Liberation theology is a synthesis of Christian theology and socio-economic analyses, based in far-left politics, particularly Marxism, that emphasizes "social concern for the poor and political liberation for oppressed peoples." In the 1950s and the 1960s, liberation theology was the political praxis of Latin American theologians, such as Gustavo Gutiérrez of Peru, Leonardo Boff of Brazil, Juan Luis Segundo of Uruguay, and Jon Sobrino of Spain, who popularized the phrase "Preferential option for the poor."
The Latin American context also produced evangelical advocates of liberation theology, such as C. René Padilla of Ecuador, Samuel Escobar of Peru, and Orlando E. Costas of Puerto Rico, who, in the 1970s, called for integral mission, emphasizing evangelism and social responsibility.
Theologies of liberation have developed in other parts of the world such as black theology in the United States and South Africa, Palestinian liberation theology, Dalit theology in India, and Minjung theology in South Korea.
Latin American liberation theology
The best-known form of liberation theology is that which developed within the Catholic Church in Latin America in the 1950s and 1960s, arising principally as a moral reaction to the poverty and social injustice in the region. The term was coined in 1971 by the Peruvian priest Gustavo Gutiérrez, who wrote one of the movement's defining books, A Theology of Liberation. Other noted exponents include Leonardo Boff of Brazil, Jon Sobrino of Spain, and Juan Luis Segundo of Uruguay.
Latin American liberation theology met opposition in the United States, which accused it of using "Marxist concepts", and led to admonishment by the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) in 1984 and 1986. While stating that "in itself, the expression "theology of liberation" is a thoroughly valid term".
The Vatican rejected certain forms of Latin American liberation
theology for focusing on institutionalized or systemic sin and for
identifying Catholic Church hierarchy in South America as members of the
same privileged class that had long been oppressing indigenous
populations from the arrival of Pizarro onward.
History
A major player in the formation of liberation theology was the Latin American Episcopal Conference (CELAM). Created in 1955 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, CELAM pushed the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965) toward a more socially oriented stance. However, CELAM never supported liberation theology as such, since liberation theology was frowned upon by the Vatican, with Pope Paul VI trying to slow the movement after the Second Vatican Council.
More or less at the same time as the initial publications of Latin American liberation theology are also found voices of Black liberation theology and feminist liberation theology.
After the Second Vatican Council, CELAM held two conferences
which were important in determining the future of liberation theology: the first was held in Medellín, Colombia, in 1968, and the second in Puebla, Mexico, in January 1979.
The Medellín conference debated how to apply the teachings of Vatican
II to Latin America, and its conclusions were strongly influenced by
liberation theology.
Although liberation theology grew out of these officially recognized
ideas, the Medellín document is not a liberation theology document. It
did, however, lay the groundwork, and since then liberation theology has
developed rapidly in the Latin American Catholic Church.
Cardinal Alfonso López Trujillo
was a central figure after the Medellín Conference, who as priest in
Bogota he did not attend, and was elected in 1972 as general secretary
of CELAM, and then, its president in 1979 (at the Puebla conference). He
represented a more orthodox position, becoming a favourite of Pope John Paul II and the "principal scourge of liberation theology." Trujillo's faction became predominant in CELAM after the 1972 Sucre conference, and in the Roman Curia after the CELAM conference in Puebla, Mexico, in January 1979.
Despite the orthodox bishops' predominance in CELAM, a more
radical form of liberation theology remained much supported in South
America. Thus, the 1979 Puebla Conference was an opportunity for
orthodox bishops to reassert control of the radical elements, but they
failed. At the Puebla Conference, the orthodox reorientation was met by
strong opposition from the liberal part of the clergy, which supported
the concept of a "preferential option for the poor". This concept had been approved at the Medellín conference by Ricard Durand, president of the Commission about Poverty.
