An Unreached People Group
Mission agencies divide people groups into reached and unreached. Each agency might have a bit of a different definition but basically it means less than 1% of the people are Christians and there is no “gospelizing” church in the language of those people. The Basques fall into the “unreached” group.
One missionary from Basque Country wrote: “The Basques—an ancient and proud people –50 scattered evangelical believers who find it difficult to worship or witness in Basque. Only the beginnings of evangelistic and literature ministries have been made”.
This is how the mission reference book Operation World describes the Basques and Basque country. “It has been observed that there are no known churches preaching the gospel in Euskera, the Basque language, also known by one of its variants, Batua. The ethnic Basque people have no culturally, nor linguistically keyed proclamation of the gospel of Jesus Christ. This situation qualifies the Basque as an unreached people group under the definitions currently utilized in the modern missions movement”.
The US Center for World Mission describes the situation as follows. “ ‘No Basque speaking evangelical church exists anywhere in the world’, reports CAM International. The 25 evangelical churches in the Basque area of Spain worship in Spanish {with principally Spanish attendees} so very few Basques attend. Evangelical Basques are few and far between”.
The Crisis of Catholicism
Add to that information about the Basques as a people group, the fact that they live in Spain where a spiritual vacuum exists.
The Catholic Church faces a crisis. In the last few years, 20% of its members, mostly young people, have turned to secularism and religious indifference. The number of priests is declining and renewal movements have hardly affected the Church. At a recent meeting of Europe’s Roman Catholic bishops, the bishops pointed to “the serious indifference to religion of so many Europeans as a dangerous sign. There is a great risk of de-Christianization and paganization of the Continent”.
So the Basques are planted in an increasingly secular continent in a country with a failing national church and in a culture with no Basque-speaking evangelical church.
The enmity between the Basque people and Spain
We might ask, “Why can’t they go to a Spanish speaking church? Or why isn’t the Spanish speaking Evangelical church effective?” Those are great questions with a deeply embedded political response.
In short, as groups of people, the Basques and the Spaniards really dislike each other. In addition the Basques are very concerned about the continuation of their language. This puts a very big impediment in the path of any Basque wanting to go to a Spanish speaking church and in the path of any Spanish speaking Evangelical church wanting to reach Basques.