Liberation Theology

Liberation Theology

By Otto Maduro

Liberation theology is a variegated Christian movement—present, in one form or another, in most major denominations and regions of the world—emphasizing the Christian obligation of active, practical solidarity with the poor and oppressed, and with their struggles against poverty and oppression.

The term and its synonym "theology of liberation" began to be used in about 1969—in Spanish, Portuguese, and English—by Protestant and Roman Catholic theologians throughout the Americas.

Several foundational texts of liberation theology—the Peruvian Gustavo Gutiérrez's A Theology of Liberation, the U.S. American James Cone's Black Theology and Black Power, and the Brazilian Rubem Alves's A Theology of Human Hope —appeared almost simultaneously, independently of each other, at the end of the 1960s.

Origins

The language of liberation has gained currency since early in the 1960s across the world, among groups and movements such as political, union, and community organizers; democratic and socialist movements; and guerrillas against colonial rule. Movements of oppressed peoples to free themselves from the yoke of colonialism (Vietnam, Mozambique, Puerto Rico), military dictatorships (Cuba, Philippines, Zaire), capitalism (Tanzania, Chile), racism (South Africa, the U.S. civil rights movement), or communism (Czechoslovakia, Poland) often identified their thrust with the term "liberation"—as in the many fronts of national liberation of Africa, Asia, and the Americas in the 1960s.

The Christian churches—especially in Third World countries and in the United States—found themselves increasingly challenged by these movements of liberation. First, this was because these movements frequently saw and denounced the churches as tools of domination in the hands of the oppressors. Second, it was because a growing minority of church members were participating in such movements, taking time and energy away from church work, and, most significantly, provoking confrontations with the powers that be—which often led their pastors to disavow them. Last but not least, it was because a growing number of churches experienced a steady drain of youth and working-class members toward the liberation movements, such members rarely finding support to reconcile their religious faith with their commitment to liberation movements, and thus frequently distancing themselves from organized religion or rejecting religion altogether. [Page 393]

Christian Responses

These challenges provoked disparate reactions from church leaders, theologians, and activists—depending on their background, allegiances, outlooks, and so on. Some churches, religious orders, congregations, denominations, individual church leaders, and lay activists took a militant, antiliberationist stance, seeing in any liberation movement a sign of the Anti-christ, and justifying the use of armed violence to eliminate such movements (e.g., the Anti-Communist Alliance of Argentina). Most congregations, pastors, religious thinkers, and activists, however, tended either to avoid the matter altogether—as if it didn't have any important bearing on their lives—or to develop some modest form of attention and succor to the poor, but with little to no patience for those understanding poverty as a result of systemic oppression, as an unjust social product urgently demanding social reform.

In some places in the Americas, nonetheless, a few Christian voices began to integrate—in action as well as in thought—a consistent commitment to those liberation movements, and a deep, reflective Christian faith accompanying that commitment. Ironically, part of the impetus behind this integration came from the churches' call of "going to the poor" (getting to know them firsthand by living with them, as them, and in service to them), to counter and preempt the growth of communism among the poor—and of Protestantism as well, in the case of the Latin American Roman Catholic Church. Heeding that call, however, frequently put missionaries, clergy, and lay church activists in a novel, shocking predicament: one that elicited among many not only a radical questioning of the prevalent explanations of and responses to the reality of poverty, but also, more decisively, a critique of the churches' actual place, role, and self-understanding in an unjust, oppressive world.

Crucial catalysts of such processes were Pope John XXIII's and the Second Vatican Council's summons for an humbler, serving church (1961–1965); the progressive ecumenical (Protestant) World Council of Churches–sponsored network ISAL (Iglesia y Sociedad en América Latina); the radical writings and tragic death of the Colombian Roman Catholic priest Father Camilo Torres (1966), spurring camilista groups of Christian socialists across Latin America; and the many groups of lay and clergy arising in similar directions all over the Americas.

U.S. Beginnings

The civil rights movement (under the leadership of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.), the United Farm Workers (with the Roman Catholic pacifist labor organizer César Chávez at its forefront), and the anti-war movement all contributed to create in the United States, in the 1960s, an environment propitious for the development of indigenous theological movements connected with these novel struggles for liberation. Moreover, U.S. missionaries to Latin America (such as Maryknollers and Quakers) often brought back to the United States—besides significant firsthand accounts of the troubling associations between, on the one hand, Latin American oppression, and, on the other, U.S. public and private agencies—news about the emerging theological quests and responses amid poverty and oppression south of the border.

Thus, from the 1960s on, a wide array of liberation theologies—such as African American, Hispanic, feminist, pacifist, Asian American, Native American, eco-feminist, and gay-lesbian—emerged in the United States. In all of them, at least originally and indirectly, there is a certain influence of both African American and Latin American liberation theology. Despite all the obstacles and reactions against liberation theologies, these continue to flourish, multiply, and grow across the United States.

The Defining Features

One of the key traits of all liberation theologies is a recognition that theology is, as Gustavo Gutiérrez likes to put it, a "second moment." Life, including faith, is first—at both the community and the individual level. Theology follows life, as a human effort to understand God's presence and God's demands amid real life.

Each and every liberation theology, while recognizing a somewhat universal yearning for liberation, underscores the particularity of its own attempt—an attempt stemming from the unique experiences of oppression and the specific struggles for liberation of a singular segment of humankind—to grasp God's reality and guidance in the concrete lives of the human community.

Simultaneously, liberation theologies are very critical of theologies claiming universal validity and speaking for humanity as a whole: more often than not, elite theologies stemming from—and either blurring or aggrandizing—the particular experience of an elite minority.

Liberation theologies all put a strong emphasis on praxis—conscious, transformative action of human communities. Theology is not an end in itself; it is a means for a community of believers to orient their real, day-to-day lives in relation to one another and with other people. Thus liberation theology is not what is important; what is key is the actual liberation from oppressive structures and practices. The value of [Page 394] liberation theology, if any, resides in its becoming a useful means for that actual human liberation.

Thus, more than a new set of scriptures, structures, dogmas, or theological concerns, liberation theologies are experiments in collective, dialogical rethinking of the traditional scriptures, church structures, dogmas, and theological themes from within or in service to the specific struggles for self-liberation of a particular oppressed community. Part of such work is deconstructive (examining which power dynamics underlie certain interpretations of scripture, of church structures, etc., and analyzing what consequences such interpretations have). A crucial part of it, however, is constructive: building an understanding of God, scripture, salvation, etc., that makes sense of the lives, pains, and anger of specific oppressed persons and peoples; that contributes to their healing; and that empowers them to struggle to free themselves from such oppression and its deleterious effects.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Berryman, Phillip. Liberation Theology. 1987.

Gottwald, Norman K., ed. The Bible and Liberation. 1983.

Novak, Michael. Will It Liberate? 1986.

Smith, Christian. The Emergence of Liberation Theology. 1991.

Torres, Sergio, and John Eagleson, eds. Theology in the Americas. 1976.

Source Citation: Maduro, Otto. "Liberation Theology." Contemporary American Religion. Ed. Wade Clark Roof. Vol. 1. New York: Macmillan Reference USA, 1999. pp. 392-394.