Pope John Paul II gave the opening speech at the Puebla
Conference. The general tone of his remarks was conciliatory. He
criticized radical liberation theology, saying, "this idea of Christ as a
political figure, a revolutionary, as the subversive of Nazareth, does
not tally with the Church's catechesis"; however, he did acknowledge that "the growing wealth of a few parallels the growing poverty of the masses," and affirmed both the principle
of private property and that the Church "must preach, educate
individuals and collectivities, form public opinion, and offer
orientations to the leaders of the peoples" towards the goal of a "more
just and equitable distribution of goods".
Some liberation theologians, however, including Gustavo
Gutiérrez, had been barred from attending the Puebla Conference. Working
from a seminary and with aid from sympathetic, liberal bishops, they
partially obstructed other clergy's efforts to ensure that the Puebla
Conference documents satisfied conservative concerns. Within four hours
of the Pope's speech, Gutiérrez and the other priests wrote a 20-page
refutation, which was circulated at the conference, and has been claimed
to have influenced the final outcome of the conference. According to a
socio-political study of liberation theology in Latin America, a quarter
of the final Puebla documents were written by theologians who were not invited to the conference.
Theology
Liberation theology could be interpreted as an attempt to return to the gospel of the early church where Christianity is politically and culturally decentralized.
Liberation theology proposes to fight poverty by addressing its alleged source, the sin of greed. In so doing, it explores the relationship between Christian theology (especially Roman Catholic) and political activism, especially in relation to economic justice, poverty, and human rights. The principal methodological innovation is seeing theology from the perspective of the poor and the oppressed. For example, Jon Sobrino argues that the poor are a privileged channel of God's grace.
Some liberation theologians base their social action upon the Bible scriptures describing the mission of Jesus Christ, as bringing a sword (social unrest), e.g., Isaiah 61:1, Matthew 10:34, Luke 22:35–38 — and not as bringing peace (social order). This biblical interpretation is a call to action against poverty, and the sin engendering it, to affect Jesus Christ's mission of justice in this world.
Gustavo Gutiérrez gave the movement its name with his 1971 book, A Theology of Liberation.
In this book, Gutiérrez combined populist ideas with the social
teachings of the Catholic Church. He was influenced by an existing
socialist current in the Church which included organizations such as the
Catholic Worker Movement and the Jeunesse Ouvrière Chrétienne, a Belgian Christian youth worker organization. He was also influenced by Paul Gauthier's The Poor, Jesus and the Church
(1965). Gutiérrez's book is based on an understanding of history in
which the human being is seen as assuming conscious responsibility for
human destiny, and yet Christ the Saviour liberates the human race from
sin, which is the root of all disruption of friendship and of all
injustice and oppression.
Gutiérrez also popularized the phrase "preferential option for the poor", which became a slogan of liberation theology and later appeared in addresses of the Pope.
Drawing from the biblical motif on the poor, Gutiérrez asserts that God
is revealed as having a preference for those people who are
“insignificant", "marginalized", “unimportant", "needy", "despised", and
"defenseless". Moreover, he makes clear that terminology of "the poor"
in scripture has social and economic connotations that etymologically go
back to the Greek word, ptōchos.
To be sure, as to not misinterpret Gutiérrez's definition of the term
"preferential option", he stresses, "Preference implies the universality
of God’s love, which excludes no one. It is only within the framework
of this universality that we can understand the preference, that is,
'what comes first'."
Gutiérrez emphasized practice (or, more technically, "praxis") over doctrine. Gutiérrez clarified his position by advocating a circular relationship between orthodoxy and orthopraxis seeing the two as having a symbiotic relationship.
Gutierrez' reading of prophets condemning oppression and injustice
against the poor (i.e., Jeremiah 22:13–17) informs his assertion that to
know God (orthodoxy) is to do justice (orthopraxis). Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (later Pope Benedict XVI), however, criticized liberation theology for elevating orthopraxis to the level of orthodoxy. Richard McBrien summarizes this concept as follows:
God is disclosed in the historical "praxis" of liberation. It is the situation, and our passionate and reflective involvement in it, which mediates the Word of God. Today that Word is mediated through the cries of the poor and the oppressed.
Another important hallmark for Gutiérrez's brand of liberation
theology is an interpretation of revelation as "history". For example,
Gutiérrez wrote:
History is the scene of the revelation God makes of the mystery of his person. His word reaches us in the measure of our involvement in the evolution of history.
