The Cuba Partnership Resource Manual
A Cuban Experience of Mission in Unity
Last Updated (Monday, 21 February 2011 19:59) Written by Carlos Emilio Ham Monday, 21 February 2011 18:39
Carlos Emilio Ham: "A Cuban Experience of Mission in Unity"
The Presbyterian Church was founded in Cuba by Evaristo Collazo, a Cuban lay patriot
who fought against Spanish colonial rule in the 19th century. While living in Florida, USA,
in political exile, he was converted to Christianity in the Reformed tradition. He returned to
Cuba and founded the first Presbyterian congregation in Havana on June 26 1890. His wife
Magdalena, together with the congregation, set up a school for poor children who could not
afford to pay high school fees.
So from the very beginning Cuban Presbyterianism was marked by this rich heritage:
patriotism and social commitment, with a strong participation of the laity and of women,
and a special ecumenical orientation and engagement. In 1898, Cuba attained its independence
and constituted itself a republic. In place of Spain, the United States now became the dominating
power.
At the beginning of the 20th century, with the support of US missionaries, the church developed
rapidly, with the construction of many church buildings, schools and medical dispensaries, as
well as Christian formation and church development programs. The congregations were
constituted as a presbytery of the Presbyterian Church USA, Synod of New Jersey. In the 1940s,
Presbyterian and other Protestant leaders founded the Cuban Council of Churches and the
ecumenical seminary in Matanzas.
Revolution in the revolution
When the revolution became more radical, instituting a programme of wide-ranging reform
and nationalizing private companies, people started to withdraw their support and many
left the country. A great number of these private companies were owned by North Americans
and, as a result, in January 1961 the US government severed diplomatic relations with Cuba.
Three months later, following the abortive US-sponsored Bay of Pigs invasion, the socialist
character of the revolution was proclaimed and the United States declared an embargo
against our people.
In response, Cuba developed closer relations with the communist states in eastern Europe
and the Soviet Union. These states were officially atheist. This policy was also imposed in
our country but, to be honest, in Cuba, unlike other atheist countries, there was no open
persecution of religious people. There was, rather, a subtle persecution. Religious people
could not study journalism, psychology, foreign affairs or any other profession in which
they would influence the minds or the ideology of others.
From the point of view of the structure and mission of the church, we were free to preach
and to teach, but only within the four walls of the sanctuaries. The evangelizing effort of
going out and reaching the people as an organized church, to share the "good news" as it is
conceived traditionally, was not permitted. During these years, the question was not how to
preach the gospel as an organized church, but how to live the gospel creatively with integrity
as Christians, as a community of believers, and how to bear witness to the living Lord in such
a way that people come and ask you about it.
I still remember that in our youth meetings at church we used to comment on how people
referred to us as good workers and good students, but said it was a pity we were Christians.
They could not understand that we were honest and hard working, not in spite of our faith,
but precisely because of it. And I am expressing this here not because of our personal merits.
It was a result of the action of the Holy Spirit in our lives, in spite of our material limitations.
It was indeed hard, so in those years we suffered an exodus not only of Cubans from the country
but also of Christians from the churches. The Presbyterian church, for example, lost 70 per cent
of its pastors. Our church today highly respects the minority of pastors that remained in the
churches, under great pressures and in economic distress. I remember in the early sixties, when
my father was studying theology in Europe, we were living with my mother's relatives in West
Virginia, USA. We returned to Cuba in 1962, during the famous missile crisis, "against the traffic",
due to my parents' commitment to the people and the church in Cuba.
So the two important hostile factors that kept the church from carrying out its mission in unity
during all those years were, on one hand, the pressures of the atheistic government and, on
the other hand, the harsh realities of the US embargo, which hurt (and still is hurting) the Cuban
population, including the churches, particularly the pastors. Just to have an idea, we need to
remember that the Presbytery of Cuba (as it was called at that time), was organically part of
the Synod of New Jersey, so when the US embargo was declared, the pastors and their families
suddenly stopped receiving their salaries and were in great need.
