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INTRODUCTION

The following is a comprehensive scholarly bibliography of published materials on the varieties of liberation theology, mostly in book form, available in English through the late 1980s. It is intended as an introductory survey to this vast field for the teacher and student of contemporary theology, of biblical hermeneutics, and to the interrelationship of politics and religion around the world. It will also serve as a comprehensive bibliography for the specialist who seeks a research guide to such materials. The author also hopes that his approach — to define as liberation theologies many of the most important, if disparate, forms of contemporary religious thought — will highlight the basic similarities of approach, sources, and aspiration of these theologies in order to help facilitate the search for common ground and solidarity so important in the quest for integral liberation that all these movements seek. The author, who has studied long and written on the history of peacemaking in the Roman Catholic tradition, approaches his field from a broad perspective and as an outgrowth of newly reemphasized Judeo-Christian definitions of peace: as the ongoing work of justice in the world.

The materials presented here are predominantly from about 1970 on, when a clearly definable liberation theology first began to emerge from Latin America. While the focus has been on the primary texts and proponents of liberation theology, at times it has been necessary to include both deep historical background and important reflections contained in articles in the scholarly or popular press, most of these in published collections. In some very few occasions an article has been included as an exception, such as review or bibliographical articles on the literature or because, quite simply, there exists no other literature on a particular topic. While this may have posed problems for some areas of study, such as feminist theology, where many of the most important works originally appeared in article form, the explosion of reprints and collections in the late 1980s has made a great deal of this material available in book form. For materials previous to that, and for these almost countless journal materials, this author has benefited greatly from already published bibliographies, which are presented at the beginning of each chapter under the heading “Bibliographies.” In using these, I have tried to be as exclusive as possible: that is, I have attempted not to duplicate materials that have already appeared in published annotated bibliographies. I have, however, repeated entries in some exceptional cases, as when a book is a classic in its field and of immense influence, or when I feel that my own comments might help the overall context of a chapter. In either case I have made a cross-reference to the bibliography or bibliographies in which it first appeared.

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WHAT IS LIBERATION THEOLOGY?

One might begin a definition of liberation theology with a quotation from one of the works of the Boffs or from Phillip Berryman and thus reflect the efforts and controverted position of important liberation theologians and their allies. Yet perhaps more useful, because closer to the roots of the movement and obviously in accord with the spirit of Vatican II, which gave birth to this theology, is the following brief statement in “Justice in the World.” This comes from the 1971 Synod of Bishops, presided over by Pope Paul VI and bearing the stamp of both the pope and the majority of the world’s Roman Catholic prelates.

A Word of Hope

1. 1.The power of the Spirit, who raised Christ from the dead, is continuously at work in the world. Through the generous sons and daughters of the Church likewise, the People of God is present in the midst of the poor and of those who suffer oppression and persecution; it lives in its own flesh and its own heart the Passion of Christ and bears witness to his resurrection.
   

2. 2.The entire creation has been groaning till now in an act of giving birth, as it waits for the glory of the children of God to be revealed (cf. Rom. 8:22). Let Christians therefore be convinced that they will yet find the fruits of their own nature and effort cleansed of all impurities in the new earth which God is now preparing for them, and in which there will be the kingdom of justice and love, a kingdom which will be fully perfected when the Lord will come himself.
   

3. 3.Hope in the coming kingdom is already beginning to take root in the hearts of men [sic]. The radical transformation of the world in the Paschal Mystery of the Lord gives full meaning to the efforts of men, and in particular of the young, to lessen injustice, violence and hatred and to advance all together in justice, freedom, brotherhood and love.
   

4. 4.At the same time as it proclaims the Gospel of the Lord, its Redeemer and Saviour, the Church calls on all, especially the poor, the oppressed and the afflicted, to cooperate with God to bring about liberation from every sin and to build a world which will reach the fulness of creation only when it becomes the work of man for man.
   

