$Unique_ID{COW00122} $Pretitle{259} $Title{Angola Chapter 2D. Religious Groups and Religious Life} $Subtitle{} $Author{Irving Kaplan} $Affiliation{HQ, Department of the Army} $Subject{church religious protestant roman local community catholic angola groups party} $Date{1978} $Log{} Country: Angola Book: Angola, A Country Study Author: Irving Kaplan Affiliation: HQ, Department of the Army Date: 1978 Chapter 2D. Religious Groups and Religious Life Religious Affiliations Information on the religious affiliation of Angolans after independence is lacking, and the estimates available for affiliation in the colonial period are in conflict. Moreover the meaning of religious affiliation is ambiguous. An individual may, for example, claim membership (or be recorded as belonging) to a specific Christian denomination, a claim recognized by the domination and by his local community, but he may also share perceptions of the natural and supernatural order characteristic of indigenous religious systems and participate in some of the rituals embedded in those systems. Sometimes the Christian sphere of the life of a community will be institutionally separate from the indigenous sphere. In other cases the local meaning and practice of Christianity may be modified by indigenous patterns of belief and practice. The problems of conflicting data and ambiguous meaning notwithstanding, it may be useful to present available estimates as a rough approximation to the preindependence situation and as a basis for reasonable conjectures on affiliation in the late 1970s. A religious census in 1960 gave the entire white population (3.6 percent of the total) and 48 percent of all Africans as Roman Catholics. In the absence of data for mesticos (roughly 1 percent of the population), it may be assumed that half or more were Roman Catholics. The Annuario Pontificio for 1966 (information furnished by the relevant dioceses), however, gave the proportion of Roman Catholics in Angola at 36 percent and that for 1968 at roughly 40 percent. Assuming the white population at from 3 to 4 percent, African Catholics constituted roughly 33 to 36 percent in the mid- to late 1960s. The discrepancy between the official figures for 1960 (repeated in a number of sources) and those given by the Vatican publication may be accounted for in part by the fact that the 1960 figures are based on a census and that some Africans living in communities with substantial numbers of Roman Catholics or Protestants may refer to themselves as such when asked, whereas church sources are likely to list as Christians only those who meet the formal criteria for membership. In the absence of unambiguous information for the end of the colonial era, it is estimated that African Roman Catholics constituted from 40 to 45 percent of the population. Most Roman Catholics are to be found in western Angola, not only because that part of the country is the locus of the densest population, but also because Portuguese penetration into the far interior was comparatively recent and Roman Catholic missionaries tended to follow the flag. The most heavily Roman Catholic areas before independence were Cabinda Enclave, where most of the people may be included in the Kongo ethnolinguistic category but are separated from the Kongo of Angola proper not only geographically but in other respects as well. The latter are not quite so heavily Roman Catholic, and Protestantism has been very influential there. There was a substantial proportion of Roman Catholics in Luanda and Cuanza Norte districts. Luanda, particularly the city, is ethnically mixed; but there are large numbers of Mbundu in the area, and a kiMbundu dialect is the local lingua franca. Cuanza Norte is heavily Mbundu. Less heavily Catholic were the Ovimbundu-populated districts of Benguela and Huambo although Huambo has been estimated at two-thirds Catholic. In the southern and eastern districts the proportions of Roman Catholics fell off considerably. It is not possible to determine whether the not-very-cordial relations between the MPLA-Labor Party government and the Roman Catholic Church have affected church affiliation (see Church, State, and Community, this ch.). The functioning of the Roman Catholic Church in its usual fashion requires the availability of priests, and most of those were foreigners and members of missionary orders. Less than 20 percent of all Catholic clergy were Africans in the colonial era. The state formally permits the presence of foreign religious personnel, but continuing conflict may lead to their departure, weakening the institutional structure of the church. Official data in 1960 gave the proportion of Protestants in the population at 17 percent, the great bulk of them presumably Africans, although some mesticos may have been affiliated with one or another Protestant church, and one source claims 8,000 white Protestants. Here again, either the official figures are belied by another source or there was a substantial falloff by the mid-1960s. The tendency noted for individuals living near Christian communities to identify themselves as Christians of the appropriate kind applies to those living in largely Protestant communities. The World Protestant Handbook, 1968 gives the total number of communicants (full members) of the Protestant churches in Angola at 95,926 and of members of the total Christian community at 350,000. The dates for the information available for each of the churches or denominations listed vary, but in general it may be assumed to refer to the mid-1960s, and the proportion of Protestants in the category of total Christian community may therefore be estimated at