Our church got its independence from the mother church in 1966 and one year later the
Presbyterian-Reformed Church was founded. That same year we ordained our first woman
minister (Rev. Ofelia Ortega) and extended our relationships to the world church. Our
church became a member of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches and the World
Council of Churches, among other organizations.
The isolation of the Cuban churches imposed by the US embargo has been to a certain extent a
blessing, positive and beneficial for the life and mission of the Cuban church. It obliged us to
write our own biblical studies, our own hymns and our own biblical-theological reflections,
as well as our own Sunday school curriculum. This has helped us to develop a stronger and
more united Cuban leadership. In 1977 we wrote our own confession of faith, the only one in
Cuba and among all the Reformed churches in Latin America and the Caribbean.
At this point we should also recognize the important role that the churches both in Cuba and
the US have played in breaking down walls of hostility and building a bridge of reconciliation
and love between both our countries, in spite of the resentment of our governments and even
of the Cubans both in Cuba and abroad. We can't write the history of the relationship between
our two countries in the last forty years without taking this role into consideration, although
we still have a long way to go.
The capacity of pastors and laypeople of the Presbyterian-Reformed Church in Cuba to develop
important positions of ecumenical leadership, both nationally and internationally, and at the
same time to keep the unity of the church has always amazed me. I think that it has much to
do with the notion of "unity in diversity". While we might have our differences, when we do not
to think the same, we still respect and accept each other. Of course we have tensions and
contradictions among ourselves, but the commitment to the unity of the body of Christ is sacred
and therefore stronger than what divides us. We recognize, of course, that it is easier to preserve
the unity of a smaller church like ours than a bigger one.
Religious freedom
A six-hour meeting of 75 Cuban Protestant leaders with President Fidel Castro on April 2 1990
changed the course of our history. We spoke specifically about the negative effects on the
population of the official state atheism, the issue of double standards, the need for access
to the mass media for the proclamation of the gospel, the construction of new sanctuaries, etc.
Naturally the encounter did not come out of the blue. It was preceded by a series of events
that contributed to the realization of the meeting itself, such as the Sandinista revolution in
Nicaragua ("Between Christianity and revolution there is no contradiction", they used to say);
meetings of Fidel Castro with Latin American liberation theologians; the visit in 1984 of the US
presidential candidate, Rev. Jesse Jackson, who led Fidel Castro to attend a church service in
memory of Martin Luther King, Jr; the book Fidel and Religion, in which Frei Betto interviewed
Castro, a bestseller in 1985, etc.
As a result of the meeting, among other factors, the 4th congress of the Communist Party in
1991 changed its by-laws, allowing religious persons to become members. In 1992 a popular
referendum was carried out, and the great majority of the population voted to adopt a secular
constitution, Protestant pastors were elected members of the parliament, etc.
Economic difficulties
In 1989 the Berlin wall fell, marking the disintegration of the socialist system in eastern
Europe and the Soviet Union. As a result of this, our economy dropped drastically. Until
that year, we used to import 16 million tons of oil per year. In 1992, we could only import
4 million (a quarter of the former amount!), which caused long blackouts, a drastic reduction
in public transportation, food and medicines.
US policy not only remained hostile towards Cuba, but became tighter with the 1992 Cuban
Democracy Act (Torricelli Law) which prohibits US subsidiaries based in other countries from
trading with Cuba. The Helms-Burton Act, which tries to internationalize the embargo, using
legal sanctions to avoid foreign investments in Cuba in property formerly owned by US citizens,
has received a strong reaction from the European Union and the world community.
Of course the economic depression that Cuban people are suffering does not depend on
international factors only. The centralization of the economy in former times by the Marxist state,
prohibiting private initiative, the failure of the socialist economy, not having, among other factors,
the competition of the market which can be beneficial and creative, has also contributed to the crisis.