One should not be surprised to find that most of the key elements of liberation theology are here in concise nutshell. Let us therefore take a moment to expand out the text and to emphasize key elements:

1. • the work of liberation is initiated and guided by the Spirit, not by human agency or motivation
   

2. • the People of God, a key concept of liberation theology in its discussion of the Church, is the human agency of such change: that is, change is brought about by the people, who are the church
   

3. • the People of God are the sons and daughters of the Church, men and women equal
   

4. • they are found especially among the poor and the oppressed
   

5. • as the People of God, men and women cooperate with God in the act of creation, of giving birth to a new heaven and earth
   

6. • while the kingdom will be perfected only with the coming of the Lord himself, it is a kingdom of justice and love that must be built through human efforts, and thus in this world
   

7. • the transformation of the world will take place both in human hearts and it will be radical. While the synod did not mean “radical” in the sense of a specific political program or ideology, it clearly stated that the transformation will be the work of human agency, especially of the young
   

8. • it will specifically lessen injustice, violence, and hatred
   

9. • it will advance all together in justice, freedom, brotherhood and love. It will thus be societal rather than individualistic, external in its form and effect, rather than internal and only “spiritual”
   

10. • it is a work of proclamation: that is, a prophetic task that speaks out the truth by proclaiming the Gospel
    

11. • it is based on the liberation theme of Christ’s mission in Luke 3:18: “The spirit of the Lord is on me,/ for he has anointed me/ to bring the good news to the afflicted./ He has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives,/ sight to the blind,/ to let the oppressed go free,/ to proclaim a year of favour from the Lord.
    

12. • in fact, this Synodal passage is nothing more than an official church explication of this radical Gospel text
    

13. • such liberation is the work of these people themselves to define and then to overcome oppression
    

14. • the aim is liberation from every sin, both individual and internal, and social, structural, political, and economic
    

15. • such liberation is based on the Gospels
    

16. • it is essentially a religious task: it is work done in cooperation with God, not with political structures, economic systems or ideologies, not through force or blood, but “with God”
    

17. • its aim is to “build a world which will reach the fullness of creation” that is, will strive for the creation of the kingdom of God, here on earth, but in the full realization that God’s kingdom is not of the world
    

18. • finally, it stresses that the true work of liberation is not through some miraculous deliverance from above, or some escape into internal piety and spiritual liberation, but will come only when it becomes “the work of man for man,” the human work of liberation on behalf of fellow men and women, not in heaven, but on earth.
    

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While the Synod of Bishops could have had only an inkling of the tremendous vitality of the theological movement to which they were about to give birth, liberation theology, with few exceptions, lived up remarkably well to their prescription. In contrast to many of the academic theologies of the First World, liberation theology was born out of the actual experience of the people: not its professional theologians or academics but from the lives of the poor in the Third World, from the oppressed gays and women of the First, from the poor and blacks living on the fringes of prosperity in comfortable North America, from the deeply spiritual thinkers of the creation theology movement who see an intimate link between inner spirituality and the pressing needs for a new global environmental activism and nonviolent reverence for life.

In addition, this theology was born out of the historical traditions of both the First and Third Worlds. In Latin America, where liberation theology was first recognized as a distinct way of speaking about God, certain facts were decisive elements in the context of doing theology. They included long colonial dependency, economic development that favored small elites, and the emergence of the 1970s’ “national security state” that attempted to protect these elites from the growing political upheaval spurred by the Cuban Revolution. Yet even a small sampling of the historical works that bear immediate relevance to liberation theology assembled in chapters 1 and 2 bear witness to the fact that liberation theology can find its roots equally in the missionary founders of Latin America as in the liberating books of the Bible. While defined and limited by their times and by their age’s understanding of God, nature and society, these traditions of nurturing indigenous traditions, of offering protection and hope against the exploitation of colonial powers, and of speaking out forcefully against injustice with a clear vision of the just society are deeply embedded in the religious culture of Latin America.

On the other hand, just a cursory glance through the notes and bibliographies of the leading liberation theologians of the Global South will reveal a great erudition based not on faddish ideology or superficial synthesis of current academic research with politics but on a learned and very profound theological understanding of human existence that is based on Christian tradition and a close study of the Bible.

