the SIL residence in Bogota awaiting surgery. Terrorists knocked at the door at 6:30 A.M. and then burst in with revolvers and machine guns. Sylvia Riggs, a Wycliffe member, later described what happened after she was awakened by one of the hooded terrorists: “They took us all to the living room and made us lie facedown on the floor while they tied our hands and feet and gagged us. There were 12 of us adults and five children…. During the course of the hour that we lay there, my hands began to hurt from the rope tied around my wrists and I began to tremble from the cold of the cement floor.”25 The paralyzing fear that gripped those seventeen helpless victims as they lay on the floor that morning of January 19, would never be forgotten, but for sixteen of them the physical trauma was over by 8:00 A.M.
For Bitterman the nightmare had only begun. Soon after the terrorists had attacked, it became apparent that the individual they really wanted was Al Wheeler, the director of the Bogota SIL office. When they discovered he was not among the group, they chose Bitterman instead, forcing him at gun-point into a car. Then they drove away, giving no clue as to their motives. The first real indication of why he was kidnapped came four days later when the terrorists, identifying themselves as the “M—19,” expressed their demands in writing: “Chet Bitterman will be executed unless the Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL) and all its members leave Colombia by 6:00 P.M. February 19.”26
Once the demands were made known, attempts were made to negotiate, and pleas came from everywhere begging the terrorists to spare his life. Garcia Herraros, a Catholic priest, wrote an open letter that was printed on the front page of a Bogota newspaper: “We want to ask the kidnappers to free this man who has dedicated his life to the extremely noble task of translating the Bible into an Indian language. We can’t become insensitive or indifferent to the pain of our Protestant brothers. We esteem and respect them. We appreciate their efforts of sharing the love of Christ. We are with them in this moment of pain.”27
When the February 19 deadline passed, there was a sense of relief. Perhaps the terrorists would realize that their goals were futile. But every glimmer of hope was quickly dashed by the reality of the situation. New and conflicting deadlines were set, and rumors surfaced almost daily that the execution had already been carried out. It was a nightmare for Brenda and her fellow WBT/SIL colleagues. For Bitterman the ordeal may have been less traumatic than it was for his loved ones.
During the forty-eight days of his captivity, he was treated reasonably well. He shared the gospel with them, argued with them, and played chess with them. “We’ve even become friends,” he wrote, “and we respect each other, though we view the world from opposite poles.”28 What “friendship” was established between him and his captors, though, did not stay his execution on March 7. He was shot once through the heart, and his body was left in a bus along a street in Bogota.
In Columbia, South Carolina, Chet’s brother learned of the news as a result of a chance look at a teletype machine. In Huntington Beach, California, Wycliffe’s U.S. director Bernie May was awakened by a long-distance telephone call…. In Lancaster, Pennsylvania, Chet’s parents got the word from a local newspaper reporter. And in Bogota, Colombia, the early-morning stillness was jarred for Chet’s wife when a nearby shopkeeper banged on the gate yelling a message that couldn’t wait: “They’ve found Chet’s body in a bus.”29
The publicity surrounding Chet Bitterman’s kidnapping and death brought an outpouring of sympathy and support for the Bitterman family and for WBT/SIL. Cam Townsend reported that more than two hundred individuals had volunteered to take his place. Townsend, in Colombia for the memorial service, was overwhelmed with the response. “The whole country was expressing sympathy to us. Everyone from the president to the policeman who had tears in his eyes when he called on us, was wonderful.”30
For Bitterman’s family, the news of his death was accepted with an amazing serenity. Yet there were the inevitable questions. Why had God allowed the ordeal to end the way it did? The problem with his death, Chet’s father confessed, “is that we so completely misread God’s intent.”
We fully expected Chet to lead his captors to the Lord…. We expected God to release Chet, perhaps in some miraculous way, so the capture of missionaries would become less attractive to revolutionary-type people…. God is still God. We know that, but how can we make the media people recognize it? We anticipated telling the news reporters when Chet was released, “See what God has done?” But how is He going to do something now in a way that’ll make sense to the world? … We’ve almost concluded there’s very little, if anything, we can do to explain Chet’s death to our unsaved friends and the media people, because the answer is to be found at the spiritual level.31
For some missionaries who were killed in the line of duty, it was the untimely and unjust death that most defined the sacrificial service. But for others it was the life of ministry that far overshadowed the grievous death. This was true of William Donald “Don” McClure (1906–77), who, with his wife Lydda, served for nearly fifty years in Africa with the American Presbyterian Mission. In 1977 he was gunned down by guerrilla terrorists at a mission outpost on the border of Ethiopia and Somalia. His life was “a pilgrimage of service,” according to his biographer: “He started in the desert region around Khartoum along the Nile, traveled across the lush forests of the Upper Nile plain from Doleib Hill in the Sudan on the Sobat River among the Shulla people, to Akobo on the Pibor River among the Anuaks, to Pokwo on the Baro River, to the Gilo River, to Addis Ababa, and finally across Ethiopia to Gode among the Somali people along the Webi Shebelle at the southern edge of the vast Ogaden desert.”32
