Nicaraguan Pastors Released after 9 Months in Prison, but ‘There’s Still Work to Do’

Christian missionaries in Nicaragua have faced the continuous threat of the country’s authoritarian government. As The New York Times reported, “[R]eligious leaders have been among the biggest targets, harassed, arrested and forced into exile.” As a result of this persecution, 13 pastors from the Mountain Gateway church had been put in jail with sentences that were supposed to last 12 to 15 years, each receiving $80 million in fines. But as of September 5, after nine months in prison, those pastors have officially been released.

It seems the arrested pastors were a part of the “sweeping campaign” Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega and his wife Rosario Murillo, who’s also the vice president, started “against nonprofits and religious groups,” the NYT added. This effort on behalf of Nicaraguan officials has resulted in over “1,600 organizations, many of them evangelical churches, [being] closed in the past month alone.” And on Thursday’s episode of “Washington Watch,” Britt Hancock, a missionary to Nicaragua with Mountain Gateway, explained what led to the 13 arrests, as well as the significance of these pastors being released.

“In 2023,” he said, “our ministry held a series of mass evangelism campaigns in Nicaragua.” This occasioned 6,000 evangelical churches and millions of individuals to come together throughout eight different initiatives. In “the last campaign,” Hancock added, “we filled the national meeting space, the biggest space in the country, in Managua, the capital city. And we had over 200,000 people the last night of our campaign there.” However, it was “a month after that happened” that officials in Nicaragua “began to arrest all of our staff and pastors that worked with us.”

“Why did they see [those gatherings] as a problem?” asked Joseph Backholm, guest host and senior fellow at Family Research Council. “Was it some kind of threat to the government?” According to Hancock, the government did find the gatherings as a threat.

He explained that Nicaragua has “a history, particularly since 2018, of just really dealing harshly and crushing any people or group that they perceived as a threat that had any social influence” — especially something as “big” and “unified” as what Hancock and his team were doing in the country. Ultimately, “[T]he freedom of the gospel doesn’t mix well with totalitarian regime ideology.” And with Nicaragua being run by “a communist dictatorship,” it simply falls in line with “their pattern for dealing with these kinds of things.”

The next question, according to Backholm, is whether this was an act of persecution specific to Christianity or just a communist government acting accordingly. Hancock replied, “We’re sure that it was both.” He added, “We were there for a long, long time as [an] evangelical … Christian ministry working on the ground.” It wasn’t “until the Lord really exploded such a massive movement” that the government decided to crack down on them. But from Hancock’s understanding, it wasn’t so surprising.

The “movement of faith,” he stated, “particularly the gospel, is a threat to them because we believe that relationship with Jesus is built on free will and love and freedom is contrary to the tenets of communism.” And when “that gets expressed around the world,” it’s often met with religious persecution. But Backholm highlighted that despite that reality, this has resulted in “a good outcome.” And yet, it begs the question: “How did these [pastors that had] 12-to-15-year sentences, unjust though they may be, end up being released after [just] nine months?” To which Hancock emphasized, it was “a complicated situation.”

The release of these 13 pastors came after immense effort from Hancock and his team, as well as their support from members of Congress, FRC President Tony Perkins, the Alabama delegation, the State Department, the Department of Homeland Security, the White House, and the press. Additionally, Hancock believes “likely tens of thousands or maybe millions of people were praying,” which helped create a “matrix of pressure upon the Nicaraguan government” that led to “months of negotiation directly by the State Department with the Nicaraguan government.” As a result, “they were able to successfully negotiate the release of our dear friends.”

Hancock further observed that this story comes with many lessons for both now and the future. Currently, the country is still “shutting down many churches and ministries.” Yet despite the subjugation, he added, “the spiritual side of things is alive and well. The revival fire of God is burning in people’s hearts.” But even so, the “repression is sowing a lot of fear and keeps people from speaking openly.” This is why “we need to continue to pray,” Backholm stated, as “there’s still work to do.”

In comments to The Washington Stand, Arielle Del Turco, FRC’s director of the Center for Religious Liberty, expressed that “the release of these Nicaraguan pastors and ministry leaders is cause for great celebration,” since “they are now spared the pain of a long prison sentence that they did not deserve and can be reunited with their families.” It “also demonstrates the power and importance of U.S. diplomatic efforts on behalf of persecuted Christians in other countries,” and “it should encourage the State Department to prioritize religious freedom efforts.”

At the same time, Del Turco underscored that “while it’s great that the U.S. government was able to negotiate the release of these ministry leaders, this is not an admission from the Nicaraguan government that these individuals were wrongly imprisoned, nor does it indicate that the Nicaraguan government will refrain from imprisoning innocent pastors going forward.” The future for these released Nicaraguan pastors is that they’re “being sent to Guatemala to be processed as refugees before they go to the United States or other countries.”

“This,” Del Turco warned, “is a huge loss for the Christians left behind in Nicaragua, who are now without those churches and ministries.” She concluded, “We must continue to advocate and pray for the realization of robust religious freedom protections in Nicaragua.”