under 10 percent. That category includes (in addition to communicants) other worshipers, children of Christian parents, catechumens, and members of groups associated with the church. It may be noted that, by contrast, children of Roman Catholic parents are likely to have been baptized and to be enumerated as fully Roman Catholic. Some churches (e.g., the Church of God) recognize only full communicants. In churches where the distinction was recognized the ratio between the two categories ranged from roughly two to one to as much as four to one. Altogether omitted from the 1968 handbook are figures of the Baptist Missionary Society. This mission and several smaller Baptist groups were located entirely in the northwest among the Kongo. After the uprisings of 1961 these districts were declared a military zone by the colonial authorities, and foreign missionaries were not permitted to operate. Then and thereafter, substantial numbers of Kongo fled to Zaire, and the missions dispersed northward with them. In many cases, even if the figure for total Christian community in the mid- to late 1960s is raised by 50 percent, the proportion of Protestants would have been substantially under the 17 percent given by official sources in 1960 and the proportion of communicants or full members much smaller. There was a very strong tendency for specific Protestant denominations to place their missions in particular regions and therefore to become involved with the ethnic groups living there. Lawrence W. Henderson, a Methodist missionary, has gone so far as to refer to Protestantism as a "tribal religion," by which he means not only that there was a link between specific denominations and ethnic groups, but also that the social structure of the ethnic community affected the way in which the local church was organized (see Church, State, and Community, this ch.). The fact of such links does not mean, however, that only one Protestant group carried out missionary activity among the communities of any ethnolinguistic category. Among the Ovimbundu the missionary group longest in situ consists of the smaller units that eventually came to make up the United Mission (combining the United Church of Canada and the United Church of Christ Congregational-an American group). The World Christian Handbook, 1968 gives the figure for communicants as 50,000 and that for the total Christian community as 200,000. The Plymouth Brethren (not listed in the handbook) had 7,500 full communicants in the eastern Ovimbundu territories according to Henderson; they have also made an impact in Chokwe territory immediately to the east. The Philafrican Mission (also known as the Swiss Mission) reported nearly 6,000 full members in the late 1960s and about 11,000 members in the total Christian community. There were also some Seventh Day Adventists in the area. According to the 1960 religious census about 21 percent of the Ovimbundu were Protestants, but later figures suggest a smaller percentage even if members of the total community rather than communicants are counted. The sole Protestant group active among the Mbundu was the Methodist Mission, largely sponsored by the Methodist Episcopal Church of the United States. Portuguese data for 1960 indicated that only 8 percent of the Mbundu considered themselves Protestants, but Henderson noted that the missions had considerable success among the people called Dembos (after the rugged area in which they live), a kiMbundu-speaking group strongly resistant to Portuguese rule from the beginning and active in the rebellion of 1961. Because the area came under military rule after that year, later information was not available. In addition to the Baptist Mission, several other Baptist groups have worked among the Kongo, without, however, achieving the success of the Baptist Missionary Society, a London-based group. Late 1960s or more current data are not available, but as many as 35 percent of the Kongo were considered Protestants by the official religious census of 1960. The Baptist Missionary Society's figures for 1962 showed nearly 11,000 communicants and almost 40,000 members of the total community. Even if the other Baptist missions were, together, equal in membership to the Baptist Missionary Society, Protestants would not have accounted for more than 10 percent of the Kongo. The Plymouth Brethren working among the Chokwe did not communicate information on their numbers to easily available sources, but in 1958 they claimed more than 6,000 individuals in fellowship in eighty assemblies. Henderson notes the development of a spontaneous Christian movement in the diamond territory of what is now Lunda Norte Province, in which lay Christians, working for the Diamond Company of Angola, did the first evangelical work. If these are taken into account, as many as 8 percent of the Chokwe may have been Christians in the early 1960s. The South Africa General Mission (after 1965 the Africa Evangelical Fellowship) was the only Protestant group to attempt missionary work among the very heterogeneous Nganguela category. The scattered mission stations in this sparsely settled territory have reported a total of up to 3,450 communicants and more than 10,000 in the total community; but this area was the locus of considerable military activity, and the situation in the late 1960s, let alone that in the postindependence period, was unknown. In addition to the Protestant churches directly generated by the missions and continuing in a more or less orthodox pattern, there were other groups that stemmed at least in part from the Protestant experience but expressed a peculiarly local tendency and were dominated