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Angola Religious Communities
The MPLA-PT maintained a cautious attitude toward
religion in
the late 1980s, in contrast to its determination in the
late 1970s
to purge churchgoers from the party. A 1980 Ministry of
Justice
decree required all religious institutions to register
with the
government. As of 1987, eleven Protestant institutions
were legally
recognized: the Assembly of God, the Baptist Convention of
Angola,
the Baptist Evangelical Church of Angola, the
Congregational
Evangelical Church of Angola, the Evangelical Church of
Angola, the
Evangelical Church of South-West Angola, the Our Lord
Jesus Christ
Church in the World (Kimbanquist), the Reformed
Evangelical Church
of Angola, the Seventh-Day Adventist Church, the Union of
Evangelical Churches of Angola, and the United Methodist
Church
(see Christianity
, ch. 2). Roberto de Almeida, the MPLA-PT
Central
Committee secretary for ideology, information, and
culture,
admonished church leaders not to perpetuate oppressive or
elitist
attitudes, and he specifically warned that the churches
would not
be allowed to take a neutral stance in the battle against
opponents
of the MPLA-PT regime.
The official attitude toward religion reflected the
ideological
split in the party leadership. Staunch party ideologues,
who had
purged almost all churchgoers during the rectification
campaign of
the late 1970s, opposed leniency toward anyone claiming or
recognizing moral authority outside the regime. But as
they had
done in regard to traditional leaders, the president and
his close
associates weighed the balance between ideological purity
and
political necessity and soon moderated their antireligious
stance.
Political opposition had not coalesced around religious
leaders,
and, in general, the fear of religious opposition was
weakening in
the late 1980s.
Employing Marxist-Leninist diatribes against the
oppression of
the working class, only the most strident ideologues in
the MPLA-PT
maintained their opposition to religion. The Roman
Catholic Church
was still strongly identified with the colonial oppressor,
and
Protestant missionaries were sometimes condemned for
having
supported colonial practices. More serious in the
government's view
in the late 1980s was the use by its foremost opponent,
Jonas
Savimbi, of the issue of religion to recruit members and
support
for his UNITA insurgency. Savimbi's Church of Christ in
the Bush
had become an effective religious affiliate of UNITA,
maintaining
schools, clinics, and training programs.
Small religious sects were annoying to MPLA-PT
officials. The
ruling party suspected such groups of having foreign
sponsors or of
being used by opponents of the regime. To the government,
the
sects' relative independence from world religions was a
gauge of
their potential for political independence as well. Watch
Tower and
Seventh-Day Adventist sects were suspect, but they were
not
perceived as serious political threats. However, the
Jehovah's
Witnesses were banned entirely in 1978 because of their
proscription on military service.
During the late 1980s, security officials considered
the small
Our Lord Jesus Christ Church in the World to be a threat
to the
regime, despite the fact that the Mtokoists, as they were
known,
were not particularly interested in national politics
(see Internal Security
, ch. 5). Their founder, Simon Mtoko (also known
as Simão
Toco), had been expelled from Angola by the Portuguese in
1950 for
preaching adherence to African cultural values. He
returned to
Angola in 1974 but soon clashed with MPLA leaders over the
regime's
authority over individual beliefs. He opposed the party's
Marxist
rhetoric on cultural grounds until his death in 1984.
After his
death, officials feared the group would splinter into
dissident
factions. The church was legally recognized in 1988 even
though
Mtokoists clashed with police in 1987 and 1988, resulting
in
arrests and some casualties.
Data as of February 1989
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