Book Excerpt: ‘Soul By Soul’ By Brazilian Journalist Adriana Carranca
Adriana Carranca (Photo via Mônica Imbuzeiro/Agência O Globo)
US-born Protestant evangelicalism has gone global to an extent of which many of us might be unaware. This book tells the story of Americans’ colossal mobilization to proclaim Christianity “to the ends of the Earth,” a movement that triumphed in the Global South, challenged the Vatican, then turned east in full force after 9/11 to spread the Gospel among Muslims.
When the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq set off a wave of anti-American attacks and made the field too dangerous for US missionaries, thousands of disciples, particularly from Latin America, were mobilized to finish the task.
In “Soul by Soul,” journalist Adriana Carranca follows the pilgrimage of a missionary family from Brazil as they move to Afghanistan. Carranca brings us on a harrowing journey through the underground passages of the global evangelical movement as it clashes with the full force of militant Islamic groups in the Middle East and South Asia, where contemporary religious wars are being fought, soul by soul.
What follows is an excerpt from Carranca’s new book, “Soul By Soul: The Evangelical Mission to Spread the Gospel to Muslims”:
This was my third trip to Afghanistan, and the change in mood in the country was clear. It was 2012, and the US-backed government of President Hamid Karzai was drowning in corruption scandals. The US had lost credibility for failing to stabilize and rebuild Afghanistan, and it was blamed for the chaos and the widespread violence, especially in the tribal areas of the border with Pakistan, where drone attacks had killed innocent civilians. Rural villages had turned into fertile grounds for recruitment from the different factions that had fought the civil war and had begun preparing their forces for when the American troops left. In the cities, the mood among ordinary Afghans had shifted from hope and relief to anger and despair.
As Afghans prepared for the weekly prayer day at their mosques, I set out for the home of Werner and Hannelie Groenewald, a missionary couple from South Africa who came to Afghanistan shortly after 9/11 and stayed for ten years. Werner was hosting a Christian service for a small group of devoted missionaries who remained in Kabul.
The living room had been arranged for the religious service with a few chairs, but most of the dozen adults already present sat on the floor. A young man played the guitar next to his veiled wife, singing gospel rhymes while trying to handle the couple’s four small children. A wood-fired bukhari kept the living room warm. Smoke from the chimney painted the wall with a fine layer of ash. Strips of plastic covered the window cracks, both to keep the cold air outside and the Jesus songs and worship inside.
Werner began by reading stretches of the Bible in English, while some tried to follow with versions of the book in Dari and Pashto. Vigorous praying and singing followed. Then, all the children were guided upstairs, where they were kept busy playing Bible crossword puzzles and Christmas bingo with Werner’s fifteen-year-old son Jean-Pierre and thirteen-year-old daughter Rhodé. After the prayers, the adults discussed the missionary efforts in Afghanistan, which had come to a stop following a 2010 crackdown. Werner revealed that had asked a few Afghan church leaders to resume Bible teachings and church meetings.
“Churches [outside Afghanistan] are full of believers, but they also worship other gods, like consumerism,” Werner said. “Here, we’ve lost followers, but that is good because only those firm in their faith remain.”
Not long after, Werner and Hannelie received a short visit from one of the Dutch Reformed Church’s reverends, who carried a letter informing them that the church had decided to cut their support by nearly half. South Africa was reeling from the global financial crisis, and the church was struggling to stay afloat.
By 2013, Werner and Hannelie could no longer afford the rent for the spacious house, so they moved with Jean-Pierre and Rhodé to the office of a small US-based organization called Partnership in Academic Development. The family occupied the rooms upstairs, while the NGO’s office was rearranged on the ground floor. Werner’s church meetings were transferred to a window-less basement. Hannelie started working as a private doctor at a clinic and a hospital in Kabul, and returned to homeschooling the children. Jean-Pierre was crushed about leaving the international school, becoming isolated from friends and increasingly unhappy. Rhodé’s back pains intensified. One morning, Werner told Hannelie that he was considering leaving Afghanistan.
In 2014, the United States had announced that NATO’s combat mission in Afghanistan would officially end on the last day of the year. A newly formed government led by President Ashraf Ghani had just taken office without being able to control most of the country. Militant groups were emboldened and waging attacks against security forces.