Religious revival
In the last twelve years, the drastic changes in the Marxist state, the Communist Party and the
constitution of the nation, withdrawing its atheist character, the economic hardship, and the
faithfulness and the mission in unity of the churches have allowed us to witness a tremendous
religious revival. Now, the pews of many churches are filled with people seeking a word of hope
and guidance. Denominations have had to train pastors and laypeople quickly and to make rooms
ready in private homes for the newly converted.
People experiencing "emptiness" in their lives attend the churches, or practice other religions,
to try to discover or rediscover a meaning for their lives. So one of the most important roles
that the churches are called to play is to be a producer of meaning in the lives of the people,
to teach them about the Bible, about that Jesus who transforms lives and societies, who
teaches the real meaning of loving God and loving one's neighbor.
This climate of openness and religious freedom was encouraged even more by the visit of Pope
John Paul II in January 1998 and the Cuban Evangelical Celebrations the following year. In each
case, four different masses and celebrations were organized with the participation of thousands
of people and broadcast on radio and TV. Significant also in this regard were the visit of an
ecumenical delegation that same year, led by Dr Konrad Raiser, general secretary of the World
Council of Churches, and the more recent visit by Dr Setri Nyomi, general secretary of the
World Alliance of Reformed Churches. This climate means that the churches no longer have to
limit their mission to the sanctuary, but can - and should - develop it out in society. So indeed
he churches are encouraged to bear witness not only in the Jerusalem of the church, but to the
ends of the earth, as we read in Acts 1.8.
Challenges in mission
The Presbyterian-Reformed Church in Cuba as part of the body of Christ in the country is
facing new challenges to its mission in unity:
* How to develop holistic diaconal projects in collaboration rather than in competition?
* As we try to do mission in society, how to be an expedition more than an institution?
* How to be faithful and promote justice in a dual-currency economy (where one can hardly
survive without the "hard" currency) as a church, and as church leaders who often have better
financial possibilities than those around them?
* How to cope with the "invasion" of "missionaries" (some of them "mercenaries"), who come
with lots of dollars to try to "purchase" souls and even pastors and to proselytize?
* How to handle the "charismatic movement", which can be a blessing, but also creates
many divisions?
* How to minister in the context of ideological confrontations and polarization, both internally
and in relation to the Cuban exiles?
* How to preach and teach the importance of reconciliation in society, starting right there in the
church between the different groups in the congregations: those who remained faithful, those
who are returning, and those who come for the first time?
* How to carry out mission in partnership with other churches and organizations abroad?
* How to cope with opportunism of both left and right?
* How to encourage the ecumenical spirit and commitment at a time when there is a reinforcement
of denominationalism and apparently less ecumenical will or ethos?
These are some of the questions that challenge the commitment to mission and unity of the
churches in Cuba today. The soil is ready for a fresh planting of the seed of the word of God.
Not only that it is easier vis-à-vis the state, but also because it is more needed at a time when
there is a readjustment of values in society. Our Lord Jesus Christ, before going to his Father,
left his disciples the great commission: "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.
Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age. (Matthew 28: 18-20)
These verses, which form the conclusion of the gospel of Matthew, confirm that mission belongs
to the Lord himself, and that he shares it with us through the Holy Spirit. He co-missions us to
work along with him - which is expressed symbolically by the vertical dimension of the cross -
but the mandate refers also to the call to work for each other - which is represented by the
horizontal dimension.
In this way our ministry has been commissioned by our Lord in favor of his kingdom here on
earth and with the full conviction of his permanent accompaniment. The difficult and
challenging times through which we are living in Cuba today are a "kairos", offering
opportunities to analyze and redesign the role of Christianity and to continue working
for the benefit and the unity of our people. The church is not ours: it belongs to the Lord and
its future depends on the future of our people. So even when our specific concern is the unity
of the church, our greatest mission is to seek the unity of all the people, of all humanity, and
even of all creation.