In Latin America, for example, liberation theology is the intellectual and theological expression of the deeply religious experience of poverty and oppression of the mass of the people, yet it owes much of its intellectual structure and discipline to the philosophies and theologies of twentieth-century Europe, where many of the leading liberation theologians were educated. The works of these theologians owe much to the thought of Bultmann, Metz, Moltmann, Chenu, Congar, Barthe, Heideggar, Rahner, Ladriere, Maritain, Teilhard de Chardin; as well as to the methodology of Marx and to the structuralist insights of Deridda, Foucault, or Bataille. On the whole, however, it is fair to say that we are dealing with works of theology that deal first with the Bible, the spiritual state of the world and its individuals, the role of God and humanity in salvation, and the entire spiritual apparatus and structure of the church, including its sacramental, liturgical, pastoral, and ecclesiological aspects and therefore with all the classic categories of traditional theology.

Thus liberation theology is not a new theology, but a new way of doing theology. It seeks not to displace the objects of theology, the categories just enumerated, but the subjects of that theology: that is, its principal agents are not professors in comfortable seminaries in North America or Europe, but the poor and oppressed all around the world. The role of the liberation theologian, professional, rigorously trained, yet sensitized to the revelation given the people themselves, is to help the People of God form their own theology, their own understanding of God, and to then take these insights and express them in forms that traditional theologians and members of the churches can understand. In this way theological reflection can truly appreciate the truths that God has spoken to the poor and marginalized.

Liberation theology also grew from the realization, felt most strongly in Europe at the end of World War II, that a new age had dawned that had forever divorced the world of spirit from any one political system, from any “Constantinian” sense of triumphalism — a unity of the church with the powers of the world that had brought theologians to face the reality that at best the church is “a ministry in service to the majority” of the world’s unbelievers.

We would, however, be offering only one part of the development of liberation theologies were we to restrict ourselves to its first impulses in Latin America. By the time a recognizable theology of liberation had appeared in Latin America in the early 1970s, there had already emerged a revolutionary form of liberation theology in both the United States and in Africa. As a result of the black consciousness and Civil Rights movements of the 1950s and 1960s in the United States and South Africa, a clearly defined black theology had offered its first essays on the spiritual meaning of the black struggle, white racism and the possibilities for reconciliation or radical transformation within their societies. While often equated with the black power movement in the United States, black theology was just that, a theology of liberation that reflected on politics and society but that remained essentially theology, a way of talking about the God of the poor and oppressed and the path to freedom.

At the same time many European theologians who had given impetus to Vatican II were also developing a form of theology that spoke of the essential connections between the political and social life of the world and the spiritual mission of the church. Their theological message had immense influence upon John XXIII’s and Vatican II’s message of the “opening” of the church to the world and for the world.

Other factors that came together in the late 1960s and early 1970s to form the theology of liberation presented below were the women’s movement in the United States and Europe, the gay rights movement, and the emerging movements for democratization in the Third World, especially in the Christian communities of the Pacific Rim and in India during the late 1970s. In all three cases — if one will excuse a broad generalization — theological reflection came after the original social and economic insights of oppression faced by women, gays and lesbians, by the Asian poor and oppressed, and by Native and Hispanic Americans. In all these cases, however, it is important to stress that these theologies were not born of academic abstraction but were theological responses to very real contexts and situations of oppression, marginalization, and awakening consciousness for liberation.

Thus in every case the liberation theologies presented here are serious, truly religious attempts to come to terms with oppression, explore its theological meaning, value and burden, and to evolve religious ways of explaining how God can permit oppression, present the opportunity for the oppressed to realize their conditions of oppression and sin, and finally offer the theological underpinnings of hope, and faith, and love needed to overcome oppression and to convert oppressors so that the kingdom of God can be built.

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THE SCOPE OF THIS WORK

This book will therefore include not only the classic and more recent texts of Latin American liberation theology but also works on the historical roots of this theology. These include the Hebrew and Christian biblical origins of liberation and studies that focus on the role of Jesus as a prophet of liberation and on his mission to raise up the marginalized and the oppressed. This will be the focus of Chapter 1.