Gutiérrez also considered the Church to be the "sacrament of
history", an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace,
thus pointing to the doctrine of universal salvation as the true means
to eternal life, and assigning the Church itself to a somewhat temporal
role, namely, liberation.
Practice
One
of the most radical aspects of liberation theology was the social
organization, or reorganization, of church practice through the model of
Christian base communities. Liberation theology strove to be a bottom-up
movement in practice, with biblical interpretation and liturgical
practice designed by lay practitioners themselves, rather than by the
orthodox Church hierarchy. In this context, sacred text interpretation
is understood as "praxis". Liberation theology seeks to interpret the
actions of the Catholic Church and the teachings of Jesus Christ from
the perspective of the poor and disadvantaged. In Latin America,
liberation theologians specifically target the severe disparities
between rich and poor in the existing social and economic orders within
the nations' political and corporate structures. It is a strong critique
of the various economic and social structures, such as an oppressive
government, dependence upon First World countries and the traditional
hierarchical Church, that allow some to be extremely rich while others
are unable to even have safe drinking water.
The journalist and writer Penny Lernoux
described this aspect of liberation theology in her numerous and
committed writings intended to explain the movement's ideas in North
America. Base communities were small gatherings, usually outside of
churches, in which the Bible could be discussed, and Mass could be said.
They were especially active in rural parts of Latin America where
parish priests were not always available, as they placed a high value on
lay participation. In May 2007, it was estimated that 80,000 base communities existed in Brazil.
Contemporaneously, Fanmi Lavalas in Haiti, the Landless Workers' Movement in Brazil, and Abahlali baseMjondolo in South Africa are three organizations that make use of liberation theology.
Brazilian liberation theology
The
Brazilian Catholic Church is arguably one of the most theologically
progressive Catholic congregations due, in large part, to a history of
violent military and political conflicts as well as a divisive
socioeconomic climate. During Brazil's military rule
from 1964 to 1985, the Catholic Church and its members assumed
responsibility to provide services to the poor and disenfranchised,
often under threat of persecution. The Vatican II and Medellín
conference innovations in liberation theology entered the Brazilian
Church as the Brazilian lower classes experienced sharply deteriorating
economic and political conditions. Among these were an increase in
landownership concentration, a decline in wages and standards of living,
and a rise in the military state's political repression and violence,
including mass detainment, torture, and the assassination of political
opponents.
Base ecclesial communities
After
decades of repression from the government authorities, the
liberationist Catholic Church in Brazil is absent of traditional
centralization and encourages an increased lay participation. Faced with
a severe priest shortage, much of the Brazilian Catholic Church is
organized into Base Ecclesial Communities or, "CEBs" in which the Mass,
community spirituality programs, and community needs are led or
addressed by a single clergy member or a trained lay member in either a
small chapel or an individual's home. The CEBs introduced new social
ideas and democratic methods which led to many participants' active
involvement in popular movements of Brazil that worked for progressive
social change. An example of progressive social change initiated by the
CEBs is in Nova Iguaçu.
A health program began there to try to organize the population in order
to remedy widespread malnutrition, open sewers, and other health
hazards.
Eventually the neighbourhood initiative reached a national interest
level where it then became a mass movement in nearly every
neighbourhood. Initiatives like the health program in Nova Iguaçu
illustrate how CEBs have helped the transition from military to
democratic rule.
While liberation theology has brought about significant
progressive reforms in Brazil, anthropologist Robin Nagle questions the
effectiveness of Catholic Church theology in Brazil. Nagle concentrates
on the conflict between conservatives and liberationists in Recife,
Brazil, in 1990. The poor neighbourhood of Morro da Conceição had a
liberationist priest named Reginaldo who was expelled by the
traditionalist archbishop because the archbishop found Reginaldo's
politics and social theology annoying and adverse to his own agenda.
When Reginaldo and his followers refused to accept the expulsion and the
new priest, the archbishop called in the Military Police. Conversely,
the event did not cause a mass response because the liberationist agenda
aroused distrust and even hatred among many of its intended audience.
