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LOUISVILLE — The U.S. government is denying blanket licenses to travel to Cuba to a growing number of churches and Christian humanitarian groups — including the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) — on the grounds that they do not qualify as religious organizations.
Among the groups whose travel license renewals were denied are the Common Global Ministries Board of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), the United Church of Christ, the American Baptist Churches in the U.S.A., the Baptist Medical Dental Fellowship and Witness for Peace, an activist group that has operated in Central America for many years and for the past five years has organized educational tours of Cuba.
The PC(USA), the UCC and the Disciples, at least, are appealing the decision. The PC(USA)’s blanket license — obtained first in the mid-1990s — was used only a few times a year for official delegations and travel/study seminars.
The Unitarian Universalist Service Committee is still waiting to hear whether its license will be renewed, as is the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), a progressive church-based public policy analysis group.
Church World Service — a relief and development organization with close ties to most mainline denominations — got its license renewed, but with restrictions, limiting its use to 25 pre-approved people rather than permitting exchanges with partner churches.
In a mid-July letter to the PC(USA), the U.S. Treasury Department — which enforces the 44-year-old U.S. trade embargo with Cuba and oversees licensing through its Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) — rejected the church’s license renewal, saying that it does not meet criteria for religious organizations.
Molly Millerwise, a spokeswoman for the Treasury Department’s Public Affairs Office, told the Presbyterian New Service that there is a policy shift at OFAC intended to “crack down on abuses of the sanctions program” by some religious organizations.
Millerwise, who said she could not comment on specific cases, said some churches take people to Cuba for non-religious purposes, such as visiting family. Denying a license renewal may or many not indicate that a church or agency is under investigation, she said.
Three PC(USA) presbyteries with longtime church partnerships in Cuba have been denied general licenses too. They are Long Island, South Louisiana and Twin Cities Area.
The treasury department said that local churches may seek permits for employees and members to travel to Cuba for religious activities on a trip-by-trip basis – something many PCUSA churches with Cuban partnerships already do.
This is the way that travel to Cuba was authorized a decade and more ago. A blanket travel permit guarantees travel and avoids a lengthy process that doesn’t guarantee a license at its conclusion and, at least in the past, was rife with delays, massive red tape and frequent last-minute government decisions.
“The regulations haven’t changed. The religious licenses haven’t changed … and these organizations have qualified in the past,” said Mavis Anderson of the Latin American Working Group (LAWG), a church-related foreign policy think-tank in Washington, DC.
Anderson says what has changed is how the Bush administration interprets the regulations — another in a series of Cuba-policy decisions implemented by the White House six months before the 2004 presidential election.
Most of the measures are designed to reduce the flow of money and visitors from the United States to Cuba, including Cuban Americans. Family visits are now limited to once every three years. Educational licenses for students are more difficult to obtain.
Churches, Anderson argued, are just the latest casualty of the administration’s tightening of Cuba sanctions, especially churches which have opposed the U.S. embargo and travel ban on Cuba as a relic of the Cold War that is now counterproductive.
She can’t substantiate her claim that religious groups that support Bush’s Cuba policy are favored over those who don’t because the names of organizations that have been granted Cuban travel licenses aren’t part of the public record. They are protected under the Trade Secrets Act.
Millerwise denied that any churches are being singled out for preferential treatment.
“This is happening even though these organizations have a track record … they’re being denied eligibility for religious travel licenses. They’re being denied left and right,” said Anderson.
The controversy is fueling a complicated debate about religious freedom. Under the new rubric, travelers must be identified, as well as a “full-time” schedule of their religious activities.
But who determines what is a “full-time” religious activity? Could it include a swim in the Caribbean after a day of mission-project work or could a swim be deemed a recreational activity and jeopardize a license? Is religious activity limited only to restoring church buildings and attending worship? And who decides? For that matter, who gets to determine what constitutes a religious organization? Is that power appropriately placed in the hands of the Treasury Department? Is the government now giving priority to local congregations, and, if so, why?
The PCUSA’s appeal argues that it meets all of OFAC’s criteria for a religious organization. It has:
- tax exempt status;
- established congregations served by organized ministry;
- regular worship services (in particular churches and daily at the Presbyterian Center);
- religious education of the young;
- formal religious doctrine; and
- membership that is not associated with another denomination.
The PCUSA’s liaison to Cuba, the Rev. Tricia Lloyd-Sidle, said that she isn’t willing to speculate why the federal government is changing its definition of religious organizations — but she said. “It is not so helpful to focus on what we don’t know,” she said.
What is clear, according to Lloyd-Sidle, are the worries of Cuban partners and the increasingly hostile White House agenda.
“A concern for our Cuban partners is a seeming pattern about who the U.S. is allowing to travel (from Cuba) to the U.S., as well as U.S. Christians to Cuba … that (pattern) hinders the historic churches, like the Methodists, the Presbyterians, the Baptists, and works to favor independent evangelical groups,” she said, adding that the Cuban government’s policy for travel isn’t a cakewalk either.
The travel snarls, however, are just the “tip of the iceberg” on changes in U.S. Cuban policy, said Lloyd-Sidle, citing a 2004 State Department report that outlines a new U.S. approach that is “clearly aimed at bringing about (regime)-change in Cuba. “That’s not hidden.”
Cuban churches, she said, have always argued against U.S. intervention in their country. “Our partners say, ‘We know the problems in Cuba and we’re capable of solving them ourselves, thank you very much,’” Lloyd-Sidle said.
The Alliance of Baptists (AOB) is already ensnared in the policy tangle, according to Stan Hastey, who is the director of the Washington, D.C. mission organization that has 25 churches in partnership with Cuban churches.
The AOB’s license was suspended June 23 for alleged misuse when OFAC disputed a trip by a Birmingham church group. Hastey thinks the question is about a swim on a Varadaro beach — a resort area — before overnighting at a local church and visiting a farm that doubles as a church retreat center. But he can’t resolve the matter because he is unable to get the Treasury Department to return his telephone calls.
Hastey sent clarifying information to OFAC, but he still has received no word on whether the license will be reinstated and the Treasury Department is not returning his phone calls, he said.
Hastey is not hopeful. “It has become clear to me that folks at Treasury were looking for a pretext to suspend our license,” he wrote in a letter on the AOB website.
“Churches are being singled out as the newest target in what is clearly an effort to prevent U.S. citizens from traveling to Cuba. They’re just going category by category,” he told the Presbyterian News Service.
Ironically, said Lloyd-Sidle, cutting out denominations — which tend to have stricter policies and procedures for overseas visits — only increases the possibility of license abuses in Cuba.
The new licensing plan brings back bad memories of chaos for religious groups who have to apply for licenses try-by-trip, according to Julia Ann Moffett, the PCUSA’s former Cuba liaison.
Like Hastey, she remembers the days when there were no blanket licenses and applications were only filed for single trip licenses. Some licenses were de facto denied. Even if the protocol was followed to the letter, inevitably groups were waiting until the day before departure to get a license — sometimes even traveling to Miami and awaiting a fax before boarding an airplane to Havana.
“We’d call and call and call (the Treasury Department),” said Moffett, reiterating Hastey’s current complaint. “On the last day, finally, you’d get someone in an office and convince them that you need the license now and they’d fax it to you. It was a mess.”
The Rev. Felix Ortiz, the area secretary for the UCC/Disciples Common Global Ministries Board, was stunned by the rejection letter for what he thought was a routine application process. “There’s no new law. Yet they’re denying the license. Before it was allowed …
“We did have a license. Twice.”
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