By Dalia Acosta
Credit:Baldrich
Cuba's Christian churches have launched an ecumenical dialogue.
CÁRDENAS, Cuba, Nov 6 (IPS) - A group of Christian denominations and
ecumenical organisations in Cuba have launched an ethical dialogue aimed
at smoothing over their historical differences and fomenting mutual
understanding, knowledge, and openness to debate.
"We want to be part of the solution, and that's why we've taken this
step. This doesn't mean we will be at the centre of the ethical
dialogue, but we're going to promote it," Baptist pastor Raimundo
García, the head of the Christian Centre for Reflection and Dialogue
(CCRD) in the city of Cárdenas, 160 kilometres from Havana, told IPS.
"We don't intend to discuss doctrine, but rather ethical and moral
issues. How is it possible to disrespect fellow-Christians, to recognise
no limits, to seek to convert members of a different church, and to
poach pastors and leaders with offers of higher salaries?" said García.
"Social action is part of Christian life, but we don't see it as a means
of attracting new members for the church," he said. "Some Christian
groups are distributing material goods and other things in order to
bring people into their church. Some even disparage other churches and
religious leaders."
Baptists from the conventions of Western and Eastern Cuba,
Presbyterians, Episcopalians and Methodists are participating in the
discussion process, as are the Christian Reformed Church, the Brethren,
the Apostolic Church of Jesus Christ, the Unitarian Universalist Church,
the School of Practical Christianity, Caritas and the Catholic community
of San Egidio.
About 40 people attended the workshop on contemporary problems affecting
relations between Christian churches and institutions, in Cuba and in
the world, held at the CCRD from Oct. 16 to 18, including several
experts on socio-religious issues and a representative of the Cuban
Council of Churches.
A World Council of Churches document, handed out to people at the
meeting, recognises church unity as a permanent priority of the
ecumenical movement and rejects inter-church proselytising as
destabilising and creating tensions, scandals and division. "Lack of
unity is leading us to take arrogant, selfish postures with spirituality
that is divorced from reality, manipulation of the Bible and the gifts
of the Spirit, disagreements and prejudice," said Adolfo Ham, rector of
the Higher Institute of Biblical and Theological Studies (ISEBIT) in
Havana, delivering the keynote lecture at the workshop.
According to Ham, this crisis of unity imposes the need to work out a
code of ethics for inter-church relations, and to apply a strategy that
includes spreading information and knowledge, practising tolerance in
the context of a plurality of ideas, and dialogue within a framework of
respect.
After decades of tension following the January 1959 triumph of the Cuban
revolution, relations between Cuba's socialist government and churches
took a radical turn for the better in the wake of an Apr. 2, 1990
meeting between President Fidel Castro and 70 evangelical and ecumenical
leaders.
As a result of this meeting, the ruling Communist Party opened up its
membership to people of faith; discrimination for religious reasons
diminished; and new opportunities for religious organisations to work in
the social arena were created.
"In the 1990s, there was a change, in the sense that internal obstacles
were removed. Christian denominations became stronger, some that had
disappeared reappeared, and many new ones arrived. In 1967 it was
estimated there were about 50 denominations, but in the 1990s there were
over 100 denominations and sects nationwide," said García.
The growth in the number of churches coincided with the worst period of
the economic crisis in Cuba, which was triggered in the early 1990s by
the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the East European socialist
bloc, this Caribbean island nation's main aid and trade partners.
Participants at the workshop in Cárdenas said the surge in church
membership occurred because many people were drawn to religion in search
of hope at that time, and were seeking ways of satisfying their
spiritual as well as material needs.
The causes of the crisis in inter-church relations include lack of
understanding of other denominations, poor theological training,
personality cults and indiscriminate ambition for power, strong
sectarian fundamentalism and the divorce between the Christian message
and practical living, according to participants.
"Lack of dialogue and the absence of an expression of unity are
confusing for society. People ask 'why, if they are all Christians, are
there so many different names, and so much division? Why does each
denomination make an exclusive claim to the truth?'" Baptist pastor
Gisela Pérez told IPS.
Other flaws tabled at the meeting were inter-generational conflict,
failure to include women in meaningful roles, economic dependence on
foreign churches, and competition between church authorities, causing
divisions within different denominations.
As well as analysing the situation, the Cárdenas workshop produced a set
of strategic working proposals including actions to encourage better
knowledge of each other, uproot prejudice, accept the right to dissent
and to be different, and foment dialogue with all who are willing to
join in, without exclusion.
"A church not obsessed with making converts, that looks outwards at the
community and identifies with its problems," was the proposal from one
of the working groups, after acknowledging that an open attitude within
a church is not always applied equally in the community.
On the contrary, some churches and individuals isolate themselves from
society, as if to avoid "contamination," they said.
According to Gloria Rebustillo, of the B.G. Lavastida Christian Service
and Training Centre in Santiago de Cuba, 847 kilometres from Havana,
"churches are divided over the need to enter into dialogue with the
community, in order to prepare the churches to relate to their reality
and respond appropriately."
"The church is part of the positive forces in society, and must see
itself as one community organisation among many. Church people come from
that community and they can't be split in two. I can't belong to the
Federation of Cuban Women and, separately, to the church. I am not two
people," she said. (END/2007)
No comments:
Post a Comment