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The Wider Setting of “Liberation Theology”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

John H. Yoder
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Commentary
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The Review of Politics , Volume 52 , Issue 2 , Spring 1990 , pp. 285 - 296
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Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1990

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References

1. Levine, Daniel H., “Assessing the Impacts of Liberation Theology in Latin America,” Review of Politics 50 (1988): 241–63;CrossRefGoogle Scholar and James Tunstead Burtchaell, C.S.C., “How Authentically Christian Is Liberation Theology?” ibid., pp. 264–91, since reprinted in Burtchaell's, Giving and Taking of Life (Notre Dame: Notre Dame University Press, 1989), pp. 188–208.Google Scholar

2. McCann, Dennis, Christian Realism and Liberation Theology: Practical Theologies in Conflict (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1981).Google Scholar

3. Ogden, Schubert, Faith and Freedom: Toward a Theology of Liberation (Nashville: Abingdon, 1979)Google Scholar, best represents the effort of the liberal establishment to subsume a new phenomenon under one's own prior hermeneutic. Whether such cooption is a compliment or a mistake is the theme of a debate between Anselm Kyngsuk Min (pp. 83–102)Google Scholar and Mark Lloyd Taylor (pp. 103–47)Google Scholar in the Journal of the American Academy of Religion 57 (1989).Google Scholar

4. Novak, Michael, Will it Liberate? Questions about Liberation Theology (New York: Paulist 1986).Google Scholar

5. “Instruction on Certain Aspects of the Theology of Liberation,” Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, 3 September 1984, in Origins 14 (13 09): 193–204.Google Scholar

6. Berryman, Phillip, Liberation Theology (New York: Pantheon, 1987).Google Scholar

7. Brown, Robert MacAfee, Theology in a New Key; Responding to Liberation Themes (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1978).Google Scholar

8. Ferm, Deane William, Liberation Theology; a Survey and Liberation Theology; a Reader, both Maryknoll, Orbis, 1986.Google Scholar My own statement of the case for liberation theology was stated in my “Biblical Roots of Liberation Theology” Grail (St. Jerome's College, Waterloo, Ontario) 1 (1985): 55–74.Google Scholar

9. “Latin America Re-Evangelized Through Basic Ecclesial Communities,” chap. 5 (pp. 290–371)Google Scholar in Russell, Jane ElyseO.S.E., , “Renewing the Gospel Community; Four Catholic Movements with an Anabaptist Parallel” (Ph.D. diss., University of Notre Dame, 1979).Google Scholar The most prolific South American author in the early phase of base community theory development was José Marins, published by Bonum of Buenos Aires. Cf. Muller, Alois and Greinacher, Norbert, eds., Les Communautés de Base, Concilium 104, Paris, Beauchesne, 1975Google Scholar (not the same as the English-language Concilium volumes by the same editors).

10. The theology of the underdog people (min jung) is the Asian counterpart of liberation theology. It is more sober about how soon “we shall overcome”: cf. Lee, Jung Young, An Emerging Theology in World Perspective: Commentary on Korean Minjung Theology (Mystic CT: Twenty Third Publications, 1988);Google ScholarBock, Kim Yong, ed., Minjung Theology: People as the Subjects of History (Singapore: Christian Conference of Asia, n.d [c. 1981]).Google Scholar Minjung thought counts less on the achievement of liberation within a manageable future. Thus it affirms more simply than does Latin liberation theology God's identification with the victims, in their capacity as victims, less than as bearers of the promise of a new order.

In an analogous way, some Original American thinkers find liberationist optimism inappropriate not only to their setting but also to their hopes: cf. Warrior, Robert Allen, “Canaanites, cowboys, and Indians,” Christianity and Crisis, 49–12, 11 09 1989, pp. 261–65.Google Scholar

Within South America, the Maoist sendero luminoso in the peruvian countryside exemplifies challenges to which liberation theology offers no specific answers.

11. The violent Taborites of 1418 were outlived by the nonviolent Petr of Chelcic, the violent Thomas Müntzer by the nonviolent Swiss Brethren, Mennonites, and Hutterites, the (rhetorically) violent Levellers by the Friends, Cf. Nuttall, Geoffrey, Christian Pacifism in History (Oxford: Blackwell, 1958)Google Scholar and Berkeley, , World Without War Council, 1971.Google Scholar Similarly Helder Càmara and Adolfo Perez Esquivel have arisen as nonviolent leaders in response to the confident commitment of a Nestor Paz or a Camilo Torres to liberating violence. It is thus regularly the case that pacifism is articulated not from scratch but, in critical situations, in response to an advocacy of violence which it rejects on both principled and pragmatic grounds. Cf. note 12 on the limited value of the principle-pragmatism split.

