THE RIGHT BOOKS

The reign of God has arrived in Nicaragua”: Thus spake Father Richard Preston, a Michigan priest, writing in The Catholic Weekly, in March 1983. And if God made His arrival riding in a camouflaged Jeep instead of upon an ass, and if His attendants seemed bemused this time, as if their hearts were actually with another kind of Savior, the situation is comprehensible through the fecundity of History, the infinite varieties of religious experience. As Miguel d’Escoto, a Maryknoll priest and Foreign Minister of the Sandinista regime, said in 1980: “There are people that call themselves atheists. From the Christian perspective, in fact, this does not have great importance. The important thing is the behavior of people; it is the practice, not the theory.”

Since July 1979, when the Sandinista revolutionaries overthrew the Somoza dictatorship of 42 years’ duration, many Christians—especially in the United States and Western Europe— have hailed the advent of the new government as revolution with a human face, in which Marxism and Christianity each found ultimate realization in the other. Somoza had been ousted through the cooperation of Christians and Marxists, Catholic priests held positions of authority in the new government, and the FSLN was promising to create a society democratic as heaven, gentle as Brook Farm, and efficient as a Stalinist tractor factory. Come hell or high water this was the vision to which certain progressive Christians were determined to cling. The purpose of Humberto Belli’s Nicaragua: Christians under Fire (The Puebla Institute, P.O. Box 520, Garden City, Mich. 48135; $8) is, in the author’s words,“to show that Christians’ hopefulness regarding the Sandinista revolution is mistaken.”

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About the Author

Chilton Williamson Jr.

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Religious Persecution

Religion

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The reign of God has arrived in Nicaragua”: Thus spake Father Richard Preston, a Michigan priest, writing in The Catholic Weekly, in March 1983. And if God made His arrival riding in a camouflaged Jeep instead of upon an ass, and if His attendants seemed bemused this time, as if their hearts were actually with another kind of Savior, the situation is comprehensible through the fecundity of History, the infinite varieties of religious experience. As Miguel d’Escoto, a Maryknoll priest and Foreign Minister of the Sandinista regime, said in 1980: “There are people that call themselves atheists. From the Christian perspective, in fact, this does not have great importance. The important thing is the behavior of people; it is the practice, not the theory.”

Since July 1979, when the Sandinista revolutionaries overthrew the Somoza dictatorship of 42 years’ duration, many Christians—especially in the United States and Western Europe— have hailed the advent of the new government as revolution with a human face, in which Marxism and Christianity each found ultimate realization in the other. Somoza had been ousted through the cooperation of Christians and Marxists, Catholic priests held positions of authority in the new government, and the FSLN was promising to create a society democratic as heaven, gentle as Brook Farm, and efficient as a Stalinist tractor factory. Come hell or high water this was the vision to which certain progressive Christians were determined to cling. The purpose of Humberto Belli’s Nicaragua: Christians under Fire (The Puebla Institute, P.O. Box 520, Garden City, Mich. 48135; $8) is, in the author’s words,“to show that Christians’ hopefulness regarding the Sandinista revolution is mistaken.”