CHRISTIANITY TODAYcommissioned Adon Taft, religion editor of the Miami Herald, to visit Cuba to learn how the revolution has affected the religious life of the people. Taft toured the entire island, interviewing missionaries and national church leaders as well as the laity. Here is his report:
Faith is being put to the test on the tense, confused island of Cuba.
Fidel Castro’s revolution has split the church and more and more his government’s restrictions are tightening on the material life of God’s people.
Prophetic, perhaps, is a window display of the American Bible Society’s downtown headquarters in the capital city of Havana. The display, which stops hundreds of passersby a day, quotes 1 Peter 4:7–9:
“But the end of all things is at hand: be ye therefore sober, and watch unto prayer. And above all things have fervent charity among yourselves: for charity shall cover the multitude of sins. Use hospitality one to another without grudging.”
Everyone who enters the store comments on how well the verses fit the situation in the nation, reports the pretty young clerk who is a Roman Catholic.
Just what that situation is has people both inside and outside Cuba confused. Many people outside the country think it is a pitched battle between a Communist-led government and a powerful Roman Catholic church.
There is little doubt left that the government is Red controlled. Fidel himself may be no more than a neurotic with a savior complex. He is in the power, however, of the avowed Communist, Che Guevara.
In addition to its thinness, the Roman Catholic church in Cuba is split over the revolution. Many of the brawls which have occured over denunciation of communism from the pulpits were between pro and anti-Castro forces within the congregations.
The famous pastoral letters against communism were not read in any of the Catholic churches in the interior provinces. This was partly because of fear of reprisals, but also because of the sympathy of many priests and others for the Castro regime.
There has been some effort, as in many Communist countries, to organize a national Catholic church. The appeal has been to the 200 Cubans among the 720 priests of the church. The other priests are foreigners, some 400 of them Spanish.
Cuban Catholics: How Strong?
Catholic strength in Cuba is questionable. Cuba is not a Catholic nation, as is commonly thought, if one takes it to mean that a majority of the 6,000,000 population are Catholics.
The predominant religion of Cuba is spiritism, a combination of animism and voodooism. Many nominal Catholics actually practice spiritism, adopting saints of the Roman church as the spirits of the inanimate objects they worship.
A good example of the thinness of the Catholic church on the island is Havana, with its population of nearly 1,000,000. There are only 30 fully established churches and 50 mission stations in the whole city. Six of the churches are Catholic. This compares with Miami, a city of comparable size and not in any sense a Catholic center, where there are a total of 450 churches, including 30 Catholic.
Havana is not an exception. In Mantanzas, for example, there are only 2,000 church members in all—Protestants and Catholics—in a population of 100,000.
The greatest strength of the Catholics is in Camaguey, where they have 22 of the 30 churches in the city area of 210,000 persons.
All of the hierarchy’s opposition to the government has not stemmed from anti-Communist feeling, either. Castro, although nominally a Catholic himself, has cut off all government subsidy for the Catholic church which has existed throughout the island’s 450-year history of European civilization.
The recognition traditionally given the Roman church by the Cuban government gives that church’s current pronouncements more prestige and force than is indicated by the statistics on active membership.
Protestant churches, meanwhile, have received a sort of left-handed blessing from Castro. For the first time Protestants are given recognition in public events.
Many Protestants—both clergymen and laymen—were active in the government when the revolution first was established and found general support for promises of much-needed reforms.
Several still are in the government although Faustino Perez, former minister of recuperation, and Enrique Ostalki, both Presbyterians, and Lopez Fresquet, a Methodist who was minister of finance, have quit their Castro-given posts.
Significantly, most of Christians left in the government are Presbyterians. Heading the list is Dr. Raul Fernandez Ceballos, secretary of the Cuban Council of Churches who heads up the literacy program under the minister of education.
Castro met with Dr. Fernandez, Dr. Rafael Cepeda (a professor at the Evangelical Seminary and director of education in Latin America for the Presbyterian Church, USA) and others, mostly Presbyterians, to propose a national Protestant church with a minister of religion in the cabinet.
Only intervention by the Presbyterian mission board in the United States with a threat to cut off funds aborted the plans.
Many Protestant leaders—both American missionaries and native Cubans—opposed the attempt at a new union of church and state.
The historic union of the state with the Catholic church had prevented any significant Protestant work in Cuba until after the Spanish-American War when missionaries from the United States followed Yankee troops in to liberate the people from more than Spanish rule.
The Bible was banned from the latently wealthy island until 1871. But since the days of independence, Bible-believing Christians have been making some headway.