entirely by Africans (see Church, State, and Community, this ch.). How many Angolans identified themselves with such African churches is not known, but it is reasonable to assume that numbers of Africans were (and are) attached to them. If it is assumed that roughly half of Angola's population was affiliated in some sense to either the Roman Catholic or one of the Protestant groups, then the other half is involved with indigenous religious systems. Those so involved are not likely to be isolated individuals but members of communities or parts of communities that have been little affected by missionary activity. In a state dominated by an explicitly Marxist-Leninist party, the party leaders and many of the militants are likely not to have a formal religious commitment or at any rate to deny having one. The total number of such persons, however, is probably quite small. Indigenous Religious Systems There are as many indigenous religious systems (patterns of beliefs, ritual, et cetera) as there are ethnic groups or even sections of ethnic groups. Two or more ethnic groups may share specific elements of belief, ritual, and organizational principle; but the configuration of these is peculiar to each group or section. Nevertheless certain patterns are widespread. All groups believe in the existence of a high god, but his attributes vary (for example, some groups emphasize his role as a creator, others not). Specific events in the world of human beings are not usually explained by reference to him, however, nor is a cult addressed to him. The active entities in indigenous religious systems were ancestral and nature spirits. The first were relevant to the welfare of a descent group or its members, the second to the welfare of a community in a given location, although specific individuals could be directly affected by one of the nature spirits resident in rocks, trees, or natural forces, such as wind or lightening. Ancestral spirits, especially those of relatively recently deceased kin, had to be honored by appropriate rituals if they were to look with favor on the enterprises of their descendants. Only some of these rituals are performed by the descent group as a whole. More frequently they are performed by and on behalf of a segment of the group or an individual. Among some groups the ancestors of chiefs were significant not only for the chiefly lineage (see Glossary) but also for the communities ruled by their descendants. In theory, nature spirits were not generally considered to have led a human existence, but there were exceptions; occasionally the spirits of chiefs or others were detached from specific descent groups or thought to have the characteristics of other nature spirits in that they were resident in features of the landscape. The spirits of the ancestors of a kin group are looked to for assistance in economic and social matters, and some misfortunes-famine, poor crops, personal losses-are ascribed to having failed to perform the appropriate rituals or to having misbehaved in some other way. Not all misfortunes are attributed to ancestral or nature spirits, however. In most societies it was (and largely still is) believed that magical powers inhere in things, that these powers are usually neutral, but that they may be used malevolently to afflict others or to prevent and deal with affliction, particularly illness and death. It is thought further that individuals, sometimes unconsciously and without the use of material or technical means, can bring illness or other affliction to human beings. Such persons, usually called witches, are thought to be marked by the presence of a substance in the stomach or other organ (e.g., among some Ambo, the throat). The terms witch and sorcerer have been applied to those who use their powers malevolently, the distinction between the two based in part on whether the power is inherited (witch) or acquired for something of value (sorcerer), that is, whether the power is mystical or technical and whether the power is used on one's own behalf (the witch) or may be used, at a price, on behalf of others. In fact this distinction is made only in some societies and may be linked to certain features of community social structures and associated with patterns of accusation, that is, whether kin by blood or marriage or non-kin are held to be responsible. Although the presence of beliefs in witchcraft or sorcery has been recorded for Angolan groups, the kind of careful description and analysis that would show the link between specific features of belief, ritual, and social relations in any specific society have not been done. Whether an individual's difficulties are to be attributed to witchcraft or sorcery or to the acts of ancestral or nature spirits is usually up to the decision of a diviner, a specialist whose personal power and use of material objects are held to be generally benevolent (although there are cases where a diviner may be accused of sorcery) and whose awareness of patterns of stress and strain in the community help him or her make the decision. A diviner-widely called a kimbanda-may also have substantial knowledge of herbal medicine, and at least part of the kimbanda's work will be devoted to the application of that knowledge. The kimbanda has inherited or acquired the ability to communicate with spirits. In many cases the acquisition of such power follows illness and possession by a specific spirit. There is a good deal of variation in the proficiency and degree of specialization of diviners. Some will deal only with particular symptoms, others with a wide range. Some are limited to a specific village, others are widely