12. The distinction between rejecting violence on the grounds of general moral principle and rejecting it on the grounds that something else will work better is a standard concern of ethicists concerned for varieties of method. The distinction is not meaningless but it is usually overdone. Most committed interpreters of the conviction that violence is always wrong are also ready to argue that it is always counterproductive. Few of them would agree that the “principles” which outlaw violence are unrealistic. Few of those who on the other hand assume that the rejection of violence is “unrealistic” have followed through with the consequentialist calculus of all the comparable costs and benefits which their argument would imply.

13. In concrete political fact one does not generally see liberation theologians uncritically blessing extant military efforts or calling for new ones. They have sometimes argued the legitimacy of the governments of Cuba or Nicaragua, but mostly after their having come to power. The treatment of “revolution” and “violence” in their writings is more a commonplace, a topic always asked about, and routinely answered in the traditional “just war” way, than it is a central concern. Assmann (below note 18, p. 87) makes the same point.

14. Alvez, Ruben, A Theology of Human Hope (Corpus, 1969).Google Scholar In Tomorrow's Child (New York: Harper & Row, 1972),Google Scholar Alvez goes on to state how an alternative “community of hope” maintains an alternative construction of the future when “realism” has demonstrated the inadequacy of juxtaposing the Gospel with the promises made by either liberal or marxist visions.

15. Brun, Miguel Angel, Theologie de I'Exil (Ph.D. diss., University of Strasbourg, 1987).Google Scholar Volume 198 of Concilium, entitled Exodus: A Lasting Paradigm, ed. Bas van Iersel and Anton Weiler, demonstrates further how widely the theme has been applied and suggests gently some of its limits. Cf. my “Exodus and Exile: Two Faces of Liberation,” Cross Currents 23 (1973): 297–309.Google Scholar A similar, briefer text was printed as “Withdrawal and Diaspora: Two Faces of Liberation,” in Freedom and Discipleship, ed. Schipani, Daniel S. (Maryknoll, Orbis Books, 1989), pp. 76–84.Google Scholar

16. The above lines have followed, as the sources do, the notion that “exodus” is an apt metaphor for triumphal power. That is however historically an oversimplification. Cf. my “Exodus and Exile.” Modern Christians have sometimes felt that only the cross of Christ can enable the restraint of triumphalism; yet the earliest Christians clothed their witness to the cross in the already available language of the exilic servant songs.

17. McCann, Dennis, “The Developing Gutierrez,” Commonweal, 4 November 1988, pp. 594f.Google Scholar

18. Prologue, Assmann's to Habla Fidel Castro sobre los cristianos mjolucionarios (Montevideo: Tierra Nueva, 1972)Google Scholar is critiqued in Segundo's, The Liberation of Theology (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1976), pp. 90f. Cf. pp. 74ffGoogle Scholar “The Crisis of Theistic Language” in own, Assmann'sTheology for a Nomad Church (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1976).Google Scholar A more thorough working of the biblical message through the categories of historical materialism is offered, by the Europeans; cf. Fierro, Alfredo, The Militant Gospel (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1977).Google Scholar Fierro, however, does not claim to be interpreting the liberation writers; he rather accuses them of not being thorough enough. Cf. Belo (note 19). Kee, Alistair, Marx and the Failure of Liberation Theology (Philadelphia: Trinity Press International, 1989),Google Scholar argues a similar thesis.

19. Belo, Fernando, A Materialistic Reading of the Gospel (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1981).Google Scholar

20. Cf. Sobrino, Jon, Crossroads in Christology,Google Scholar as a treatment of classical doctrinal themes. Segundo's three-volume Christology Jesus of Nazareth Yesterday and Today is as ambitious in his setting as are the works of Schillebeecqx. His five-volume Theology for Artisans of a New Humanity is Rahnerian in its ambitious vision though happily not in its density or bulk.

