Since 2007, Knox College, in collaboration with International Ministries, has been involved in a project whose primary goal is to help students reflect on the ways in which faith, ministry and church are lived in a context significantly different from their own. Cuba was chosen as the site for this intercultural program for two reasons: the Presbyterian Church in Canada has a partnership with the Iglesia Presbiteriana-Reformada en Cuba, and Knox College has had a long-standing relationship with the Seminario Evangelico de Teologia (SET) in Matanzas. Now five years later, it seems fitting to write about some of the insights afforded by this program.
There are many aspects of this annual experience in Cuba that have left an imprint on the way in which I continue to reflect on faith, ministry and the church in Canada. I continually think about the lessons that the church in Cuba—marginalized, isolated and impoverished by political events—teaches us, not primarily about survival, but about the commitment to keep hope alive, to maintain confidence in God, and that God has a mission for the church.
From atheist to secular state
In 1992, the Communist government of Cuba decriminalized Christianity and by constitutional amendment Cuba began to define itself a laic or non-religious state instead of athiest. That same revision affirmed a system of direct elections for provincial delegates and deputies to the parliament.
Three clergy—one Presbyterian, one Anglican and one Baptist—currently serve in the Cuban parliament bringing Christian faith directly to bear on the decision-making of a Communist government. We were present at a meeting at the seminary between church officials and the government’s education representatives in Matanzas Province; apparently a meeting which happens annually in which government officials consult with the church, seeking its input into possible initiatives within the educational system.
Most impressive to the students are the various social projects in which the Cuban Council of Churches and the seminary are partners. Each project arises out of the needs identified by a particular community, having in common the requirement that these projects benefit the whole community. One congregation raises pigs and provides a laundry service to all in the community. On rainy days the laundry hangs in the church sanctuary in front of and behind the pulpit and communion table. Another congregation, where one family has converted their living room into the sanctuary, plants a vegetable garden and makes pickles in order to support a seven-day-a-week breakfast project for the elderly in the community. This project has been going for over 10 years.
For a number of years we in the Presbyterian Church have experienced and continue to experience changes in the relationship between the church and Canadian society. We name it secularism or the end of Christendom and bemoan the loss of Christian privilege within Canadian society. On the one hand, if we are honest, we are uncomfortable being one faith group among many, secretly desiring a return to the “good old days.” We increasingly feel ill at ease in a secular society skeptical of institutions in general, resulting in a reticence to speak publicly about the issues that deny life in the world God loves. On the other hand, we know what it means to be confronted with how institutional power and privilege can lead to decisions that harm, and we continue in the present to struggle with what it means to apologize and work towards reconciliation with our aboriginal brothers and sisters. We have experienced how the power to define meaning and values in a society can lead to a situation of pain and suffering for so many.
My relationship with the seminary in Cuba has given me new confidence to focus not on the disadvantages but on the opportunities for ministry that might lie in this changed and changing relationship with Canadian society. Within Cuba a move to secularism has presented possibilities that were unknown beforehand. What possibilities does this new secularism present for the Presbyterian Church in Canada? What does it mean to prepare students for ministry within this unsettling context? What is the form of leadership they will increasingly be led to exercise not only within congregations, but within and for entire communities? What are the new ways in which we are being called to declare our faith as a denomination?
Declaring its faith
In 1978, the Presbyterian-Reformed Church in Cuba set out boldly a declaration of faith stating that “this testimony constitutes the affirmation of the joy which the Church of Jesus Christ experiences in the gospel as it lives this historic moment of humanity and especially as it proclaims the meaning faith has for us in the midst of the Cuban revolutionary process.” Central is the assertion that the world is God’s and that, “Nature is the ‘theatre’ where the human being—a creature in the ‘image and likeness of God’—is placed so that he [or she] be a worker.” That is, God’s steward of all goods both material and spiritual.
In affirming these truths the writers of the document demonstrate their awareness that such claims bring the church “dangerously close to the radical secularization taken on by God in Jesus Christ, and runs the same risks that he did of misunderstandings, sufferings and crucifixion. … Nevertheless,” the document continues, “the Presbyterian-Reformed Church in Cuba hopes … as it does this, it may become more fully a part of the glorious freedom of the Risen One, a freedom which will free it from the alienating ideologizations [ideologies] that in the past and still in the present have kept and keep the Church of Jesus Christ … a captive of unjust and oppressive structures, of ‘principalities and powers’ … that have made the human being an exploiter of his neighbour.”