Like many missionaries, McClure was a jack-of-all-trades—a teacher, evangelist, mission strategist, agriculturist, diplomat, veterinarian, and handyman. But Africans knew him as “Dr.” McClure. He was an untrained and unlicensed physician whose clinics attracted people from miles around and surrounding districts. On one occasion, when he “had to operate on what I think was cancer of the mouth,” he lamented his frustration about his role: “Who am I to attempt such things and why does the Lord allow me to work alone out here? I am the only ‘medical officer’ for 25,000 Anuaks.”33 Most of his medical work involved treating malaria and eye infections and other more routine procedures, and through it all he tried to preserve his sense of humor, as is illustrated in one of his letters:
Then after dark I started for the house to clean up a bit for supper, but I was called to the river bank. Another canoe had come in through the rain and this time a young girl was lying in bloody water…. Then I saw her trouble was caused by an umbilical cord which had not been removed and trailed behind her as they dragged her out of the boat and laid her on the ground naked…. I was told that she had given birth to a still born baby yesterday and the placenta would not detach itself…. I stooped over to pick her up in my arms and bring her into the house where I could treat her. As I lifted her and straightened up, she suddenly clutched my neck and screamed in pain, and I heard one of the women cry, “It is out.” … I dare say this is the only case on record where a placenta was removed in this manner…. She is now sleeping quietly in my study and already feels much better.34
Amidst all his medical work, McClure did not neglect evangelism, nor was he subtle in his strong views on the subject. Indeed, he was very critical of fellow missionaries with the American Presbyterian Mission: “Our missionaries have been working here in Khartoum for thirty years, and we do not have even one outstanding convert who can attract others to the Christian faith…. I am convinced the fault lies with us…. The apostle Paul preached, converted, and then taught. We on the other hand, teach a lot of classes, then preach some, but no one is converted.”35
His emphasis on evangelism, however, did not detract him from community development. “Our primary task among these people is to lead them to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ,” he wrote, “but hand in hand with that program we must teach them to improve their social and economic standard of living.”36 He introduced irrigation and new crops that provided far more nutritional value than the durra they were then growing. He also helped market crops so that the people might rise above their subsistence living standard. Yet the Shulla church brought him the most satisfaction: “We pushed the cattle out of the cattle barn, which was the largest building in the village, but the group kept getting larger and larger. One Sunday morning we had more than a hundred people packed into stalls…. Already we have ten other Sunday schools started in different centers…. This church … was only the beginning of a great movement among our surrounding villages that is still growing.”37
His success was due partly to his insistence that converts not be “required to memorize the catechism, the Apostles’ Creed, the Lord’s Prayer, and certain passages of Scripture”—as had been the approach of other missionaries. “We will never have a villager who is able to perform such mental gymnastics,” he argued. “I want to set a new precedent. I believe that for the Shulla people, we should perform baptisms as soon as they show a desire to live a Christian life and can assure us of their sincerity in giving up their pagan worship.”38
Throughout his ministry, McClure trained others to conduct evangelistic ministry, and the churches he planted grew significantly, though not without strong opposition from the powerful tribal witchdoctors. Indeed, long before he was killed by guerrillas, his life was threatened on many occasions by practitioners of traditional religions. His response, however, was not to retreat. On one occasion, when a witchdoctor’s treatment nearly killed one of his patients, he was “determined to find the man and whip him publicly,” but he changed his mind, he confessed, after “my savage anger had cooled.” He recognized the urgency of reaching these feared individuals with the gospel because, he said, “There are hundreds of Shullas who want to become Christians, but they are too afraid of the curses of the witchdoctors, whose powers over these people is unbelievable to a foreigner.” It was a great day then, when a new Christian, La Amoleker, brought the witchdoctor to church: “Today hundreds and hundreds of people came in from the villages round about. The church was crowded to overflowing, and many had to stand outside…. Suddenly there was a stir of excitement. A lane opened up from the back for La Amoleker and Kaimybek, who was the most renowned and feared witchdoctor in all this country. He has been an enemy of this mission for forty years…. Gradually La [Amoleker] led Kaimybek to a knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ.”39
McClure’s diplomatic and evangelistic encounters included not only witch-doctors but also an emperor—Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia, who paved the way for new ministry opportunities for him. But his friendship at court ended when Haile Selassie was deposed by a military junta after six decades of ruling Ethiopia. That power vacuum led to McClure’s being shot to death by guerrillas just before he had arranged to be airlifted out of the region. His son Don, on hearing the news, left his own mission post some distance away and risked his life to go and bury his father—in Africa, the land he loved.
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
Carlson, Lois. Monganga Paul: The Congo Ministry and Martyrdom of Paul Carlson, M.D. New York: Harper & Row, 1966.
Dowdy, Homer E. Out of the Jaws of the Lion: Christian Martyrdom in the Congo. New York: Harper & Row, 1965.
Hefley, James, and Marti Hefley. By Their Blood: Christian Martyrs of the 20th Century. Milford, MI: Mott, 1979.
______. No Time for Tombstones: Life and Death in the Vietnamese Jungle. Wheaton, IL: Tyndale, 1976.
Lyall, Leslie. A Passion for the Impossible: The China Inland Mission, 1865–1965. Chicago: Moody Press, 1965.
Marshall, Paul. Their Blood Cries Out: The Untold Story of Persecution against Christians in the Modern World. Dallas: Word, 1997.
Partee, Charles. Adventure in Africa: The Story of Don McClure. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1990.
Taylor, Mrs. Howard. The Triumph of John and Betty Stam. Philadelphia: China Inland Mission, 1960.