Methodists and Baptists have been the pace-setting Protestant churches. The former have about 10,000 full members and have an elaborate educational system which includes the nation’s only Protestant university.
Baptists have divided the island, with Southern Baptists working in the western four provinces and American Baptists serving the two eastern provinces. Together their strength is about the same as that of the Methodists and their work across the island seems to be similar.
Presbyterians, Seventh-day Adventists, Pentecostals (the name given in Cuba to the work of the Assemblies of God), Episcopalians, and Churches of God, also have strong works in Cuba.
Free-Will Baptists, the West Indies Mission (which began in Cuba), Nazarenes, the Four-Square Gospel churches, the Church of Christ, the United World Mission, the Berean Mission and Conservative Baptists also are active.
All of these churches are split over the revolution because all of the people of Cuba are divided on the issue. At first, nearly all the people and most of the church leaders supported Castro. Many ministers thought the millennium had come with Fidel’s promises. Some thought he was a Christian.
But as civil liberties have vanished and private enterprise of every kind has been placed under restriction, the people and the church leaders have begun to place the Red label on the government. Probably 70 per cent of the people now are against the Castro regime.
“Our days are numbered,” remarked Jose Colmenero, 38-year-old, Cuban-born, American missionary for the Conservative Baptist Convention.
Working among business and professional people of Havana, Colmenero finds that many of those he has won to the Lord in the last two years now are fleeing the country because the government has taken their property and frozen their bank accounts.
“Few Christians are on fire. They’d rather talk politics than Christ,” he said. He told of one Baptist youth meeting breaking up with Christian Cubans telling American Christians, “Why don’t you Americans go home?”
The anti-Americanism stirred up by Castro is a definite stumbling block to missionaries. John Tiezen and Jerry Sandal], of the Berean Mission in the farming town of Auros, in Oriente Province, report they are unable to talk to some people just because they are Americans.
Nonetheless, the mission carries on at 13 preaching points which reach 1,000 of the poverty-stricken natives who live in the squalor of thatched-roof huts.
The mission’s two radio programs are limited in effectiveness since batteries for radios no longer are available for their listening audiences.
The biggest hope of the mission is the 11 students in the Bible school who will go out well-grounded in the faith to work among their compatriots.
Bible school is not enough, though, in the opinion of Roy Ackerle, of United World Mission. That mission’s Bible school in Cabanas, Pinar del Rio, has been closed down after 12 years to make way for a seminary-type school providing classes for about 15 students a year.
Protestant Panorama
• The Rev. James M. Lawson, Negro sit-in leader whose dismissal from the student body of Vanderbilt University Divinity School caused a faculty controversy last spring, is being assigned as pastor of Scott Memorial Methodist Church in Shelbyville, Tennessee. The 33-year-old minister earned a bachelor of divinity degree at Boston University School of Theology this summer.
• A clerical exchange program is under way between the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States and the Church of England (Anglican). The plan provides for pairs of qualified priests—one English and one American—to exchange their parishes for a year.
• Southern Baptists have started 10,252 missions and churches since the beginning of the “30,000 Movement” on June 1, 1956, according to program director C. C. Warren. The movement seeks to establish 20,000 missions and 10,000 churches by 1964.
• Nearly 500 high school and college athletes assembled at an Estes Park, Colorado, camp last month for the annual summer conference of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes. Among sports greats who participated in the program were St. Louis Hawks basketball star Paul Pettit, All-America center Doon Moomaw of UCLA, and Dave (Boo) Ferris, former Boston Red Sox pitcher.
• A week-long evangelistic campaign in Quito, Ecuador, drew capacity crowds to the 3,000-seat Capital Theater this summer. Some 415 persons responded to nightly invitations following sermons by evangelist Fernando Vangioni of Argentina.
• American pianist Van Cliburn, at the close of a summer concert tour of the Soviet Union, gave 80,000 rubles ($8,000) from his receipts to the First Baptist Church of Moscow.
• A leading Navy researcher told the American Scientific Affiliation last month that world peace is contingent upon mankind’s voluntary surrender to God. “Until human nature is changed we’ll have war,” said Dr. Robert M. Page, director of research for the U. S. Naval Research Laboratory. Page addressed the 15th annual convention of ASA, a fellowship of Christian scientists, held in Seattle, Washington.
• Twin brothers Frank and Charles Richard observed their 80th birthday by serving as guest pastors at Park Place Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in Hutchinson, Kansas, last month. The two retired ministers each delivered a brief sermon.
