The first in our series on theologies of liberation: what are we talking about anyway?
Summary – Liberation Theology
What could be considered to be the main tenets of theologies of liberation?
The following is an excerpt from an academic blog that we will be discussing later in this post, so I apologize for the academic language, but I do find it helpful:
1) The divine preferential option for the poor, the excluded, and the destitute of this world. The church has to become the church of the poor, sharing their sorrows, hopes and struggles. Initially the accent was mainly socioeconomic, but it was gradually widen to include other categories of social exclusion (indigenous communities, racial and ethnic minorities, women).
2) A historical understanding of Jesus’s proclamation of God’s kingdom. The kingdom is conceived as referring not to some otherworldly postmortem realm, but to the unceasing hope of a social configuration characterized by justice, solidarity, and freedom. Leonardo Boff and Jon Sobrino perceive Jesus as the Liberator, going back to the semantic roots of the term redemption (the deliverance of a captive or slave).
3) The retrieval of the subversive memories inscribed in the sacred scriptures, hidden below layers of cultic regulations and doctrinal orthodoxies, but never totally effaced. A specific hermeneutical and exegetical concentration in the Exodus story as a paradigm of the liberating character of God’s actions, in the prophetic denunciations of injustice and oppression, and in the confrontations of the historical Jesus against the Judean religious authorities and Roman political powers and his solidarity with the nobodies of Judea and Galilee.
4) Theology cannot be reduced to an intellectual understanding of the faith, but must also be a practical commitment for historical transformation. The category of praxis, partly borrowed from Paulo Freire’s pedagogy of liberation, partly an adaptation of Marx’s eleventh thesis on Feuerbach (“philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it”), acquired normative status. History, therefore, as the realm of the perennial struggle against oppressions and exclusions, emerged as the locus for Christian praxis.
5) God is reconceived not as an immutable and impassible entelechy but, according to the biblical narratives, as a compassionate Eternal Spirit that hears and pays close attention to the cry of the oppressed and whose action in human history has the redemption of the downtrodden and excluded as its ultimate telos. Herein might be located liberation theology’s main theoretical epistemological rupture and reconfiguration: a novel way of thinking about God’s being and action in history. Instead of contriving arcane scholastic definitions of divine essence, God is referred to as Liberator.
Free Reading
Each week we feature a free online resource to read. Some will be blog posts, some short articles, and some more academic papers. We will try to offer more than one when available, but know the best expressions of these theologies are often behind paywalls or in books alone.
Today’s reading is the source of the above summary:
- God the Liberator: Theology, History, Politics (Luis Rivera-Pagan, retired professor at Princeton)
Questions to consider
- If you could describe Liberation Theology in a couple of sentences, what would you say?
- Why do you think the emphasis on God having a preference, on God have a special focus on particular people groups, is so critical to Liberation Theology?
- Why do you think there is so much resistance to Theologies of Liberation in popular Christianity?
Sound off on those in the comments. Try to include the number so we know which you are responding to!
Going Forward
We turn next to Liberation Theology as conceived by one of its founding sources in Latin America and a close look at Gustavo Gutierrez, one of the thought patriarchs of Liberation Theology (though each tradition has their own key voices, of course). It will be great to read primary material!
Thanks for reading, commenting, and your shares on social media.
Lovely intro to this dense topic. I love the imagery of Jesus as Liberator, with pick and shovel to free us from the avalanche of oppression…
Here’s a short clip (in Portuguese language, sorry) of a leading Liberation Theologian, Fray Betto, OP:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2txpt-xjLI
Translating into English, this is what he says:
“The great revelation, for me, was the discovery that Jesus came neither to found a Church, nor to found a religion: He came to propose to us a new project of a society, which is not a Christian society; it is a human society.”
So, the answers to the questions are as follows:
1. Liberation Theology is a reinterpretation of Christianity, using Marxist methods very much in vogue in Latin America since the 1960s, which through the “Radical option for the Poor” seeks to instigate those same Poor (the “People of God”, in LT lingo) to throw down their shackles and create a society which they claim is the one Jesus intended on the Gospels, which is functionally indistinguishable from a Marxist Utopia, save for the Christian language used to couch it in.
2. That focus and emphasis is exactly the result of the Marxist method being applied to the Church. Marxism is all about either recognising or setting up (depending on one’s point of view) of separate groups (“classes”) which then come into conflict, after which the “chosen” or “preferred” group defeats its enemies, who are responsible for keeping that same preferred group away from its rightful state of Utopia, and then achieving here on Earth, rather than in a Heaven we’re not sure even exists, the promises of the Gospel.
3. The resistance in popular Christianity is a natural result of its recognition that Liberation Theology in actual fact holds fast to principles which are very alien to those principles which have guided Christianity in the previous twenty Centuries, to wit:
(a) the existence of a transcendent dimension besides the one we can see with our own senses;
(b) the emphasis on the internal struggle of the individual against sin and the role of God in saving that individual from that same sin, and
(c) the understanding that the structuring of society, while important in order to allow individuals to better resist sin and seek the grace of God, is secondary to the individual struggle of the sinner against Sin and towards God.
Is anyone still listening to this?
“4) Theology cannot be reduced to an intellectual understanding of the faith, but must also be a practical commitment for historical transformation. The category of praxis, partly borrowed from Paulo Freire’s pedagogy of liberation, partly an adaptation of Marx’s eleventh thesis on Feuerbach (“philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it”), acquired normative status. ”
Hmmm. Why on earth are we taking Marx’s or Feuerbach’s ideas into consideration? Did God say that our mission is to change the world? Via struggle? Via helping the poor “struggle” as some of his works would suggest? Violently, even? Perhaps the problem is as we have been shown all along: the problem is in the heart of man, and if that is not dealt with, the work has a poor foundation. Look at the burning cities. Christians with a bent toward Liberation Theology are getting involved with and supporting causes like BLM out of their desire to help the poor in their “struggle for justice” while ignoring the spiritual aspect in favor of the outward desire for “change.” They are facilitating violence while saying “the REAL BLM are peaceful protesters.” And yet actual footage shows BLM members encouraging and excusing looting, harassing people in the street, grabbing their phones and throwing them, knocking people over, going into restaurants breaking things and yelling and blowing horns while reassuring people that they won’t “hurt” them. Liberation Theology, in practice, easily turns into unholy alliances that could be featured in books called “When Helping Hurts.” Did Jesus really say that helping the poor struggle against justice is what we should be doing? Is this truly the primary directive that should undergird our faith, this “praxis” of helping the poor struggle for justice? I think Paul might call it a false gospel, and direct us to the Great Commission to obey Jesus, and build the foundation properly.