recognized and may journey from one village or even district to another. The greater the reputation of the kimbanda, the more he or she charges for services. This widespread term for diviner/healer has entered into local Portuguese, and so central is the role of the kimbanda to the complex of beliefs and practices characterizing most indigenous religions, whatever the variation in detail, that some sources (e.g., the Jornal de Angola) in listing the religions of Angola apparently use the term kimbandism to refer to indigenous systems. In general the belief in spirits (ancestral or natural) and in malevolent persons is associated with a view of the world that leaves no room for the accidental. Whether events are favorable or adverse, responsibility for them can in principle be attributed to a causal agent. If things go well, the correct ritual has been performed and the spirits therefore placated or their help invoked. If things go badly, the correct ritual has not been performed, or a spirit has been otherwise provoked, or malevolent individuals have succeeded in breaching whatever protective (magical) measures have been arrayed against them. This view of the world often persists even when individuals have been influenced by a Christian outlook or a degree of secular education. With some change in particulars, it seems to pervade urban areas where a kimbanda rarely lacks for clients. Witchcraft was considered at the MPLA-Labor Party's First National Conference on Organization, held in August 1977. The report, which gave no details, stated that "witchcraft is considered a problem within the scope of religion, but with special characteristics," and that "militants should prevent acts of violence by the population against individuals accused of witchcraft." Information for modern Angola is not available, but it has not been uncommon for individuals in similar communities elsewhere in Africa to claim the ability to find and root out witches when the community seems to be saturated with the kinds of tensions that generate accusations of witchcraft. "Witchfinding" movements or simply spontaneous outbursts against those believed to be witches have sometimes turned to violence. Church, State, and Community Although Roman Catholic missions were largely staffed by non-Portuguese, the relevant statutes and accords provided that foreign missionaries could be admitted only with the approval of the Portuguese government and the Vatican and on condition that they be integrated with the Portuguese missionary organization. The foreign Roman Catholic missionary was required to renounce the laws of his own country and submit to Portuguese law and to furnish proof of his ability to speak and write the Portuguese language correctly. Missionary activity was to be under the authority of Portuguese priests. All of this was consistent with the Colonial Act of 1930, which saw Portuguese Catholic missions overseas as "instruments of civilization and national influence." In 1940 the education of Africans was to be the exclusive responsibility of missionary personnel, and all church activities, education included, were to be subsidized by the state. In fact, Protestant missions did engage in educational activity and were permitted to do so-but without subsidy and on condition that Portuguese be the language of instruction (see Education, this ch.). Because the Roman Catholic Church was so clearly tied to the Portuguese colonial system and has been so perceived by the postindependence regime of the MPLA-Labor Party, the potential for conflict between the church and the party-state was there from the beginning. Such conflict became manifest not long after independence. The important Protestant missions in place in the 1960s (or their predecessors) arrived in Angola sometime in the late nineteenth century and were at work before the Portuguese managed to establish control over the entire territory. Their early years, there fore, were little affected by Portuguese policy and practice. Before the establishment of the New State in 1926 the authorities kept an eye on the Protestant missions but were not particularly hostile to them. (Settlers and local administrators often were, however, because Protestant missionaries tended to be protective of what they considered their charges.) In those early years and later Protestant missionaries were not only evangelists but also teachers, healers, and counselors-all perhaps in paternal fashion but in ways that involved contact with Africans in a more sustained fashion than that characteristic of Roman Catholic missionaries and local administrators. Among other things, Protestant missionaries worked quite hard at learning the local language, in part to communicate more adequately with those in their mission field, but above all in order to translate as much as they could of the scriptures into African tongues. Protestant missionaries were much more likely than administrators and settlers to know the local language. Roman Catholic missionaries did not similarly emphasize the translation of the Bible and, with some exceptions, did not make a point of learning the language. In 1921, even before the era of the New State, the colonial authorities insisted that except as a temporary aid to teaching, only Portuguese be used in Protestant schools, and they also required all translations of the Bible to be in Portuguese, although a translation in the local language could accompany it. The order was complied with, but parallel translations in the vernacular were made available, and Protestant missionaries by and large continued to make a point of knowing the language of those