By Jeff Brumley
While the U.S. government reports that religious rights remain greatly restricted in Cuba, a Cooperative Baptist Fellowship official said his own experience is that freedoms are improving on the Communist island.
Ray Johnson, coordinator of CBF Florida, said the American restrictions on its own citizens’ ability to travel to and from Cuba, plus other limitations, often are more difficult to deal with than the Cuban government.
Since 1961, the United States has maintained economic and diplomatic embargos on Cuba. Since 1982, the nation has been on the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism.
“I can say that I have more trouble sometimes dealing with stateside regulations than dealing with Cuban regulations” in getting assistance to Cuba, Johnson said.
But Cuba gets a pretty low rating in the most recent International Religious Freedom Report issued by the State Department this week.
“Although many religious groups reported reduced interference from the government in conducting services, importing religious materials, receiving donations from overseas, and in traveling abroad,” the report said, “serious restrictions to the freedom of religion remained.”
Those restrictions included detaining pastors in eastern Cuba for attempting to distribute aid to hurricane victims, and confiscating that aid. And many religious leaders said they used self-censorship in sermons and other services to avoid government scrutiny, the report said.
“Many feared that direct or indirect criticism of the government could result in government reprisals,” including measures that could limit congregational growth.
However, the report also said religious groups in Cuba report an “improved ability to attract new members without government interference.”
And that is what Johnson said he has seen during his two visits to the island, where CBF Florida has a partnership agreement with the Eastern Cuba Baptist Association.
Johnson said he first visited in 2008 and then again in 2012, and the situation for Cuban Baptists had greatly improved in that time.
“There was a tremendous difference in the ability of churches to act and to worship,” Johnson said.
CBF Florida’s partnership with the association, which is historically connected to American Baptist Churches USA, currently includes pulpit swaps between the two countries, donating bicycles to pastors in eastern Cuba and providing storm aid. Efforts are also underway to foster church-to-church relationships between American and Cuban congregations.
The association has about 500 churches and 800 mission congregations today compared to 300 churches and 500 missions in 2008, Johnson said.
Johnson said he does not dispute the descriptions of repressions contained in the State Department report. He said he hasn’t witnessed those abuses on his trips and wasn’t told about them by Cubans.
But that isn’t surprising, he added.
“If it’s happening, the people aren’t going to talk much about it” with foreigners, Johnson said.