• Delegates to the annual summer national conference of the Methodist Youth Fellowship passed resolutions which supported non-violent sit-in demonstrations, took a stand for racial and social equality, urged abolition of the Methodist Central Jurisdiction, and called for a study of communism by Methodist youth to enable them to more effectively oppose it. The meeting was held in Lincoln, Nebraska.
• The Young Life movement plans to erect a $92,000 national headquarters in Colorado Springs, Colorado.
• Protestant church members in Taiwan now number 136,250, according to the newly-published Taiwan Christian Yearbook. The figure represents a gain of 39 per cent since 1957. Overseas Protestant missionaries on the island are said to have increased from 444 to 534 during the three-year period.
• The Kresge Foundation is making a $25,000 grant to the Evangelical Seminary of Puerto Rico to be applied to construction of a new men’s dormitory.
• A minority faction in the First Baptist Church of Wichita, Kansas, is pressing a law suit which seeks to retain the church’s property and enjoin the majority from interfering with the congregation’s buildings, funds, or affairs. The minority faction charges that custom, tradition and doctrine were violated when the congregation withdrew from the American Baptist Convention to protest the convention’s membership in the National Council of Churches.
The 15 American missionaries with UWM find that many Cubans shun them because of their nationality, Ackerle said. But their work continues among about 1,000 persons at 15 churches and preaching stations in the province.
A UWM daily radio program from Havana’s revolutionary station still finds response.
Faced with the possibility of losing a farm used to support its work, the UWM has sold it. The move followed government seizure of Methodist and Nazarene camp sites on the Isle of Pines.
The growing prejudice against Americans also may force out men like the Rev. Victor Rankin, district superintendent of the Methodist Church in Camaguey where an Episcopal missionary already has been attacked by the government and has left the country, at least temporarily.
Rankin is glad that so many Cubans have been given leadership in the Methodist Church because they could carry on if necessary. But, like most of the Americans on the field, he is a little apprehensive about the preparedness of the majority of the Cuban churchmen.
“After all,” he points out, “the church is only 50 years old here.”
Besides the prejudice against American missionaries, the pinch of the general economic conditions of the island, and the isolated seizure of church property, Protestants and Catholics alike are faced with government antagonism in their vast educational undertakings. The churches operated 1,300 schools with 300,000 students and 10,000 teachers.
Some 300 of these schools will be unable to open this month because they are unable to meet the high salary requirements of the new law. Many of the teachers were practically volunteers.
The government is making it uneconomic to run many other schools in such ways as in the case of the school which has three buses. One is broken and the school doesn’t have the money to replace it and there are no buses for sale anyway. The school asked the government for permission to lay off the bus driver, but the request was denied.
In another instance a school had 170 boarding students, 150 of which were orphans or needy students whose tuition was paid by the government. The government is taking the 150 students out of the school but the school can’t fire the cooks and housekeepers used to care for those students.
Catholic schools must pay into teacher pension funds, maintained by the government, even though the teaching nuns can’t draw a pension.
A Methodist school has discovered that one of its teachers is a Communist. The director cannot fire the teacher because of present laws forbidding employers to fire anybody. Classes cannot be taken away from the teacher for fear the teacher would complain to the government.
Despite all this, not even all the American missionaries are disturbed at Castro’s policies. Mrs. Herbert Caudill, a Southern Baptist who has been transplanted from Mississippi for 30 years, notes:
“Government recognition of Protestants by using them in government has given evangelicals prestige for the first time and makes our work easier.” She terms Che a genius who has saved the Cuban economy.
And many Cuban church leaders still feel Castro is in sympathy with their work. Some point out that Fidel’s son has joined the Methodist Church, that his sister sings in a Baptist choir, that he often quotes the Bible, and that Che Guevara’s wife—Aleida March—is a Presbyterian (she also is a known Communist).
Among those are such evangelical leaders as the Rev. B. G. Lavastida, a founder of the West Indies Mission and just-retired director of Los Pinos Nuevos School near Santa Clara.
He sees no danger of communism in the government and hails the promised reforms as Christianity in action. The fact that his 32-year-old school for training nationals to evangelize Cuba is closing next year to channel money to build churches, is because many fanners who supported the work have moved to the city and lost contact, he said. The number active in the work has dwindled from 7,000 to 5,000.
