The shift toward the present state of increased religious freedom in Cuba seems to have occurred sometime in the early 1980s. In 1985 Frei Betto, a Brazilian Jesuit priest, published a book entitled Fidel and Religion—a summary of 23 hours of conversation with the country’s leader. That book projected a keen apology of Cuban government views. In it Castro offered personal insights on the subject of religion.
About Christ, Castro stated, “I never perceived a contradiction in the political revolutionary field between the ideas I maintained and the idea of that symbol, that extraordinary figure who had been so familiar to me since I began to reason.” 1
On the subject of prayer in the Catholic Church he recalled: “I have seen, for instance, in some religions, the habit of praying as if talking with another, spontaneously, with one’s own words, to express a feeling. That was never taught to us [from his childhood Castro attended Catholic schools], but to repeat what was written, once, ten times, one hundred times, absolutely mechanically. That really isn’t a prayer; it’s an exercise of the vocal cords.” 2 About hell Castro said: “I remember long sermons on hell, about its heat, its sufferings, its anxiety. I really don’t know how such a cruel hell could be invented....One cannot conceive of a place that would deal so harshly with a person, no matter how great his sins might have been.” 3
About that time Castro expressed his attitude toward the church in several conciliatory meetings with Catholic bishops and Protestant leaders. In September of 1985 he appealed to his party activists to respect the rights of believers and promised to start working to help solve the “material needs” of the church. José Felipe Carneado, then chief of religious affairs within the Cuban Communist Party, stated during an interview in January 1986 that the party no longer considered the teaching of atheism as a key element in their ideological work.
Some see the government’s attempts at reconciliation with the churches as strategic steps taken to win the support of Liberation Theology militants and to build the party’s image in the eyes of international opinion. Whatever the motives, changes since 1985 have brought wonderful benefits to Cuban believers.
During the first years of the revolution, religious repression in Cuba included the closing down of the main Catholic magazine La Quincena, the occupation and confiscation of Catholic and Protestant schools, and the jailing and deportation of several priests. By 1961 hundreds of priests and bishops had been detained and some churches profaned. These confrontations reduced the number of priests and other Catholic religious workers to a fourth of their 1960 total.4 Other religions suffered equally significant losses. When Fidel Castro came to power in 1959, there were some 15,000 Jews in Cuba. Today there are only an estimated 1,500 Jews throughout the island. 5
Seventh-day Adventist pastor Noble Alexander recalls the day of February 20, 1962, when he was detained while driving home after preaching a sermon in Matanza, Cuba. Authorities pulled him over and told him he was wanted for five minutes of questioning. Those five minutes turned into 22 years in a Cuban prison. A year after his arrest he faced a mock trial on charges of trying to kill Cuban president Fidel Castro. A lawyer he had never seen pleaded guilty on his behalf. Pastor Alexander was one of 26 political prisoners Fidel Castro released after a visit by Jesse Jackson in June 1984. Also released was Thomas White, a Los Angeles school teacher who spent several months in prison. He had been condemned for dropping evangelistic leaflets over Cuba from a plane.6
The harassment of religion in Cuba has included the sending of workers of various denominations to forced labor camps. In these they have suffered physical and verbal abuse. Another type of abuse was called the “street plan.” It consisted of conducting activities next to church buildings in order to interrupt the religious services. Juan Clark, a Cuban-American journalist, interviewed a Catholic parishioner who told of Communist Party youth running screaming into a church and throwing eggs, one of which hit the priest.7
The Protestant churches experienced similar attacks. Baptists were pelted with stones inside their church. Religious youth in Cuba have suffered for their faith over the years because atheism was deemed the backbone of Cuban education. Excellent students have been denied the opportunity of enrolling in the best schools because of their religious convictions. Textbooks deny the historicity of Christ and criticize the biblical account of creation.
Only during the past few years have the churches been allowed to conduct direct evangelism. Before, they would disguise their outreach as cultural or musical programs. Christians would commit Bible passages to memory so they wouldn’t be seen carrying a Bible to other homes. Today churchgoers may invite friends and neighbors to undisguised evangelistic meetings. Although Bibles are not readily available in stores, church organizations can purchase them in bulk from state-approved venues.
By 1985 less than 1 percent of the total population of 8.5 million were attending the Catholic Church. Even so, with only 192 priests Cuba had the lowest clergy to potential parishioner ratio in Latin America.8 And while Protestant churches have been growing, their growth has trailed that in other countries. Recent growth, however, has been astounding. Seventh-day Adventists, for example, baptized more than 2,000 in just one day in February of 1999. Jehovah’s Witnesses have also experienced considerable growth (now approximately 80,000 members).
The year 1999 was good for religious freedom on the island. Pope John Paul II’s visit to Cuba from January 21 to 25 made several historic firsts. He celebrated public Masses attended by hundreds of thousands in Havana, Camagüey, Villa Clara, and Santiago de Cuba. In his 11 discourses the pope emphasized the need for fundamental human freedoms.
On December 1, 1999, the government declared that henceforth citizens would be allowed to celebrate Christmas as an official holiday and permitted the Catholic cardinal to speak briefly on national media on the celebration. However a report from the U.S. Department of State confirms that Nativity scenes in public areas are still prohibited.9
The government requires churches and other religious groups to register with the provincial Registry of Associations to obtain official recognition. Until recently, when some concessions have been made, the construction of new church buildings has been outlawed. This has forced the growing congregations to meet in private homes. Although house churches have occasionally been singled out for harassment by government representatives, the use of private homes for religious worship has provided an exceptional opportunity for Cubans to follow their religious orientation. Thousands of house churches are providing places of worship in many communities in which building of new churches is not allowed and in which the means of transportation are limited at best.
There have been advances in religious liberty for Cubans, but even today there is an ever-present danger. In 1985 Fidel compared the church to the revolution, saying: “If you [Christians] appreciate the spirit of self-denial and other human values, those are the values we exalt.... If the church were to create a state according to those principles, it would organize one such as ours.”10 So believers are pressured to compromise in favor of a state that pretends to replace it ideologically. This threat in some ways is more dangerous than open persecution. In Cuba church and state make strange bedfellows.
Footnotes
1 Fidel Castro and Frei Betto, Fidel y la Religión (Santo Domingo: Editora Alfa y Omega, 1985), p. 322.
2 Ibid., p. 149.
3 Ibid., p. 150.
4 Juan Clark, Religious Repression in Cuba (Miami: University of Miami, 1985), p. 9.
5 www.jewishcuba.org/cohen.html.
6 See Noble Alexander, I Will Die Free (Nampa, Idaho: Pacific Press Pub. Assn., 1991).
7 Clark, p. 27.
8 Ibid., p. 89.
9 “U.S. Department of State, Cuba: Religious Freedom Summary,” Annual Report on International Religious Freedom, 1999.
10 Castro and Betto, p. 263.
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