The main reason was that it was too much to ask poor parishioners to
embrace a Church focused more on the troubles of this life than solace
in the next.
While Robin Nagle claims that liberation theology is ineffective
for genuine social change, anthropologist Manuel Vásquez argues that
liberation theology embraced by CEBs create a twofold effect, because it
not only provided moral justification for resistance but it also served
as a means to organize the resistance. Many people come to the CEB
through conversion experiences, but also because they are keenly
concerned with the spiritual and infrastructural needs of their
community. Through his fieldwork in working-class neighbourhoods of Rio de Janeiro,
Vásquez reveals that CEBs combat disenfranchisement but also serve to
overcome the obstacles associated with materialism and globalization.
The social and political impact can be viewed in terms of initial
consciousness-raising, the motivation for involvement, the sense of
community they develop, the experience of grassroots democracy, the
direct actions they engage in, and finally, directly political actions.
Liberation theology and indigenous Brazil
The Tapeba
Anthropologist
and author Max Maranhão Piorsky Aires analyzes the influence of
liberation theology on the transformation of the indigenous Tapeba people
of Brazil from poor, uneducated inhabitants neglected by the state to
rights-bearing and involved citizens. Specifically he largely attributes
the work of the Brazilian Catholic Church to the progression of the
Tapeba. The Catholic Church enlisted state authorities, anthropologists,
and journalists to help uncover the identity of neglected indigenous
peoples of Brazil. Early recognition by missionaries and followers of
liberation theology stimulated indigenous identification of the Tapeba
population as a possibility for attaining rights, especially land,
health, and education.
The Church gathered and contributed historical knowledge of indigenous
territory and identity of the Tapeba in Caucaia that ultimately
succeeded in the tribes obtaining a legally codified identity as well as
a rightful place as Brazilian subjects.
Gurupá
In Gurupá,
the Catholic Church employed liberation theology to defend indigenous
tribes, farmers, and extractors from land expropriation by federal or
corporate forces. New religious ideas, in the form of liberation
theology, have fortified and legitimized an evolving political culture
of resistance.
Meanwhile, the Church-supported Base Ecclesial Communities (CEBs) have
promoted stronger social connections among community members that has
led to more effective activism in Gurupá. Anthropologist Richard Pace's
study of Gurupá revealed that CEBs assured safety in united activism,
and, combined with liberation theology, encouraged members to challenge
landowner's commercial monopolies and fight for better standards of
living. Pace references a specific incident in the CEB of Nossa Senhora de Fátima,
in which a community of 24 families of farmers, timber extractors, and
traders resisted an extra-regional timber extraction firm. The community
negotiated an agreement with the firm that gained them a higher
standard of living that included imported goods, increased food
availability, and access to health care. While severe social
dislocations such as government-initiated capitalist penetration, land
expropriation, and poor wages persist, small-farmer activism is
fortified by liberation theology and receives structural support from
unions, political parties, and church organizations.
Vatican reaction
Joseph Ratzinger
In March 1983, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (later Pope Benedict XVI), head of the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith
(CDF), made ten observations of Gustavo Gutiérrez's theology, accusing
Gutiérrez of politically interpreting the Bible in supporting temporal
messianism, and stating that the predominance of orthopraxis
over orthodoxy in his thought proved a Marxist influence. Ratzinger
objected that the spiritual concept of the Church as "People of God" is
transformed into a "Marxist myth". In liberation theology he declared,
the "'people' is the antithesis of the hierarchy, the antithesis of all
institutions, which are seen as oppressive powers. Ultimately anyone who
participates in the class struggle is a member of the 'people'; the
'Church of the people' becomes the antagonist of the hierarchical
Church."
Ratzinger did praise liberation theology in some respects,
including its ideal of justice, its rejection of violence, and its
stress on "the responsibility which Christians necessarily bear for the
poor and oppressed". He subsequently stated that no one could be neutral in the face of injustice, and referred to the "crimes" of colonialism and the "scandal" of the arms race.
