Liberating Theology: Gustavo Gutierrez

Extract

A theology of liberation purports to answer the question of the relation between Christian faith and the struggle for human liberation. From within the Bolshevik party, Bukharin and Proebrazhensky thought the two antithetical: ‘A communist who rejects the commandments of religion and acts in accordance with the directions of the party, ceases to be one of the faithful. On the other hand, one who, while calling himself a communist, continues to cling to his religious faith, one who in the name of religious commandments infringes the prescriptions of the party ceases thereby to be a communist’. But Gutierrez is a Peruvian who writes as a Latin American. Things in that strife-torn continent are less ossified, as in the third part of his book he makes clear. The struggle for liberation is not the possession of one revolutionary group or set of groups who can dictate the terms on which others may participate, and while the bulk of the church (for Gutierrez, the Catholic church) is still reactionary, many Christians are coming to see that their commitment to Christ places them within and not against or just outside the liberation process. Indeed, Gutierrez would claim, the scope and seriousness of the process of liberation is such that no one in Latin America, and no one in the world, is outside it (p. 143). Ostensible neutrality is a fraud, real neutrality a fiction. Gutierrez does not address himself to the world, though the world may have something to learn from him. He writes in a Latin American perspective, and for his own, for the oppressed and for the exploited.