The Fraternity of Baptists Celebrates 35 Years of Ministry in Cuba! By Stan Dotson
Hola familia y amistades,
The Fraternity of Baptist Churches of Cuba celebrates the 35th anniversary of its founding this Sunday!
This weekend Ebenezer Baptist Church will have a series of events to pay tribute to the church’s pastor emeritus and founder of the Martin Luther King Memorial Center, Raúl Suárez, who recently turned 89. This weekend was chosen because the founding of the denomination the Fraternity of Baptist Churches of Cuba, of which Raúl was a co-founder, happened at Ebenezer Baptist church on September 8, 1989.
We are grateful to be able to work with Raúl and the current pastor, Idael. We are also grateful for the many connections that Raúl and others forged with churches in the Alliance of Baptists, a companionship that started even before the formation of both denominations. And we are grateful that three of those companions who formed friendships over 35 years ago, Stan Hastey, and Ken and Nancy Sehested, will be with us this weekend and will share in the celebratory events. Prayers for their safe journeys!
Another friend who has been instrumental in this companionship has been Mahan Siler. In recent years, Mahan has felt a deep calling to bring together a group of pastors and leaders from the Alliance family to share monetarily on a regular basis with Fraternity pastors. One of Mahan’s friends from Alliance days, Dick Tucker, has joined him in giving to and promoting this project. They asked that we give a brief context for their dream.
The economic situation has become severe in recent years for Cuban families, with salaries stuck at the level they were when the government had resources to subsidize food and medicine. Now that the food sector of the Cuban economy has become privatized, unregulated prices have led to the highest inflation in the world, meaning that food is available, but at prices far out of reach to 90% of Cubans. An example: a retired pastor’s pension is around 1500 pesos/month, and a carton of 30 eggs is now over 3000 pesos. So the monthly income is not even enough to have an egg every other day. Mahan’s and Dick Tucker’s dream is for us to create a fund to supplement the salaries of both current and retired pastors, a group of around 50 people. It would be wonderful to find 50 U.S. people who would commit to $100/month to this project, giving the pastors and the pensioners the ability to put food on the table.
In order to promote this project, Mahan and Dick asked if we would highlight one pastor a month in our weekly invitations. Given the tribute that is happening this weekend, we thought it appropriate to give a brief bio of Raúl Suárez.
Raúl was born in 1935 and raised by sharecroppers in Aguacate, in the sugar cane region of the Matanzas province. After 3rd grade he went to work in the fields, cutting cane, and by the time he was a teenager he had developed a great disdain for the rich landowners who so mistreated and exploited and humiliated his father and the other workers. During his teen years he joined a Baptist church (by way of a youth baseball team), and the pastor and his family took Raúl under wing, helping him catch up in his education. He eventually graduated high school and went on to higher education, eventually becoming both a pastor and a seminary professor.
In 1961 he was a missionary pastor in the poor region on the southern coast known as the “Shoe Swamp”, close to the place we know as the Bay of Pigs. When the U.S. invasion happened, Raúl did not join the military action, because his understanding of Jesus’ teaching was that he was to respond to injustice with non-violence. But, he took the church’s jeep, painted a red cross on it, and began making trips to the front lines of the battle to rescue the injured and take them to get medical care. On one of these journeys, shrapnel came through the windshield and his eyes were filled with shattered glass. He received a commendation for his brave actions.
The government would soon forget his heroism, though. After the Bay of Pigs, the Cuban revolutionary leaders made an official alliance with the Soviet Union, feeling they needed protection from their neighbor to the north that had just invaded. Part of this alliance involved describing the Revolution as Marxist and atheist in nature, so people of faith began suffering discrimination. Some, like Raúl Suárez, were actually taken to a forced labor camp, called UMAP, where they endured two years of grueling work and attempts to re-socialize them away from religious faith.
For Raúl Suárez, his time in UMAP was an opportunity to analyze why the Revolution would think the church to be anti-revolutionary. He came to understand that the government had reason, as the Cuban churches, which were deeply influenced by the missionaries from the US conventions, like the Southern Baptist Convention, were indeed very much anti-revolution. But as Raúl describes it, this was a time when he was able to take off the “glasses” and lenses of the conservative fundamentalist churches which had served as a filter for his life, and put on new “glasses”, with the filter of liberation theology, seeing Jesus as the greatest revolutionary of all time. He made a commitment to do his best to prove to the government leaders that people of faith had a positive role to play in building a new society based on values of social justice and equality for the poor.
It took him thirty years, but he achieved his life’s goal. He had been elected to be president of Cuba’s Council of Churches, and in this role he had a direct line to the government leaders. One day in 1991 Fidel Castro was on the television news, speaking from Brazil where he had just visited some of the liberation theology base communities. Fidel famously said, “If we only had Christians like this in Cuba, they could be part of our government, too.” Raúl Suárez’ wife, Clara Rodés, gave him a big push and said “You have to tell Fidel that we are here!” Raúl got through to Fidel, and convinced him to host a meeting with religious leaders. Fidel said he would meet with twenty. Over seventy showed up, and the meeting was televised, with leader after leader urging the historic leader to change the official position of atheism and end religious discrimination. Fidel listened, and promised change. Soon after, Fidel Castro convened a constitutional convention, and they changed the basis of Cuba’s revolutionary society from being Marxist and atheist, to being a secular state with freedom of religion.
Because of that change, Christian leaders could then participate in government, and Raúl Suárez was elected to be a representative from his municipality to the National Assembly. He soon made waves there, by casting a never-before-heard “no” vote. In the Assembly, the practice was for all the disagreements to be hammered out ahead of time, so that by the time a piece of legislation reached the floor, it was always unanimous. Raúl had been warning people that his view had not been considered when they were working on an update to the capital punishment law. He said he could not in good conscience vote in favor of such a practice, no matter how they revised it. When he voted no, several of the Assembly leaders began berating him, until none other than Fidel Castro came to his aid, telling the Assembly that Raúl Suárez was a man of conscience, and they needed more people like him in the Assembly.
Raúl is also well-known for having founded two institutions that continue to make a great difference in the lives of Cuban people. One is the denomination, the Fraternity of Baptist Churches of Cuba, which is celebrating its 35th anniversary this weekend. The Fraternity, though a small denomination of 43 churches, has been a leader in developing important new ministries, such as the prison and hospital chaplaincy program and disability ministries in Cuba, And, in 1986, Raúl founded the Martin Luther King Memorial Center, as a way to promote faith-based social action. The Center has a presence now throughout all the provinces of Cuba, working to promote ecumenical social justice projects for churches, as well as grassroots education training.
blessings
Stan
Ensancha el espacio de tu carpa, y despliega las cortinas de tu morada. ¡No te limites! Alarga tus cuerdas y refuerza tus estacas. Porque a derecha y a izquierda te extenderás. —Isaías 54:2-3a (NVI)