Nonetheless, media reports tended to assume that the condemnation of
"liberation theology" meant a rejection of such attitudes and an
endorsement of conservative politics.
In 1984, it was reported that a meeting occurred between the CDF
and the CELAM bishops, during which a rift developed between Ratzinger
and some of the bishops, with Ratzinger issuing official condemnations of certain elements of liberation theology. These "Instructions" rejected as Marxist the idea that class struggle is fundamental to history, and rejected the interpretation of religious phenomena such as the Exodus and the Eucharist
in exclusively political terms. Ratzinger further stated that
liberation theology had a major flaw in that it attempted to apply
Christ's sermon on the mount teachings about the poor to present social
situations.
He asserted that Christ's teaching on the poor meant that we will be
judged when we die, with particular attention to how we personally have
treated the poor.
Ratzinger also argued that liberation theology is not originally a
"grass-roots" movement among the poor, but rather, a creation of
Western intellectuals: "an attempt to test, in a concrete scenario,
ideologies that have been invented in the laboratory by European
theologians" and in a certain sense itself a form of "cultural imperialism". Ratzinger saw this as a reaction to the demise or near-demise of the "Marxist myth" in the West.
Throughout the 1990s, Ratzinger, as prefect of the CDF, continued
to condemn these elements in liberation theology, and prohibited
dissident priests from teaching such doctrines in the Catholic Church's
name. Leonardo Boff was suspended and others were censured. Tissa Balasuriya, in Sri Lanka, was excommunicated. Sebastian Kappen, an Indian theologian, was also censured for his book Jesus and Freedom.
Under Ratzinger's influence, theological formation schools were
forbidden from using the Catholic Church's organization and grounds to
teach liberation theology in the sense of theology using unacceptable
Marxist ideas, not in the broader sense.
Towards reconciliation under Pope Francis
According to Roberto Bosca, a historian at Austral University in Buenos Aires, Jorge Bergoglio
(later Pope Francis) had "a reputation as an opponent of liberation
theology during the 1970s" but he "accepted the premise of liberation
theology, especially the option for the poor, but in a 'nonideological'
fashion."
Before becoming Pope, Bergoglio said, "The option for the poor comes
from the first centuries of Christianity. It's the Gospel itself. If you
were to read one of the sermons of the first fathers of the Church, from the second or third centuries, about how you should treat the poor, you’d say it was Maoist or Trotskyist. The Church has always had the honor of this preferential option for the poor ... At the Second Vatican Council
the Church was redefined as the People of God and this idea really took
off at the Second Conference of the Latin-American bishops in Medellín."
Bosca said Bergoglio was not opposed to liberation theology itself but
to "giving a Catholic blessing to armed insurgency", specifically the Montoneros, who claimed liberation theology as part of their political ideology. Blase Bonpane, a former Maryknoll father and founding director of the Office of the Americas, said "The new pope has not been comfortable with liberation theology."
On September 11, 2013, Pope Francis hosted Gutiérrez in his residence, where he concelebrated mass with Gutiérrez and Gerhard Müller, then Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Some saw this meeting as a sign of warming relations between the hierarchy and liberation theologians. The same month, L'Osservatore Romano published an article by Archbishop Müller praising Gutiérrez.
On January 18, 2014, Pope Francis met with Arturo Paoli, an Italian
priest whom the Pope knew from Paoli's long service in Argentina. Paoli
is recognized as an exponent of liberation theology avant la lettre and the meeting was seen as a sign of "reconciliation" between the Vatican and the liberationists.
Miguel d'Escoto, a Maryknoll priest from Nicaragua, had been sanctioned with an a divinis
suspension from his public functions in 1984 by Pope John Paul II, for
political activity in the leftist Sandinista government in Nicaragua.
Pope Francis lifted the suspension in August 2014, in response to a
request by d'Escoto.
At a 2015 press conference in the Vatican hosted by Caritas International,
the federation of Catholic relief agencies, Gutiérrez noted that while
there had been some difficult moments in the past dialogue with the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith,
liberation theology had never been condemned. Although he saw an
increasingly clear emphasis on Church teachings on the poor, he did not
consider that liberation theology was undergoing a rehabilitation, since
it had never been "dishabilitated".
