A Pastoral Word of Hope from El Salvador

From Emmanuel Baptist Church: As an Evangelical Church in El Salvador, we want to share a Pastoral Word of Hope amid events that caused mourning and pain to this city’s families, of our entire society.

1. As a Church, we deplore the attack on a group of activists of the “Farabundo Martí National Liberation Party” (FMLN), which occurred on the afternoon of Sunday, January 31. Two members of that party lost their lives, and four more people were injured by gunshot wounds.
2. We repudiate this fact due to the armed violence against these activists.  They had every right to proselytize, like the other parties.  This event tarnished the current electoral campaign with bloodshed.  They were exercising their civic rights, which makes it possible for us to show our democratic culture. We repudiate this fact, also, because it is a sacrilege.  Every murder of a person is an Offense to God. We must understand it this way, in what is supposed to be a Christian society.
3. Vehemently, we call on the political parties in the current electoral contest, their leaders, and their militants to avoid any act of violence.  We call them to invest their campaign efforts based on Christian Principles of Respect for our fellow men.  We call them to be practitioners of Truth and Honesty.  Then, this electoral campaign could be dignified.  We call them to show a Culture of Peace, seeking that the ideals consigned in the National Flag: “God, Union, Freedom” are honored in the political practice of all the parties that compete in the current electoral campaign
4. As the Church of Jesus Christ, our call is to overcome the temptations of confrontation, denigrating accusations, and insults.  How much good it does us behaving with decency! Our society has already experienced moments of hatred; hatred between compatriots must be a stage passed. We invite all sectors of our community, as the Gospel says, to open ourselves to a new time, the time of understanding, of equanimity, and, why not? the time of the National Fraternity.
5. We send to the families of compatriots, Gloria Rogel Del Cid and Juan de Dios Tejada, our Christian Solidarity.  We are confident that The Consolation and Peace of God will fill their lives.
6. Our Church reminds to all sectors of society, the leaders of the three powers of the State, the political parties, that as daughters and sons of God, we have the absolute right to be respected in our Dignity.  This implies the inalienable right to Life, Justice, and Peace as gifts from God.  All men and women, girls, boys, and young people, have the Sacred Right to live in a country with a future full of Justice and Peace.

“The wolf will dwell with the Lamb, the leopard with the kid will rest together, the cow and the bear their young will graze together, no one will harm all my holy mountain, because the earth (and our country), will be full of knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea.”
Isaiah 11: 6, 7, 9.

The Reverend Miguel Tomás Castro
General Pastor
“Emmanuel” Baptist Church
San Salvador, El Salvador