People: Words And Events
Deaths:Dr. Walter Lowrie Whallon, 81, retired Presbyterian minister and one-time president of the Lord’s Day Alliance of the United States; in Newark, New Jersey … the Rev. Domingo Marrero, 51, a dean at the University of Puerto Rico and well-known Methodist leader; in San Juan … Dr. Garfield Williams, 78, former dean of the Church of England cathedral at Manchester; while travelling by train from his home in Devon to Exeter, England … Lieutenant Colonel John Stobart, 56, territorial commander of the Salvation Army in Ceylon; in Colombo … Miss Ellen Nielsen, 89, veteran Danish missionary to China who refused to be repatriated; in Takushan, Manchuria … Dr. Norman B. Harrison, noted Presbyterian minister.
Elections: As president of the American Evangelical Lutheran Church, the Rev. Anders E. Farstrup … as Methodist Bishop of Lima, Peru, Dr. B. Foster Stockwell.
Appointments: As president of Tougaloo Southern Christian College, Dr. Adam Daniel Beittel … as professor of systematic theology at New Brunswick Theological Seminary, Dr. Gerrit T. Vander Lugt … as Bishop of the Anglican Diocese of Masasi, Tanganyika, Father Trevor Huddleston … as chaplain at American University, the Rev. LeRoy Steney Graham.
Citation: To Dr. Paul W. Brand, British Baptist medical missionary, the 1960 Albert Lasker Award for Distinguished Service to the Physically Handicapped (Brand has been director of orthopedics at Vellore Christian Medical College in India since 1946. He was cited for work among lepers.)
So the picture remains confused. A Communist youth movement in Oriente uses the name of an American Baptist minister who helped launch Castro’s revolution; a Methodist layman and a Methodist clergyman in the interior are active leaders in the underground counter-revolutionary movement. Protestants, some of whom at first welcomed the Castro attacks on the Romans, and Catholics are working together in schools and other areas for the first time.
But the biggest area of agreement in even the Catholic church is that this is the Cuban church’s greatest opportunity. The church still is free to preach Christ in all his glory and power.
And the greatest need of Cuba, in the opinion of most evangelical leaders, is more American missionaries to give guidance and initiative to the faithful, young Christians in the churches of the island.
It’s a pressing need underscored by the theme hymn used by a Methodist clergyman specializing in work among laborers in the interior—“Work for the Night Is Coming.”
‘Kneel-in’ Arrests
The first “kneel-in” arrests were made in Memphis August 25 after would-be demonstrators appeared at Bellevue Baptist Church, second largest in the Southern Baptist Convention. Dr. Ramsay Pollard, SBC president, is pastor.
A white youth and his Negro companion were fined $51 each on disorderly conduct charges and ordered held for grand jury action on a state charge of interfering with public worship. They had been offered seats in the balcony, but declined and protested.
A passing policeman noted the disturbance and intervened. The church itself did not press charges.
Aide for Kennedy
Senator John F. Kennedy has enlisted the services of a high-ranking National Council of Churches official in his presidential campaign.
James W. Wine resigned as Associate General Secretary for Interpretation for the NCC last month to join the Kennedy staff as “special assistant for community relations.” The new job will entail dealing with questions raised by the Democratic candidate’s membership in the Roman Catholic Church, his statements on Church-State matters, and similar issues.
Wine, a 42-year-old Presbyterian elder who has long been active in Democratic circles, is known chiefly for his key role in the Air Force manual controversy. It was he who first called the Defense Department’s attention to a reservist security manual which accused prominent Protestant clergymen of pro-Communist activities. He pressed the issue even after being assured that the manual was being withdrawn.
Wine, a lawyer, spent a year and a half with the NCC. He came to New York after having served as vice president of Park College, in Parkville, Missouri, for two years. Before that he had served in his native Kentucky as a U. S. Commissioner under appointment by President Truman.
After 38 Years
Radio station WABC in New York is cancelling seven paid religious programs totalling four hours weekly.
Among those being eliminated is a Sunday morning broadcast from Calvary Baptist Church, a program which has been aired regularly for 38 years.
The station plans to replace the four paid hours with 90 minutes of free time to be shared by the area’s “four largest organized religious groups—Protestants, Roman Catholics, Jews, and Evangelicals.” A spokesman said the station would continue to relay the ABC radio network’s full religious schedule (which itself is being curtailed).
Crusade in Europe
Evangelist Billy Graham was scheduled to begin meetings in Germany this week following a series of crusades in Berne, Zurich, Basel, and Lausanne.
Meetings were slated in Essen from September 10 through 16. To accommodate the campaign, the largest tent ever erected in Germany was raised in the big West German industrial center. The tent was made to seat 20,000.
Following the Essen meetings, Graham planned to go to Hamburg and Berlin.
Buddhist Control
The government of Ceylon plans to take over all state-assisted Christian schools. Education Minister Badiudin Mahmud says the move will be made before the end of the year.