Since contemporary liberation theologians also examine the on-going tradition of liberation, Chapter 2 presents materials from the Christian tradition of the Middle Ages and early modern Europe, focusing a good deal of attention on the mendicant missionaries in Latin America during the Conquest and Colonial periods best exemplified by Bartolomé de Las Casas.

Because liberation theology is fully within the orthodox Christian tradition, Chapter 3 treats the papal, episcopal, and conciliar foundations of the theology and praxis of liberation, foundations that are stressed again and again by practicing liberation theologians. In fact, one of the key elements of liberation theology is its authors’ attempt to deepen and broaden the specifically theological basis and message of these papal, conciliar and synodal letters, to examine the biblical foundations of these revolutionary documents, and to meditate profoundly on their meaning in the lives of the majority of Christians around them. The bibliography also therefore presents materials on the most important practical element of the theology: the base Christian communities that have grown all over the world.

While liberation theology is at root a theology of the Global South, flowing from the praxis of Latin America, Asia and Africa, it also reached out to the liberation traditions and aspirations of the First World. Chapter 4 therefore presents materials on liberation theology’s impact on European thought and action. This chapter presents important European reflections on liberation theology from both sympathetic and critical schools of thought. These include Political theology, which, according to at least a few theologians, should be the inclusive category that includes liberation theology. In this chapter I have also chosen to present some material already covered in my annotated bibliography on peacemaking in the Catholic tradition. This is a section on Danilo Dolci and his attempts to raise the consciousness and standard of living of the poor and marginalized in western Sicily. It has been, as far as I know, the only documented European program that has attempted to do what liberation theology and European Political theology claim to want to do: lead the people themselves to become the subjects of their own history and to apply the principles of the Christian tradition of social justice and nonviolence to real praxis. Where Dolci differs from the liberation theologian may perhaps be clear from the entries; yet his example is too compelling to omit here.

Chapters 5 to 7 contain the heart of any discussion of liberation theology: the “Third World” theologies of Africa, Asia and Latin America. Consistent themes that emerge throughout these chapters are a deep adherence to the Gospels, the essentially theological nature of the inquiry, and yet the profound impact of the social, economic and political contexts of the Third World in doing theology. Poverty, oppression, racism, and sexism lie at the heart of any understanding of God and creation here. At the same time, these theologians are neither naive nor provincial when it comes to either their situations or the intellectual means for liberation. The books listed here are the work of highly trained and very aware professionals who have studied their own religious traditions and those of the European and North American theological schools. These are also theologians in constant communication with one another, through regional, national, international and intercontinental conferences, collections of essays, journals and teaching positions.

The collection contains materials that may surprise many North Americans: books on the various forms of liberation theology that increasingly affect Americans: not only black theology and the immediate impact of Latin American religious thought on such groups as the Sanctuary Movement and the United Farm Workers, but also such diverse areas as the U.S. Bishops’ recent pronouncements on economic and social justice, on the embattled creation spirituality movement, and on gay and lesbian liberation theology. In all these areas of religious thought one central insight is quickly coming to the fore: that the way in which North America produces, spends, defends, and thinks about its physical and spiritual life is in profound crisis — some theologians might even say in a profound state of sinfulness — and that while the insights of liberation theology cannot be imported wholesale or exploited like so many Third-World commodities, they can at least point the way toward a new way of life for us. This path is born more from a way of doing theology than from any specific theological categories or statements: for North America to regain a sense of human value in its increasingly exploitive way of life — and death — it must open itself to the insights of its own poor, exploited and marginalized minorities; it must realize that God has spoken first and most importantly to these about wealth, power, justice, and the meaning of the good life and true humanity.

Finally, in Chapter 9, the bibliography includes important materials on feminist theology. In its attempts to raise consciousness, redefine structures, empower individuals from all forms of oppression, and realign our thinking about the sacred and the profane away from patriarchy, hierarchy and authority and toward more ancient realizations of the liberating power of spirit, equality and compassion, feminist theology may perhaps be the most inclusive of all the liberation theologies. As many of its proponents affirm, the dichotomies and alienations of the woman’s life is truly the most ontologically human situation of oppression. Successfully addressing these most basic human situations may, in fact, be the final path to a total human liberation. Feminist theology has the last word here.

