Whatever happened to liberation theology? New directions for theological reflection in latin America

Anglican Theological Review, Fall 2001 by Kater, John L Jr

Thirty years ago, Christians around the world were introduced to Latin American liberation theology, a powerful theological movement emerging among Christians in that part of the world but with links to currents stirring in many other places. A generation later, the context in which liberation theology took shape has changed significantly, its advocates are older and the concerns and aspirations it touched have also changed. Other theological voices have taken center stage, liberation theology has disappeared from the front pages of the newspaper and is virtually unmentioned even in many academic journals. After two decades of evolution and growth, the nineties proved to be a period of reevaluation and redirection.

But in spite of the changes that have occurred, the theological enterprise among Latin American Christians remains vibrant and creative-and of importance to North American Christians, even if that is not always recognized. The purpose of this article is to summarize what has happened to liberation theology in the last decade, to identify what seem to be areas of future development, and to offer some suggestions with regard to the future dialogue between Christians from North and South.1

When Gustavo Gutierrez published his seminal study A Theology of Liberation in 1971, it was as if a bombshell had exploded among Latin American Christians. Only a few years before, at its meeting in Medellin, Colombia, the [Roman Catholic] Latin American Bishops' Conference (CELAM) had taken seriously the encouragement given by the Second Vatican Council to evaluate and restructure its pastoral ministry in light of the context in which it is carried out. That mandate is indicative of the Vatican Council's intention, under the leadership of Popes John XXIII and Paul VI, to bring the Roman Catholic Church into the modern world, epitomized by Pope John's hope of aggiornamento ("today-ment") and summarized in the Council's affirmation that "the Church exists to serve the world."

While liberation theology in Latin America is undoubtedly indebted to the impulses affirmed by Vatican II and especially the Medellin Conference, it was not unrelated to other currents already moving in various places in the aftermath of World War II. Africa and Asia were feeling the results of a powerful movement to end the colonial control of territories dominated by the wealthy industrial countries. In South Africa, the churches were challenged to become involved in the struggle of the Black majority to end apartheid and the World Council of Churches (WCC) had spearheaded international support for that cause. In the United States, the civil rights movement was struggling to end the effects of slavery and segregation, Native Americans were demanding justice, the anti-war movement was leading many to oppose the United States' support for repressive governments in South Vietnam and elsewhere, and the feminist movement was insisting on equality for women. In Germany, theologians like Johannes Metz and Jurgen Moltmann had already attempted to rethink Christian faith in light of an orientation towards the future. And in 1968, a powerful wave of revolt by young people and their supporters-in South Korea, the United States, France, Germany, Japan, Italy-was demanding freedom, a cry which was to produce profound cultural and social changes as well as provoking harsh resistance in many places.

It was truly a time in which revolution-political, social, cultural-was in the air. The Argentinean Lutheran theologian Guillermo Hansen argues that the WCCs Church and Society Conference, held in Geneva in 1966, gave an early and significant forum to voices calling for Christian participation in the revolutionary movements blossoming in many parts of the world.2 Indeed, at that conference American-born Richard Schaull, a Presbyterian missionary working in Brazil, called publicly for a "theology of revolution."3

There are indications that something great and terrible is going to happen. The foundations of the world are shaking. The powerful are constructing fortresses of money and arms. They became rich and their pride grew on the dead. The bankers, the dictators, the rich countries, the armies of the right and the left .... But all over the world a great sigh is raised, the sigh of the poor, of the oppressed .... And this sigh is more than a human sigh: it is the sigh of God. The cry of those who suffer: the vengeance of our God.4

Already in Schaull's passionate and prophetic words some of the principal themes of liberation theology can be discerned: the sense of kairos, the moment pregnant with great and earth-changing events; the energetic drawing of attention to the plight of the poor from whom the rich and powerful minority have unjustly derived their gain; and the insistence that the real God, the God of the Bible, is on the side of the poor who are crying for an end to their misery.

Gutierrez himself summarized what he considered the most significant elements of Latin American liberation theology in an article published in 1995.(5) The "option for the poor"-the demand that the Church ally itself with history's victims as the fundamental ethical commandment for Christians who are not poor-remains, he believes, "the most important contribution of the life and reflection of the Church in Latin America, and beyond Latin America, as the Christian message."6 Liberation theologians responded to the "distinct presence of the poor"-their emergence as an active force in history after millennia of being considered a necessary part of reality. Focusing on the causes of poverty-recognizing that far from being the design of Providence, it is the product of social forces, conflicts and human greed and power-leads the Christian who is aware of this truth to a position of solidarity with those who are its victims. "Poverty," Gutierrez insists, "signifies death."7