among whom they worked. That specific Protestant denominations were associated with particular ethnic communities had, as already noted, the effect of linking the structure of religious organization to that of these communities. This was brought about in part by the tendency of entire communities, whether they were localized lineages or villages or substantial segments of either of these, to turn to the variety of Protestantism offered locally (see Local (Rural) Social Systems, this ch.). The conversion of isolated individuals was rare. Those who did not become Christians remained to a greater or lesser extent adherents of the indigenous system; unless they migrated to one of the larger towns, persons of a specific locality did not have the option of another kind of Christianity. Those in a community who had not yet become Christians were tied by kinship and propinquity to those who had. On the one hand indigenous patterns of social relations affected church organization; on the other the presence of Christians in the community affected the local culture to varying degrees. Christians who could quote scripture in the local tongue contributed phrases to it that others picked up, and the attributes of the Christian God as interpreted by the specific denomination sometimes became attached to the high god of the indigenous religious system and typically made him more salient than he had been in that system (see Indigenous Religious Systems, this ch.). The effects of the local social system on the ecclesiastical organization of the Baptist church among the Kongo has been indicated by Henderson. In the first place, as time went on and the seniors of the church corresponded to the elders of the lineage, authority in the organization of the local lineage was often consonant with local congregational organization. Moreover neighboring villages were often linked by the fact that their core members were members of different segments of the same matrilineal descent group or were tied by marriage. In time villages, related in one or both of these ways became parts of a single circuit, the next higher level of church organization. A number of circuits then made up a "church," of which there were three, each headquartered at one of the mission stations of the Baptist Missionary Society. Whereas the Baptists had not attempted to impose a system of this kind but had seen it develop as an adaptation to the local social structure, the Methodists assumed that there would be a hierarchical organization-and the kind they imposed was consistent with the local organization of the Mbundu. The outcome was very similar to that of the Kongo. The basic unit was a cohesive local community based on kin groups. These communities were organized into circuits, and these in turn into districts that constituted the Angola Annual Conference. The government required an officially recognized leader in each village, the cataquista, and the Methodist mission gave specific leadership roles to so-called class leaders, pastors, and district superintendents. In general, as Henderson remarks, the role of such official leaders, whether imposed by government or the mission, "was similar to the local chief . . . who was arbiter or spokesman for the elders rather than arbitrary ruler." The elders had the real authority at each level. The Methodist Episcopal Church calls for a bishop, but there has been a resident bishop in Angola only since 1965. In the postindependence era he was an African. Ovimbundu kingdoms as effective political entities were eliminated by the Portuguese, but the mission churches in the area were identified with the old kingdoms, each pastor in a sense corresponding to a king. The deaconates corresponded roughly to local chiefdoms, and each of the villages served by a deacon had an officially recognized cataquista. The village elders held real authority, however. Here again, in Protestant villages there was a close correspondence between the village elders who made decisions about land allocation, marital disputes, and even certain criminal cases and the elders of the congregation who had the significant voice in religious matters. At the higher levels, the pastors turned out to be members of the traditional chiefly families. In effect, even if the community could no longer choose the officially recognized chiefs (who might or might not be members of the noble families) they could chose church leaders; and they apparently preferred those with a traditional right to be considered for positions of authority. Henderson points out that this hierarchical arrangement was not characteristic of the sponsoring churches or missionaries themselves but was an adaptation to the local system. The involvement of the Protestant churches in the languages of their mission areas, their medical and other welfare activity, and their ability either to adapt to local structures or (in the case of the Methodists among the Mbundu) to be fortuitously consistent with them gave Protestants much more influence than their mere numbers would suggest. For example, the leaders of the three major anticolonial movements were raised as Protestants, and many others in these movements were also Protestant even if their commitment may have diminished over time. Thus, Agostinho Neto, president of the republic and leader of the Marxist-Leninist MPLA-Labor Party, is the son of a man who was a leading African Methodist minister and of a woman who remains very active in Methodist affairs. This does not mean, however, that the notion sometimes voiced by Portuguese authorities and outside observers and frequently by settlers-that the Protestant