How ironic that revolutionary Cuba, which was once regarded as the harbinger of hemispheric transformation, is today more likely to be viewed as a nation stuck in time, an unintended museum of colonial architecture, vintage automobiles, and Soviet-era government. Perhaps Cuban Protestants should be added to that list of anachronistic survivals. According to Theron Corse, ‘self-identities implanted by US missionaries' and ecclesiastical ties to US-based denominations remain evident among Cuba's Protestants fifty years after the onset of its Marxist-nationalist revolution and decades after Protestants in the rest of Latin America shed most of their ties to North America. While their story is not simply a matter of reaction versus revolution, that is certainly part of it as this well researched and carefully argued volume makes clear.
According to Corse, the Revolution compelled Cuban Protestants to wrestle with questions of identity: would they continue to model their theology and practices on patterns inculcated by US missionaries or would they develop new understandings and behaviours that grew out of and addressed the unprecedented situation in which they found themselves? Corse finds that the majority of those who remained in the pews clung to their pre-revolutionary identities, believing that their Christian faith was incompatible with atheistic Marxism. A smaller group made an effort to reconcile the two, beginning or expanding church-based social service activities and developing a Protestant variant of Liberation Theology. A few went even further, essentially identifying the mission of the church with the goals of the Revolution. These last two factions played a significant role in ecumenical organisations and international conferences and they continue to receive the most attention outside Cuba. As the author makes clear, the voice of those who regard the church as a shelter from the storm of revolutionary politics and economic strain is much harder to hear. However when it can be heard, it sounds much like the apolitical spirituality of mid-twentieth century US evangelicals, albeit with an increasingly Pentecostal accent.
The Revolution also compelled Protestants to cope with the attenuation of their ties to denominational sponsors in the United States. Missionaries left, financial subsidies dwindled, communication with church agencies in the United States became nearly impossible. Despite all of these obstacles, Cuba's Protestants made a determined and ultimately successful effort to maintain ties with their affiliated denominations in the United States. For a time, the major source of external subsidy was the World Council of Churches' ‘Cuba Project’ which distributed funds among the Protestant churches in an effort to promote ecumenism as well as institutional survival. Later, as the Cuban government relaxed its control over the churches, the old denominational connections were re-knit and ecumenism, along with the influence of Left-leaning Protestants with whom it had always been identified in the minds of conservative believers, declined.
Despite the brevity of his text, Corse manages to give a reasonable amount of attention to all of the major denominations and several of the smaller ones along with two prominent seminaries – the conservative Seminario Evangélico los Pinos Nuevos and the progressive Seminario Evangélico de Teología – although this focus on institutional and theological developments tends to privilege those church members whom he himself identifies as atypical. Corse provides an illuminating discussion of efforts by the ‘new Cuban theology’ to reconcile Marx and Christ. While he offers no overarching verdict on the movement, it would seem to deserve credit for pressing the churches to acknowledge their social responsibilities and to identify more closely with the poor: fundamental Biblical teachings that were largely ignored by Cuba's churches prior to the Revolution. Less nobly – and ironically for a movement that claims Dietrich Bonhoeffer as one of its heroes – the new Cuban theologians have been largely unwilling to challenge the government on the issue of political rights. To be fair, as Corse points out in the case of the Movimiento Estudiantil Cristiano de Cuba, church people who tried to combine sympathy toward the Revolution's goals with even modest criticism of its methods found themselves rejected by most of their co-religionists and subjected to repression by the government.
Inevitably in such a brief volume some interesting subjects are barely touched on. Most unfortunately, the experiences of individual Protestants are passed over lightly despite the appearance of three dozen personal interviews in the book's bibliography. The reader is left wishing that the author had gone into more detail about the motives of those who left as well as those who stayed. Corse does discuss the experience of pastors and seminarians who were drafted into the notorious Unidades Militares para la Ayuda de Producción, however the more quotidian dilemmas of ordinary Cuban Protestants remain unexplored and their voices largely unheard. Notwithstanding these obligatory criticisms, this balanced and thorough overview of Protestantism in Cuba is essential reading for anyone who is interested in the topic.