In January, 2019, during the World Youth Day
in Panama, Pope Francis discussed changing attitudes to liberation
theology during an extended discussion with a group of thirty Jesuits
from Central America. He noted that he had a devotion to the martyred
Salvadoran Jesuit priest, Rutilio Grande, even before he came to know Óscar Romero
well. Francis commented that "Today we old people laugh about how
worried we were about liberation theology. What was missing then was
communication to the outside about how things really were."
Accusations
Communist era general of Romania's secret police, Ion Mihai Pacepa, claims that the KGB created liberation theology. Commentators, notably John L. Allen of Crux on the left and Damian Thompson of The Spectator on the right, have suspected these claims are exaggerated.
US political reactions
In 1983 US vice president George H. W. Bush
said he could not comprehend how Catholic theologians could harmonize
Catholicism and Marxism and support revolutionaries in Central America.
"I'm puzzled. I just don't understand it."
Latin American integral mission
Integral mission or holistic mission is a term coined in Spanish as misión integral in the 1970s by members of the evangelical group Latin American Theological Fellowship (or FTL, its Spanish acronym) to describe an understanding of Christian mission which embraces both the evangelism and social responsibility. Since Lausanne 1974, integral mission has influenced a significant number of evangelicals around the world.
The word integral is used in Spanish to describe wholeness (as in wholemeal bread or whole wheat).
Theologians use it to describe an understanding of Christian mission
that affirms the importance of expressing the love of God and
neighbourly love through every means possible. Proponents such as C. René Padilla of Ecuador, Samuel Escobar of Peru, and Orlando E. Costas of Puerto Rico
have wanted to emphasize the breadth of the Good News and of the
Christian mission, and used the word integral to signal their discomfort
with conceptions of Christian mission based on a dichotomy between
evangelism and social involvement.
The proponents of integral mission argue that the concept of
integral mission is nothing new – rather, it is rooted in Scripture and
wonderfully exemplified in Jesus’ own ministry. "Integral mission" is
only a distinct vocabulary for a holistic understanding of mission that
has become important in the past forty years in order to distinguish it
from widely held but dualistic approaches that emphasize either
evangelism or social responsibility.
Camilo Torres
The priest Camilo Torres (a leader of the Colombian guerrilla group ELN) celebrated the Eucharist only among those engaged in armed struggle against the army of the Colombian state. He also fought for the ELN.
Black theology
Black theology refers to a theological perspective which originated in some black churches in the United States and later in other parts of the world, which contextualizes Christianity in an attempt to help those of African descent overcome oppression. It especially focuses on the injustices committed against African Americans and black South Africans during American segregation and apartheid, respectively.
Black theology seeks to liberate people of color from multiple
forms of political, social, economic, and religious subjugation and
views Christian theology
as a theology of liberation—"a rational study of the being of God in
the world in light of the existential situation of an oppressed
community, relating the forces of liberation to the essence of the
Gospel, which is Jesus Christ," writes James Hal Cone, one of the original advocates of the perspective. Black theology mixes Christianity with questions of civil rights, particularly raised by the Black Power movement and the Black Consciousness Movement.
Palestinian liberation theology
Palestinian liberation theology is an expression of political theology and a contextual theology that represents an attempt by a number of independently working Palestinian theologians from various denominations—mostly Protestant
mainline churches—to articulate the gospel message in such a way as to
make that liberating gospel relevant to the perceived needs of their
indigenous flocks. As a rule, this articulation involves a condemnation
of the State of Israel,
a theological underpinning of Palestinian resistance to Israel as well
as Palestinian national aspirations, and an intense valorization of
Palestinian ethnic and cultural identity as guarantors of a truer grasp
of the gospel by virtue of the fact that they are inhabitants of the
land of Jesus and the Bible. The principal figure in Palestinian liberation theology is the Anglican cleric Naim Ateek, founder of the Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center in Jerusalem.