21. Cf. Gutierrez, , We Drink from Our Own WellsGoogle Scholar and his On Job, Orbis, 1988.Google Scholar Cf. Sobrino's, Spirituality of Liberation (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1988).Google Scholar

22. An especially clear early characterization of European “political theology” in its distinctness from “liberation” was the paper by Fiorenza, Francis, “Political Theology and Liberation Theology: An Inquiry into Their Fundamental Meaning,” in Liberation, Revolution, and Freedom: Theological Perspectives, ed. McFadden, Thomas M. (New York: Seabury, 1975), pp. 3–29.Google Scholar

23. Sturm, Notably Douglas, “Praxis and Promise—On the Ethics of Political Theology” Ethics 92 (1982): 733–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Sturm merges both movements in one account. Alvez, , Theology for a Nomad Church;Google Scholar and Segundo, , Liberation of Theology, p. 139.Google Scholar

24. Cf. an early synthesis in my The Politics of Jesus (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1972).Google Scholar

25. Gottwald, Norman, The Tribes of Yahweh (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1979).Google Scholar

26. Wink, Walter, Naming the Powers; The Language of Power in the New Testament (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1964).Google Scholar

27. Theissen, Gerd, The First Followers of Jesus (London: SCM, 1978);Google ScholarThe Sociology of Early Palestinian Christianity (Philadelphia, Fortress Press, 1978);Google ScholarThe Social Setting of Pauline Christianity (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1982).Google Scholar

28. Meyers, Chad, Binding the Strong Man (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1989).Google Scholar

29. Brun had written as much still earlier in El Rincon Teolóico, the organ of the tiny Seminario Evangelico Menonita de Teologia, where he was then teaching: Montevideo, , Agosto, 1969, pp. 8–18.Google Scholar

30. Bonino, José Miguez, Christians and Marxists: The Mutual Challenge to Revolution (London: Hodder/Stoughton, 1976).Google Scholar A very widespread unfair critique of liberation theology says that its use of the analytical resources of marxist social theory is uncritical. Such critics have not read Miguez or Segundo. Cf. also Miguez's, Toward a Christian Political Ethics (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1983).Google Scholar

31. In later reminiscing, Gutierrez reaches back farther, to the preparations for the 1968 Medellín Latin American Episcopal Conference; cf. “Liberation Theology: Its Message Examined” an interview, Harvard Divinity School Bulletin 19 (1989):Google Scholar 6f. That is true in the very broad sense of “something's being afoot”; yet the Medellfn documents do not announce a new theological methodology. They rather set out to exposit and apply, self-consciously, the implications of Vatican II. Cf. the title of the Medellín reports: The Church in the Present-Day Transformation of Latin America in the Light of the Council, 2 vols. (Bogota and Washington: Latin American Episcopal Council and U. S Catholic Conference, 1968–1970).Google Scholar

32. Segundo, , Liberation of Theology, pp. 10ff., 25ff.Google Scholar

33. Christians in the Technical and Social Revolutions of our Time (Geneva: World Council of Churches, 1967).Google Scholar

34. Hill, Christopher, God's Englishman (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson/ Penguin, 1970).Google Scholar

35. Winstanley, Gerrard, The Law of Freedom and Other writings, ed. Hill, Christopher (London: Pelican, 1973 and Oxford University Press, 1983).Google Scholar

36. Barbour, Hugh, Quakers in Puritan England (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1963);Google ScholarBarbour, and Roberts, Arthur, Early Quaker Writings (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1973).Google Scholar

37. The British government after 1689 was not nonviolent toward overseas colonies; our theme here is the concern for domestic empowerment. Obviously the Irish or the Indians did not see the regime of William and Mary as liberators. The question of the rights of ethnic outsiders is also sometimes delicate for liberation theology today.

38. Cf. Brock, Peter, Social Doctrines of the Czech Brethren;Google Scholar cf. also Wagner, Murray L., Petr Chelčiçký (Scottdale: Herald Press, 1983).Google Scholar Others would reach back yet farther; to the pataria who were a political power in eleventh-century Milan, and to the various pauperes Christi remembered as precursors of Francis and Waldo. Cf. Grundmann, Herbert, Religiöse Bewegungen im Mittelalter (Berlin: Ebering, 1935;Google Scholar Hildesheim, Ohms, 1961). The historical depth of liberation theology could benefit by more reading in the premodern undercurrents of antiestablishment Christianity. When G. Gutierrez set out to study the prehistory of the notion of liberty (“Freedom and Salvation: a political problem,” in Liberation and Change, ed. Stone, Ronald H. (Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1977),Google Scholar he read not the underdogs but the mainline classic authors.