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Angola RELIGIOUS LIFE
The attitude of the Angolan government toward religion
was
inconsistent. The MPLA-PT's strong commitment to
Marxism-Leninism
meant that its attitude toward religion, at least
officially,
corresponded to that of the traditional Soviet
Marxist-Leninist
dogma, which generally characterized religion as
antiquated and
irrelevant to the construction of a new society. The
government
also viewed religion as an instrument of colonialism
because of the
Roman Catholic Church's close association with the
Portuguese.
Furthermore, because membership in the party was the road
to
influence, party leaders and many of the cadres were
likely to have
no formal religious commitment, or at any rate to deny
having one
(even though most of Angola's leaders in the 1980s were
educated at
Catholic, Baptist, or Congregational mission schools).
Nonetheless,
the government acknowledged the prevalence of religion in
Angolan
societies and officially recognized the equality of all
religions,
tolerating religious practices as long as the churches
restricted
themselves to spiritual matters. The state, however, did
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, in early 1978 the MPLA-PT
Political
Bureau ordered the registration of "legitimate" churches
and
religious organizations. Although priests and missionaries
were
permitted to stay in the country as foreign residents and
although
religious groups or churches could receive goods from
abroad,
further construction of new churches without a permit was
forbidden.
A conflict developed in the late 1970s between the
government
and the Roman Catholic Church. In December 1977, the
bishops of
Angola's three archdioceses, meeting in Lubango, drafted a
pastoral
letter subsequently read to all churches that claimed
frequent
violations of religious freedom. Their most specific
complaint was
that the establishment of a single system of education
ignored the
rights of parents. They also objected to the government's
systematic atheistic propaganda and its silencing of the
church's
radio station in 1976. In response to charges of
government
meddling in religious affairs, President Neto issued a
decree in
January 1978 stating that there was complete separation
between
church and religious institutions. In addition, Jornal
de
Angola printed an attack on the bishops, accusing them
of
questioning the integrity of the Angolan revolutionary
process.
The outcome of the conflict had repercussions for
Protestant
churches as well as for the Roman Catholic Church. In
essence, the
government made it clear that religious institutions were
to adhere
to government and party rulings regarding nonreligious
issues.
In the late 1980s, there was a slight change in the
government's policy toward religion. The president and
others in
the government and party elites, recognizing that
political
opposition had not coalesced around religious leaders,
became less
fearful of religious opposition and therefore more
tolerant of
religious groups in general. One exception was the Our
Lord Jesus
Christ Church in the World, an independent Christian sect
founded
in 1949 by Simon Mtoko (also spelled Simão Toco). Mtoko, a
Protestant from Uíge Province, fashioned the sect after
the
Kimbanguist movement (not to be confused with traditional
kimbanda practices, which had arisen in the Belgian
Congo in
the 1920s;
see Indigenous Religious Systems
, this ch.).
The
government had been especially suspicious of the Mtokoists
because
of their strong support in Benguela Province, most of
whose
residents were Ovimbundu, the principal supporters of
UNITA.
Mtokoists also were involved in riots in the Catate region
of Bengo
Province and in Luanda at the end of 1986, and they
attacked a
prison in Luanda in 1987 in an attempt to free fellow
believers who
had been arrested in the 1986 riots. As a result, the
government
banned the sect, claiming that its members had used
religion to
attack the state and had therefore lost their legitimacy.
Subsequently, however, as part of the general relaxation
of its
policy on religion, the government softened its position
on the
sect and in March 1988 declared it a legal religion.
Data as of February 1989
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