A Pastor Describes Brutal Conditions in Cuban Prisons

On March 28, 1962, Noble Alexander was driving home to Havana after preaching in Matanzas, Cuba. Authorities pulled him over and told him he was wanted for five minutes of questioning.

The lay preacher was taken to a kind of “deep freeze” where he was stripped and interrogated—sometimes at gunpoint—throughout the night.

A year after his arrest, Alexander faced a mock trial on charges of trying to kill Cuban President Fidel Castro. A lawyer Alexander had never seen pleaded guilty in his behalf. But the pastor says he actually was arrested for preaching the gospel.

What at first was called a five-minute detention lasted more than 22 years. But it came to an end in June when Alexander came to the United States. He was one of 26 Cuban political prisoners released by Castro after a visit by the Rev. Jesse Jackson. Twenty-two American citizens were released from Cuban jails at the same time.

A Seventh-day Adventist, Alexander was ordained as an elder in prison. He led prayer meetings and Bible studies for groups that usually included Baptists, Pentecostalists, Adventists, Roman Catholics, and others.

Thomas White, a Los Angeles schoolteacher who spent several months in prison with Alexander, says one of his most moving experiences was watching the prisoners sing hymns. “There they’d be, worshiping in rags and bedsheets, and you wouldn’t see a depressed guy in the room.” White served 17 months for dropping evangelistic leaflets over Cuba from a plane.

For a few months, White and Alexander huddled by a wall every day to listen to the Voice of America and HCJB, a Christian radio station in Ecuador. Their radio eventually was found and taken away, as were several of Alexander’s Bibles over the years. Bibles were prized possessions. American prisoners, who could obtain three books a month from the U.S. Special Interests Section in Havana, passed Bibles to the Cubans. Alexander says as many as 100 prisoners would share four or five Bibles.

Conditions varied from prison to prison. Alexander participated in several hunger strikes to protest spoiled food. Along with other political prisoners, he refused to wear the same uniform as convicted criminals. Instead, he fashioned shorts out of bed sheets. He says he was flogged daily for years, and he tells of men who were tortured brutally.

Alexander says religious activities varied, depending on the prison. In one jail, Christians met in an abandoned laundry room while other prisoners ate lunch. In another, they shouted between cells.

He describes one circular prison where inmates could walk freely among the cells while a guard stood watch in a nearby tower. During a “revival,” Alexander would visit all the cells, inviting prisoners to a meeting. Three or four men would stand in the doorway to block the view from the guard tower while dozens of inmates gathered to sing, pray, preach, and even share Communion with bread smuggled from the mess hall.

Sometimes guards would fire into the room. Alexander has two scars on his fingers from bullets that grazed him. Other guards stood at the fringes of meetings, listening.

Castro’s Marxist regime sees the church as a threat, Alexander says. During the Cuban revolution, for example, one of Castro’s nicknames was el caballo, the horse. When pastors preached about the “beast” of Revelation, Alexander says they were accused of fomenting rebellion against Castro.

Alexander says the Cuban church is growing despite persecution. And the Christian activity at Combinados del Este, the last prison where Alexander was held, continues without him. Two prisoners trained by the pastor are leading the ministry there.

A New Law Makes It Harder For The Irs To Audit Churches

Internal Revenue Service (IRS) auditors must clear a new set of hurdles before they examine the financial records of a church, now that Congress has approved the Church Audit Procedures (CAP) Act.

Before wrangling with church officers over tax matters, IRS investigators are required to provide two written notices of the inquiry, agree to a meeting with church representatives if one is requested, and end the investigation within two years. If the IRS fails to comply with these stricter procedures, any court summons served to the church could be dropped.

U.S. Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) and U.S. Rep. Mickey Edwards (R-Okla.) pushed for the legislation after they learned about a five-year IRS audit of Gulf Coast Covenant Church in Mobile, Alabama (CT, Oct. 7, 1983, p. 57). That investigation cost the church $100,000, sullied its reputation, and ended suddenly when the IRS dropped all charges of wrongdoing.

The church’s financial administrator, Mike Coleman, took the matter to Washington to get the law changed. Coleman told members of Congress that his church provided more than 1,000 documents and spent hundreds of hours answering IRS queries. IRS agents requested names of donors, church staff salaries, and other confidential information. Finally, the church found out that the investigation was launched after a disgruntled community member gave stolen documents to the IRS in order to discredit the church.

The Mobile church is one of only a few that have been subjected to a full-fledged IRS audit. Over the past three fiscal years, 116 examinations of churches have been completed, with just under half resulting in unfavorable final reports. Many more investigations are triggered by groups that knowingly evade taxes or simply fail to file returns. IRS statistics show 6,612 investigations in 1983 that involved church tax avoidance and netted the government nearly $24 million, CAP Act provisions will not inhibit IRS probes of fraudulent or criminal tax evasion.

Before 1976, churches were immune from IRS audits, but tax reforms beginning that year made churches subject to taxation on business income unrelated to its ministry. How that is defined, and how the IRS distinguishes between contributions related to religious pursuits and other types of income, has proven troubling. The intent of the IRS was to crack down on bogus organizations that call themselves churches to avoid taxation. But pastors and lay leaders such as Coleman discovered that aggressive IRS field inquiries sometimes targeted bona fide churches as well as imposters.

The new law includes the following provisions:

• Before beginning an inquiry, the IRS must tell a church in writing what its concerns are, explain relevant sections of the tax code, and tell the church it has the right to request a conference with the IRS.

• At least 15 days before it examines records the IRS must provide a second written notice describing which church records and activities the IRS intends to review.

• All types of church records can be examined “only to the extent necessary to determine tax.” Previously, only account records were specifically protected in this way. Third-party records, such as bank files, cannot be used to revoke a church’s tax exemption.

• The IRS can examine records dating back three years. If a church falls short of the criteria for tax exemption, the IRS can delve into records for the previous six years.

Congress passed the CAP Act as part of the Deficit Reduction Act of 1984. That title indicates why momentum is gathering behind IRS efforts to crack down on churches. Coleman says he observed “a definite, overt, anti-Christian bias” on the part of Treasury Department officials who fought against the CAP Act.

During his Capitol Hill crusade, Coleman says many told him, “You’re not supposed to be able to do this. You’re from Alabama.” But he sees a larger lesson for the Christian community. “It’s just like God to take the unknown and the unwise and make fools out of the wisdom of this world. Don’t buy the lie that we can’t change anything.”

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