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CRITERIA FOR SELECTION

Throughout, this book attempts to focus on theological, though not necessarily academic, works. While certain materials included on political, social and economic structures are essential for understanding the role of praxis in this theology, primary focus is on the reflections of liberation theologians on God and creation and humanity’s relation to both, to itself, to the larger history of creation and salvation and to the structures of community and worship embodied in the churches. Such an approach is not overly exclusive, nor does it avoid the political, social, economic, liturgical and sexual issues at the core of the controversy over liberation theology. For such criteria — almost by definition — include the works of Gutiérrez, Boff, Starhawk, Tutu, Sobrino, Segundo, Dussel, Cardenal, Comblin, Fox, Ruether, Russell, Cone, Daly and scores of the most important theological thinkers today.

The scope of this material is so far-flung that the reader may be tempted to ask whether I consider that there is any theology that is not a liberation theology. While there is certainly a huge amount of work that has been done that merits this name, and some see liberation theologies as the most important theological movement since the Protestant Reformation, it remains a theology of the margins. While it has certainly gained much attention and has influenced thinking within the bastions of First World theological seminaries to a greater or lesser degree, the observation made by Nelle Morton (see 1256) bears considerable weight: while we may describe all these theologies as “women’s,” or “black,” or “Asian,” or “Latin American” theology; when we speak of the theology made by white males, we still tend to name it simply “Theology.” Thus, while the contents of each chapter may appear fairly straightforward from the Table of Contents or the brief survey just completed, it may be useful to distinguish certain themes and directions that define a theology of liberation.

My first major criterion was, of course, that such works have as a central concern the emancipation of individuals from stereotype, from objectification and from social and economic oppression and marginalization of many kinds, but that, as theology they are also concerned with the unique place of salvation that combines this material liberation with the spiritual in a profound unity: liberation from earthly oppression as an essential element of the kingdom preached by the Judeo-Christian tradition.

A second essential aspect of a theology of liberation is that it be of and not on, that it be by and not about a group, context, or way of life. Thus I have not, for example, chosen to include all works on gays and religious traditions, or all works by women theologians, or even in many cases books on women, or gays, or blacks, or Latin Americans, or Native Americans. This is because many theological works seek to discuss the problem of homosexuality, or of women’s claims for equality within the church or for full recognition of their spiritual and material equality in society at large, or to analyze the mythologies or religious practices of Native Americans. While such works might even be sympathetic, they continue to objectify the group they discuss; and to discuss them from the point of view of the sympathetic, or not, dominant group. Returning to our original definition, liberation theology, on the other hand, both reflects the aspirations of the People of God and is their own handiwork.

The third, relatively subjective, criterion distinguishes works of a theology of liberation from the disciplines that inform and support them: thus works of feminist theory may or may not also be of theology, and these in turn may or may not also be a feminist theology; works on Latin American economy may be about poverty and oppression there, and may thus be of essential background for understanding the context of liberation theology or of essential background for a theologian writing a work of liberation. Such a work, however, may also be a major contribution to liberation theology. Enrique Dussel’s books of sociology, history and ethics come to mind immediately in this context.

Ultimately, of course, I had to rely upon my own informed judgments in very many cases as to which works were, indeed, liberation theology according to the criteria that I have set forth. Thus some readers will be surprised to find certain works included and others excluded.

For the most part my criteria for including a particular work within a chapter or subheading were fairly straightforward: U.S. black theology, Asian liberation theology, the works of Bartolomé de Las Casas, papal and conciliar documents as foundations for liberation theology, Vatican reactions and condemnations were all easy to identify as works, or condemnations, of liberation theology and to place them within a chapter. Difficulty arose, however, when many of the works crossed over areas of theology: black theology and African theology, or black women’s theology are examples. In most cases a simple cross-reference addressed the situation of a book being relevant to more than one area of liberation theology. Only in the first chapter, “The Biblical Roots of Liberation Theology” did this approach pose difficulties. Here a distinction had to be made between liberation themes and texts in the Bible and various forms of interpretation stemming from liberation perspectives. I realize that prima facie this may appear epistemologically naive, but I have tried to focus here on liberation themes as they derive from the Bible itself, to highlight those biblical texts used as sources for liberation theologians, and to present those works of biblical scholarship that see the life of Israel and then of Jesus as essentially liberation histories.

