The following open letter is a response from Latin American evangelical Christians to the sufferings of their sisters and brothers in El Salvador. The letter is from some of the board members of CELEP (Latin American Evangelical Center for Pastoral Studies), a strong voice of the evangelical movement in Latin America, based in Costa Rica. The letter, which joins the pleas of many Roman Catholics in the region, makes a direct appeal to evangelical Christians in the United States to oppose our government's policy of intervention in El Salvador.--The Editors
July, 1981
Beloved Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
It is a fact well known to all of us that the present situation in Central America is at the flash point. It is so critical that it can explode at any moment with unforeseeable consequences. One could diagnose this situation from a number of different perspectives in order to ascertain its real causes. However, the following are indisputable facts having to do, in particular, with what is happening in our sister Republic of El Salvador:
• Violence has reached the point where it is now almost impossible to control;
• The official military forces have become an instrument of repression and death, running rough-shod over many innocent people;
• Pastors and other evangelical leaders have met their deaths, their only offense being to offer bread and medicines to those that suffer, or to ask that the lives and elemental rights of those that have been taken prisoner, or have simply "disappeared," be respected; and
• Several pastors have been forced to leave the country because their lives have been threatened.
The list of specific atrocities that our Salvadorean brothers and sisters are suffering today is endless.
And what are the reasons behind all of this?
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