The Basel Mission was founded in Basel, a city in the north of Switzerland, in 1815. It is an independent mission society that today is supported by individual Christians, congregations, and churches in Switzerland and southwestern Germany.

The churches supporting us are the ones that, 300 years ago, persecuted the forebears of today's Church of the Brethren. The tower in which some of them suffered as prisoners for their Christian faith, the "Spalentor," is a symbol of the city of Basel. That place is only a few hundred yards from our mission house, the center and symbol of the work of the Basel Mission.

So, our forebears persecuted and oppressed the Church of the Brethren forebears. If those Brethren believers did not agree to give up their Anabaptist convictions, they were sent to the galleys, where many of them died. Today we feel ashamed and sorry for this part of our own history.

But where we meant evil against our fellow Christians, God used it for good. We remember the persecution of the first Christians in Jerusalem (Acts 8:1-3). They scattered throughout the region of Judea and Samaria and as far as Antioch, and they continued to be strong in their faith and to spread the gospel (Acts 11:19-26).

As the persecution of the early Christian congregations in Jerusalem resulted in the spreading of the Good News of Jesus Christ to Antioch, the persecution of the Brethren pioneers in Switzerland worked for the upbuilding of the Church of the Brethren, first in Germany and later in the United States.

In the late 1950s, the Basel Mission started work in what was then the Northern Cameroons United Nations Trust Territory, in the area of Gavva and Ngoshe. The people were eager to hear the word of God. New congregations started to grow. In 1960, the people of the Cameroons voted to decide whether to join the country of Cameroon (newly independent that year from French rule) or to Nigeria (newly independent that year from Great Britain). The Northern Cameroons decided to join Nigeria.

The boundary between Cameroon and Nigeria was closed and the newly formed Basel Mission congregations were cut from their headquarters at Buece, Cameroon. In this situation, the Basel Mission asked the Church of the Brethren Mission in Nigeria whether it would be willing to accept the congregations in the area of Ngoshe and Gavva into its fellowship and to cooperate with the Basel Mission. The Church of the Brethren did not consider the long-ago oppression and persecution in Switzerland, but thought only of the unity of the body of Christ and stretched out the hand of Christian fellowship.

Today the Basel Mission still closely cooperates with the Church of the Brethren and EYN in Nigeria and also with the Church of the Brethren in Sudan. We give thanks to God that the Brethren accepted us as their brothers and sisters.—CHRISTOPH SCHNYDER

These remarks were offered by Christoph Schnyder, Africa Secretary for Basel Mission, at Annual Conference in Richmond, July 1992.