By Lisa Goodnight. Staff Writer. Friday, July 28, 2000 .The Record Online.
Two Bergen County preachers saw some encouraging sights in Cuba: packed church services, a huge banner on the old capitol building proclaiming "Cuba for Christ," and warm, friendly people eager to practice English.
They also saw how Cubans were banned from entering hotels, learned that doctors make just $15 a month, and heard stories about how years ago Christians were persecuted and jailed under the Communist dictatorship of Fidel Castro.
"It really makes us first of all think about the freedom of religion here," said Rev. Gregory Jerome Jackson, pastor of Mount Olive Baptist Church in Hackensack, Bergen County's largest black congregation, with 1,500 members.
"I don't know anybody [in America] who goes to church wondering if they are going to live or die for exercising their faith," Jackson said, referring to churchgoers being killed in Latin America.
Jackson and the Rev. Leo S. Thorne, pastor of the Ramapo Valley Baptist Church in Oakland, attended the Baptist World Alliance General Council meeting in Havana this month that drew more than 400 people from 60 nations. It was the Baptist World Alliance's first meeting in Cuba. Founded in 1905
in London, the BWA has nearly 100 million members worldwide. It serves to unify Baptists, evangelize, and defend human rights.
As a result of the meeting, the BWA's general secretary received consent from the Cuban government for several Cuban Baptists and other evangelical leaders to attend an upcoming Billy Graham meeting, another Baptist meeting in Amsterdam, and permission to build a home for senior citizens, said
Wendy Ryan, communications director of the McLean, Va.-based group.
She said about a half-dozen of the BWA's top leaders talked to Castro, seeking more religious freedom in Cuba. They also gave him a Bible.
Ryan said there are 418 Cuban Baptist congregations.
"They struggle like the rest with food and other things, but once you're a Christian, it makes your life more difficult," Ryan said.
Castro exiled many Roman Catholic priests and nuns in the 1950s, accusing them of supporting the government's enemies. Although Christians now can celebrate Christmas, Cuba officially was atheist for decades. Communist Party members were forbidden from practicing any religion, and some who were
openly devout lost their jobs and endured harassment.
Thorne said the government makes it difficult for pastors to build or add to churches. "They have to get signature after signature after signature. All this is intended to slow down the process," he said.
While in Cuba, the members passed a resolution that supports lifting the nearly 40-year-old U.S. trade embargo. Recently, the House of Representatives voted to stop provisions that ban U.S. food exports and limit the sales of medicine.
Besides urging religious freedom, Jose M. Alvarez, a Cuban exile and district director for Rep. Robert Menendez, D-Union City, said religious groups could lend their voices to demand basic human rights -- the freedom of speech, press, and assembly.
"There are people in jail who have done nothing wrong," Alvarez said.
Jackson met one of them: the Rev. Eliecer Prieto. Jackson stayed with Prieto's family an additional week after the Baptist meeting.
"It was a wonderful, wonderful experience . . . to see that kind of faith," Jackson said.
A. Roy Medley, executive minister of the American Baptist Churches of New Jersey, said he has invited Prieto to attend the group's annual meeting in September. Jackson said he wants Prieto to preach at his church.
Ryan of the BWA said the trip will have a lasting impact on participants: to see how the church has survived despite hardships.
But Thorne said the hardship can strengthen faith.
"You can't put the light of the church out," Thorne said. "The church always grows under persecution."
Staff Writer Lisa Goodnight's e-mail address is goodnight@bergen.com
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