Baptist Convention of Western Cuba or Convención Bautista de Cuba Occidental is an association of cooperating Baptist churches in western Cuba.
The first Cuban Baptists were patriots who were exiled to the United States during the Ten Years' War (1868–1878). Some became Baptists while in the U. S., and later returned to Cuba. Exile Albert Díaz joined a church in New York City. He returned to Cuba in 1882, and organized an independent congregation at Havana in 1883. In 1885, he was ordained as a Baptist minister, and, in 1886, he led his church to become Baptist. Southern Baptists sent C. R. Daniel to oversee the work in 1901, and he was instrumental in organizing the Baptist Convention of Western Cuba in 1905.
Other Baptist organizations in Cuba are the Baptist Convention of Eastern Cuba or Convención Bautista de Cuba Oriental (org. 1905), the Free Will Baptist Convention of Cuba or Convención Bautista Libre de Cuba (org. 1943), and the Fraternity of Baptist Churches of Cuba or Fraternidad de Iglesias Bautistas de Cuba (org. 1989).
The Fraternity of Baptist Churches was started in 1989 by three churches expelled from the BCWC because of views related to politics, open communion and open baptism. A recent reconciliation between the Fraternity of Baptist Churches in Cuba and the Baptist Convention of Western Cuba led to the "Fraternity" becoming a member of the Baptist World Alliance, of which the Western Convention was already a member. Baptists in Cuba form one of the largest non-Catholic denominations on the island. Churches in Cuba are free to hold meetings in their church buildings or in homes, but not in public places.
The Baptist Convention of Western Cuba had 7,627 members in 113 churches in 1995. The Convention is an independent organization, but cooperates with both American Baptists and Southern Baptists. Victor Gonzales is the general secretary of the BCWC (2000).
Famous quotes containing the words baptist, convention, western and/or cuba:
“I am perhaps being a bit facetious but if some of my good Baptist brethren in Georgia had done a little preaching from the pulpit against the K.K.K. in the ‘20s, I would have a little more genuine American respect for their Christianity!”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)
“No convention gets to be a convention at all except by grace of a lot of clever and powerful people first inventing it, and then imposing it on others. You can be pretty sure, if you are strictly conventional, that you are following genius—a long way off. And unless you are a genius yourself, that is a good thing to do.”
—Katharine Fullerton Gerould (1879–1944)
“Signal smokes, war drums, feathered bonnets against the western sky. New messiahs, young leaders are ready to hurl the finest light cavalry in the world against Fort Stark. In the Kiowa village, the beat of drums echoes in the pulsebeat of the young braves. Fighters under a common banner, old quarrels forgotten, Comanche rides with Arapaho, Apache with Cheyenne. All chant of war. War to drive the white man forever from the red man’s hunting ground.”
—Frank S. Nugent (1908–1965)
“Education is a necessity, it helps to understand life. Like that compagnero in Cuba who talked about politics, back when they were on strike. He knew many things, that hijo de puta, and he unraveled the most confusing situations in a marvelous way. You could see each point in front of you on the line of his reasoning like rinsed laundry set up to dry; he explained things to you so clearly that you could grasp it like a good hunk of bread with your hand.”
—Jacques Roumain (1907–1945)