At the very least this document leads me to ask, what declaration of faith is the Presbyterian Church in Canada being called to affirm in our context? How does our identity as Reformed people encourage us to be bold in redefining who we are for such a time as this?
From our beginnings we have affirmed a willingness and courage to reinterpret, reframing old wisdom for new contexts—Reformed and always being reforming! But even more essential is a spirituality which sees God’s grace as central to all that we do, a belief that God’s grace, so freely given to us must be extended to all in our communities both inside and outside the church. For us this has traditionally meant investing ourselves in the well-being of Canada.
Ours was, and in many places continues to be, a ministry of service through which hungry people are fed, the homeless given shelter, the stranger in the form of the immigrant and refugee welcomed, the most vulnerable protected. Because of this way of being in God’s world, we ask questions, if at times reluctantly, about the kind of economic, political and social structures needed to ensure the well-being of all. Like Jeremiah in his letter to the exiles, a dispirited and fearful people, here is a declaration to which we can relate: “Seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile; pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your own … I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope.” (Jeremiah 29:7,11)
“To be non-political is to be political”
Last year during their intercultural program, the rector of the Seminario Evangelico de Teologia, Dr. Reinerio Arce Valentin, spoke to Knox students about the political and economic challenges facing Cuba and the theological questions being asked by the Presbyterian-Reformed Church. He answered questions about the United States’ blockade and its effect on the quality of life in Cuba, questions about how the benefits achieved by the revolution might be in jeopardy if the United States has increased or unlimited access, questions about the move to a market economy with the new tax and regulatory changes that seek to foster the growth of micro-enterprises, questions about the extent of freedom of speech and action that really exist in this Communist state.
Reinerio’s responses recognized the enormity of the issues facing Cuba for which there are no easy answers. He expressed his concern that the church could become overwhelmed and begin out of fear to turn inward, isolating itself from its context. He told the students that he worries about the growing trend toward a personal piety and its potential to imprison the church inside its own walls, which could lead to a neglect or even denial of God’s love for the world. During this time with the students he made the comment, “to be non-political is to be political.” As I read the students’ reflection papers after they returned home, I was surprised to see how many of them had focused on this phrase, recognizing in it a challenge to an equally popular phrase in Canadian church circles: religion and politics don’t mix.
What does it mean for the PCC to be political and not, as Reinerio says, to adopt the “theology of the ostrich” and stick our heads in the sand? What does it mean to call out prophetically in the public sphere? It is a challenge; for even as the world is getting smaller, it seems to be more and more complicated. It is as if our voices have become muted, and I wonder whether we, or more specifically, whether I, lack courage or will. I worry about how this withdrawal from the public forum is modelled in worship. For example, especially in the growing popularity of praise songs, I hear us singing much more of a personal piety and much less of the radical nature of the incarnation.
I assess that often our preaching of the parables neglects the Jesus who was fully immersed in the political, social and economic ills of his day. Thomas Long, speaking about narrative preaching in Preaching From Memory to Hope, indicates that it has “too often devolved into a hodgepodge of sentimental pseudoart.” Biblical scholars, while expressing it somewhat differently, would assert that Jesus wasn’t crucified for being too spiritual. He was crucified because he was perceived to be a political threat to the stability of the Roman occupation in Palestine.
It is challenging to achieve the depth of theological reflection in one’s own context that does justice to the experience of being invited deeply into another’s context. Certainly one thing I have learned from my Cuban sisters and brothers is that theological reflection is shallow, indeed does not merit the name of theological reflection, if it does not include an analysis of the social, economic and political realities of the society where God has placed us. More than ever, with them, I seek to focus on what it means to minister knowing that the world and all that is in it, in spite of sin, belongs to and is loved by God. As God’s partners in proclaiming the reign of God and working for that reign to become a reality in this world we cannot hide from the messiness or complications of that world, separating its weekday reality from our Sunday worship. Those of us at Knox College who have participated in this experience of the Cuban reality have been challenged to claim fully with hope and joy this moment in the life of the church in Canada.
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