For some years there has been a growing Buddhist campaign for the nationalization of all schools and social welfare agencies in the country.
Bookshop Ban
Ecumenical Press Service says missionary bookshops in the Sudan province of Equatoria are being closed down by order of the governor.
All business-connected missionary enterprises must be eliminated, the report states, under the latest of a series of measures imposed by the government in a campaign for “complete Islamisation of the Sudan.”
Malta Observes Landing Of Paul
The diminutive island of Malta this year is celebrating the 1900th anniversary of the landing of the Apostle Paul.
Among Maltese it is a matter of intense pride that about A.D. 60 the apostle found refuge on the island when a Rome-bound ship in which he was travelling as prisoner wrecked in fierce winter storms (see Acts 28).
Paul remained three months, ministering to the sick and preaching Christian conversion. He left an indelible imprint on the island.
Even today, half of Malta’s men and boys seemingly are named Paul, the National Geographic Society says. Church after church bears his name. So does a nearby islet said to be the actual place where the Roman ship, with Paul aboard, ran aground.
The main island of Malta, which has been a British Crown colony since 1814, covers about 95 square miles. Most of Malta’s 319,000 residents are Roman Catholics.
The island’s religious identification stems chiefly from the Knights of Malta, a militant order which dates back to the first Crusade. The order was formed in Jerusalem, but was driven out and pursued successively through Acre, Cyprus, and Rhodes. The Knights of Malta finally established a permanent headquarters on Malta in 1530.
Korea’s Second Republic
In most respects Korea’s Second Republic is radically different from the First Republic of Syngman Rhee. Power will be centered in a prime minister instead of the president. But one thing which the April revolution did not change is Korea’s continuing dependence upon Christian leadership in the government.
In the new republic as in the old, Korea’s future rests in the hands of two Christian statesmen, a Protestant president, Posun Yun, and a Catholic prime minister, John Chang.
Succeeding Rhee as president of the republic is an aristocratic, austerity-minded Presbyterian elder whose family is famous in the history of Korean Protestantism. President Posun Yun neither smokes or drinks. Scottish-educated, he majored in archaeology at the University of Edinburgh. His wife is theologically trained at a women’s theological seminary in Japan and is actively interested in Christian education.
The whole Yun family faithfully attends the Andong Presbyterian Church near their old ancestral home in Seoul.
The prime minister is a Roman Catholic, and an intense political rival of President Yun. Both belong to the Democratic party which was swept to power in the July 29 elections, but the Democrats are one party in name only. For all practical purposes, the party is split into two almost equal factions which function as rival political parties: the Old Faction Democrats and the New Faction Democrats.
President Yun heads the Old Faction and Prime Minister Chang the New.
Convention Circuit
Here are reports of summer church conventions:
At Edinburgh, Scotland—The Sixth quinquennial assembly of the World Convention of Churches of Christ (Disciples) drew more than 4,000 delegates from many points on the globe. Some 2,500 of the delegates were Americans. The six-day meeting was held in Edinburgh’s historic Usher Hall.
Delegates unanimously adopted resolutions which (1) recognized responsibility “for the tensions and distress around us” and accepted the challenge of the age to seek new insight as to how moral power can be made an effective element of “national strength and international action”; (2) declared delegates’ readiness to make full use of whatever organizations or machinery might be seen to be working to achieve international disarmament and world peace; (3) pledged the convention to work for abolition of racial discrimination; and (4) promised efforts to provide homes for refugees and to help increase the world’s food supply.
Florentino Santana of Puerto Rico was elected convention president.
At Memphis, Tennessee—The General Assembly of the Church of God (Cleveland, Tennessee) drew some 7,000 lay delegates to Memphis.
Just prior to the biennial session, the Council of Ordained Ministers of the Church of God adopted a resolution which questions the fitness of a Roman Catholic as President.
“We honestly doubt that a Roman Catholic President could or would fully resist the pressures of ecclesiastical hierarchy,” the ministers said.
Formed in 1886, the denomination, a Pentecostal group, is the largest body using the name “Church of God” in this country, reporting a U. S. membership of more than 163,000.
At Waterloo, Iowa—In a nearly unanimous vote, the American Evangelical Lutheran Church endorsed merger with three other Lutheran churches at its 83rd annual convention. The proposed union with the Suomi, Augustana, and United Lutheran churches will produce a three-million-member denomination to be known as the Lutheran Church in America. The merger timetable calls for final consummation in 1962.
After merger, the AELC plans a special interest conference to continue fellowship among Danish congregations.