missions were responsible for radicalizing their members-was accurate. By and large the missions eschewed political agitation. Unlike the Roman Catholic missions, however, they were not considered an integral part of the colonial regime, and they did not see it as their duty to turn Africans into Portuguese. However, the Protestant missions, enmeshed as they were with particular ethnic groups and particular educational systems, could not act as channels by which a Protestant elite could be unified. In the end, those Protestants who opposed the colonial regime for whatever reasons and from whatever perspective had no extensive experience of each other (see Education, this ch.). The official position of the state, expressed in Title II, Article 25 of the Constitutional Law of the People's Republic of Angola (Constitution), was that "freedom of conscience and belief is inviolable. The People's Republic of Angola recognizes the equality of all religions and guarantees the practice thereof, consistent with the public order and the national interest." Elsewhere it is emphasized that education is solely within the competence of the state and is to have an entirely lay character. The phrase on equality of religions and the insistence on the lay character of education, of course, mark a clear shift in the status of the Roman Catholic Church. On the occasion of the First Congress of the MPLA in early December 1977, when the decision to convert the movement into the MPLA-Labor Party-a Marxist-Leninist vanguard party-was announced, the report of MPLA's Central Committee dealt with the relations between the party-state and religions. The relevant section of the report begins by stating the standard view that "throughout history, religion has always been one of the weapons the exploiting classes have utilized to divert the exploited ones in the revolutionary struggle for their liberation," and that religion is nothing more than a distorted form of social awareness, to be changed only when the world reflected by religious ideas is transformed. It then goes on to say that the party and state will not ban religion (reaffirming the formal constitutional provision) but that efforts to have the party make "concessions" to religious ideas and to abandon its "position of principle" on religion will be fought, and "the party will not permit religious postulates to be used to combat revolutionary progress...or to avoid commitments which the law may prescribe." The Central Committee's report then goes on to say that the party's premise will be that "the struggle for a free and materialistic conscience is an integral part of the struggle for the construction of the new society, where there is no more exploitation of man by man, a struggle in which it is essential that both believers and atheists participate." There will, therefore, be "a continual and systematic dissemination of the scientific concepts about the world and society among the masses," but party policy also takes into account "the fact that the struggle to strengthen national unity is incompatible with the segregation and repudiation of believers." The party, therefore, must develop a policy that will attract believers and "involve them in the tasks of the nation." In two major speeches party leaders dealt with the problem of the participation of the faithful of any kind (including those adhering to indigenous systems) in a party pursuing a materialist orientation. Acknowledgment was first made of the fact that numbers of believers, including some Roman Catholic priests, were activists in the movement and that they continue to be so. Although the formation of a Marxist-Leninist vanguard party that distinguishes between militants and sympathizers would seem to demand that the militants fully accept materialist doctrine, the two speakers (one of whom, Lucio Lara, was an important party ideologist) argued that sectarianism must be avoided and that at the stage of party development reached in the late 1970s, it was entirely possible for a believer to be a militant if he otherwise met the appropriate criteria. Further if a believer felt himself unprepared to join the party, the roles of sympathizer and member of party-related mass organizations were open to him. In general, then, the party-state was not prepared to embark on a militantly antireligious program, in part because many of its supporters, if not its leaders, had religious affiliations. Perhaps more important, an assault on religion and religious groups per se would detract from the pursuit of solutions to the variety of economic and political problems confronting the regime. The state did, however, institute certain specific controls over religious organizations, and it was prepared to act quickly when it felt that it was challenged by the acts of a specific group. Thus it was reported in early 1978 that the Political Bureau of the MPLA-Labor Party had ordered the registration of "legitimate" churches and religious organizations. Further construction of new churches without a permit was forbidden, but the government would consider requests for such permits. Priests and missionaries were to be permitted to stay in the country as foreign residents, and religious groups or churches could receive goods from abroad; such institutions would no longer be tax exempt, however. The order on the registration of religious organizations seems to have been issued in the context of the banning of the Jehovah's Witnesses, of whom there were only a few in Angola. The doctrines of this group are such that its members withdraw from all obligations to nation and state (including military