On Saturday, November 29, there were rumors that an insurgent group was planning an incursion into the capital. Hannelie didn’t usually work on Saturdays, but the hospital called her in because of the heightened alert. As the day went on, the atmosphere remained unexpectedly calm. The apprehension of an attack faded. After attending to a few patients in the afternoon, Hannelie called the hospital’s driver to take her home. Shortly after 4:00 p.m., the driver received a phone call: There was an attack at the house.
Hannelie tried to call her husband, but Werner didn’t pick up. She tried to call the kids, but Jean-Pierre and Rhodé didn’t answer either. The traffic was jammed as usual, but the journey home from the clinic felt like forever this time. As the car approached the PAD office, Hannelie saw that the street was sealed off, so she got out and walked toward the house. Afghan policemen blocked her way. For about an hour, she walked around the block, searching for a place from which she could see her home. She found one, but nothing seemed to be happening there.
Terrorist attacks were part of the routine for anyone living in Afghanistan, so she thought: They must be hiding in their rooms. The sun was setting when armored vehicles approached the street. Suddenly, heavy gunshots were fired, followed by a loud explosion. The neighborhood darkened. A police officer guided Hannelie to an office nearby where she could take shelter. Gunshots and explosions continued for another hour, and Hannelie could see her house burning. A friend called and asked to come to meet her. As he approached, Hannelie noticed he was crying. “This is going to be the longest night of your life,” he told Hannelie. “They are all dead.”
Five hours earlier, an armed man dressed in a police uniform had jumped the wall outside the PAD office and opened the front door to let two others in. Hassan, the Afghan gatekeeper, was gunned down before he could react. Inside the house, Werner was expecting visitors for a church meeting. When he heard shots, he gathered his Afghan staff and told everyone to hide. He ran upstairs to his children, who were in their rooms on the first floor. But he encountered the gunmen, who shot Werner twice and left him bleeding to death. The Afghans in the basement heard the children scream, and a flurry of shots followed. The attackers returned downstairs and sprayed bullets inside a tiny room, killing one of the staff members. The people in the basement heard one of the gunmen say: “We’ve killed them all.” The terrorists were on a suicide mission and had been ordered to fight the security forces for as long as they could and not leave the house alive, so they waited for police and soldiers to arrive. The firefight lasted for some three and a half hours until the terrorists were dead.
The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack, saying the compound belonged to a “secret Christian missionary group.” Werner was forty-six, Jean-Pierre was seventeen, and Rhodé was just fifteen.
“I couldn’t register what they told me,” Hannelie later told me. She didn’t say anything or even cry as she heard the news, and followed the missionaries to their home in silence and shock. From there, she called her sister to ask her to inform their parents. Then she called Werner’s mother, who hung up after hearing the news. “I wasn’t thinking,” Hannelie said. “It was like in hypnosis. I was clinging to God.” Later that night, Hannelie walked to the bathroom and vomited.
The following day, Hannelie went to the house to see what was left, and found everything burned to ashes. “But the miracle was that the fire stopped at Jean-Pierre’s bedroom,” she said. Her two kids were killed there, and Hannelie concluded, “God wanted to have their bodies preserved.”
Before Hannelie could bring the bodies back to South Africa, she had to help prepare them to be transferred and buried because no one else in the clinic knew “the Christian way.” “I had to embalm my family. I had to take care of everything. There were four doctors; one came in the evening. He washed them, checked the entrance and exit wounds, and I helped embalm the bodies,” she said. “I told them that I forgave the Taliban.”
At the site of the graves of Werner, Jean-Pierre, and Rhodé in South Africa’s Pretoria East Cemetery, a sign reads: “They Tried to Bury Us. They Didn’t Know We Were Seeds.”
“Soul by Soul: The Evangelical Mission to Spread the Gospel to Muslims” (published by Columbia Global Reports) is available now wherever books are sold and on Amazon.
Adriana Carranca is a Brazilian writer and journalist. She has extensively covered the war in Afghanistan and important events in Pakistan, Iran, Egypt, Israel, Palestine, Haiti, Mexico, USA, Great Britain, Uganda, Congo, South Sudan, among others. She started her career at Globo TV, followed by Veja magazine and as a Special Reporter and Columnist for one of the largest Brazilian newspapers O Estado de S. Paulo. Later, she wrote a weekly column for O Globo, and now comments twice a week at the radio station CBN, from Globo group and with nationwide reach. She has a major in Journalism and a masters degree in Social Policies and Development at the London School of Economics (LSE), as well an MA in Journalism at Columbia University.