service), although they do not directly oppose the state, which they consider irrelevant given the imminent approach of Armageddon. Because of this withdrawal, seen by most governments as anarchic, a number of states, Marxist and non-Marxist, have outlawed the group. More significant was the conflict developing in the late 1970s between the party-state and the Roman Catholic Church. In December 1977 the bishops of Angola, meeting in Lugango, drafted a pastoral letter subsequently read to all churches. The burden of the letter was "the frequent and lamentable violations" of religious freedom. In their view, the sections of the Constitution guaranteeing religious freedom had not been implemented. Specifically they protested the establishment of a single system of education that ignored the "inalienable rights of the parent." They stated further that young people (and some children) are removed from the custody of their parents without the consent of the latter. The bishops also objected to the systematic propaganda for atheism and to the fact that the church's radio (Radio Ecclesia) had been closed down in 1976. The Jornal de Angola justified its closing on the grounds that the station was "abusively overstepping its role and becoming a powerful instrument of the active counterrevolution." A decree signed by President Neto on January 25, 1978 (after the pastoral letter had been issued) stated that there was complete separation between church and religious institutions and that the MPLA-Labor Party was to hold a monopoly on information. Radio Ecclesia, already silenced, was immediately dissolved and its assets and liabilities nationalized. With respect to general philosophic differences, the bishops claimed that the church did not oppose a socialist society open to "human and Christian values," but (in the words of the letter printed in the Star of Johannesburg) that "imposing atheistic materialism on a naturally spiritual and religious people was a form of violence which could have the most evil consequences." Again, as the letter has it: "Christianity and atheistic materialism are incompatible and irreconcilable." Their protests notwithstanding, the bishops asserted that they would continue to work with the authorities. Whether they could do so was open to question. The Jornal de Angola, reflecting the party's view, reacted to the letter in January 1978, accusing "some men called venerable representatives of the ever changing, so-called universal church" of preparing "a provocative, insulting, insolent, mendacious, reactionary document questioning the integrity of the Angolan revolutionary process and making various unfounded accusations." The newspaper then went on to accuse the church of "opportunistic, servile, criminal support ... for fascism and colonialism" despite the "good behavior of some Catholics." It alluded to the church's persecution of "some priests who valued their condition of men and patriots above the alliances [i.e., their connection with the church] of the past." Reference was then made to differences within the church, and the Basque missionaries in Malange Province were singled out as having collaborated with the MPLA in aspects of "National Reconstruction." It was noted that the bishops had attempted to withdraw the right of the Basques to continue their missionary activity but that this effort had been forestalled by the regime. The Jornal de Angola closed its attack on the bishops by pointing out the clause of the third plenary of the central committee of the party, which considers "as illegal and punishable any activity which attempts to use faith or religious belief to oppose the revolutionary transformation of society." Information for mid- and late 1978 was not available, but the line had been drawn. In the circumstances, the church may not press its case. What remains unclear is the extent to which the bishops represent the roughly 40 percent of the population estimated to be Roman Catholic and, further, whether those Africans who became Catholics as a mode of adaptation to the colonial regime will remain so. The situation of the Protestant churches was different but seems to have varied from church to church. However, there was little useful information about them. That variation was in large part a function of the attachment of the missions to particular ethnic groups. The Methodists, closely tied to the Mbundu who were, in turn, among the leaders and followers of the MPLA, seemed in the late 1970s to have accommodated to the regime, although detailed observations on this matter were not available. The Methodist Bishop, Emilio de Carvalho, is reputed to be quite sympathetic to the MPLA-Labor Party and has been quoted as stating that socialism was the best option for Angola. Given the uncertain status of the Kongo, the numbers of them probably still in Zaire, and the dispersal of the Baptist mission, nothing firm can be said about the situation of the Baptists. The situation of the churches in Ovimbundu territory is also uncertain. It is not clear how many Ovimbundu continue overtly or covertly to support Jonas Savimbi's UNITA and what role if any the churches play in the politics of opposition to the Neto regime. In February 1978 the Christian Council of Angola, headed by Daniel Mzinga, was formed as an umbrella group for Protestant churches, but no information on the denominations represented or their status was available in late 1978. Presumably the formation of the council was approved (or at least permitted) by the regime, but aside from an appeal to Christian bodies overseas for help in averting famine, its activities have not been publicized.