In a very real sense, of course, all liberation theology, in fact all real Judeo-Christian theology, is an interpretation of the Bible. Beyond that truth, however, my criteria for inclusion are those hermeneutic tools that open the Bible for us as a source of the major liberation themes. If this seems somewhat obtuse and artificial, let me illustrate my point using a set of examples drawn from various forms of feminist theology.

Works on the Goddess, the pre-patriarchal, pre-Judeo-Christian worship of the Earth Mother, both historically and in the present, obviously belong to the chapter on feminist theology and not with that on Biblical roots. On the other hand, works on the politics of Jesus, his life and dealings with the women who formed his inner circle and their religious significance for liberation themes obviously belong in this first chapter, as would liberation interpretations of individual books of the Bible, such as Ephesians or Exodus. Yet a third category, such as feminist interpretation of the Bible, may fall in between. There are, for example works of biblical interpretation done by well-known liberation theologians that are not essentially works of liberation theology. An example might be Tolbert’s Sowing the Gospel. On the other hand, books dealing with a feminist interpretation of the infancy narratives would seem to call for inclusion here.

An argument could also be made to include lesbian theology under feminist thought in Chapter 9, instead of under gay/lesbian theology in Chapter 8. I felt, however, that the issues of oppression and liberation for gays, especially in the reactionary atmosphere of the 1980s in the United States, warranted their inclusion under North American liberation. Here I have also made the distinction between works that discuss the history of Judeo-Christian religious and ethical attitudes towards homosexuality and the gay/lesbian in the church, which I have not included according to the criterion outlined above, and specifically gay/ lesbian theology, which I have.

My selection is again the result of sorting through many ambiguities and nuances, but the criterion has been a theology of gayness and lesbianism that focuses on the divine in human nature, that acknowledges and attempts to free the bipolarity of human sexuality in its creative and religious sense as born from the practical experience of gays and lesbians in our culture, and then that attempts to convert these insights for both gay and lesbian liberation to the liberation of us all.

The chart below and its caption may, I hope, prove useful in distinguishing the works that I have chosen to include in my definition of liberation theologies and those fields and works that I considered important, or less important, as background.

Liberation Theologies and Their Sources

A Chart of Readings

The distance from the center of the circles indicates the degree of concentration of titles in the following bibliography, based on the immediate bearing of these topics to a true theology of liberation. Topics overlapping circles indicate that in the bibliography I have included certain books of relevance to this topic but have felt that other titles, or topics, are not central.

The ultimate direction of this argument is, of course, an admission that in so vibrant and cross-fertilizing an area as liberation theology neat categories, while useful to the bibliographer and editor, confound the truth that all true theology, and all true liberation, enlightens and liberates us all. Many of my categorizations may not therefore do justice to the topic or the work; I am simply asking the reader’s indulgence in advance for my imperfect judgments.

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THE ENTRIES

The entries are arranged here by subject according to chapter, then by subheading within each broad, usually geographical, field, then alphabetically by author and title. All entries are numbered consecutively, while cross references are noted in parentheses in bold face, as for example, (625). Cross references to other chapters are hyperlinked, for example, 625.

Simply browsing through these already existing works is a humbling one for the non-theologian, for, perhaps more so than in many fields in the Humanities, certainly better than in history, theologians are equipped with excellent research and bibliographical tools, both printed and electronic. Such a wealth of data has been both a blessing and a potential pitfall for an “outsider,” since it indicated both a richness of materials and warning that any attempt to master all of these materials might indeed be fruitless to all but the few mature scholars well versed in the field. Nonetheless, having accepted this challenge, I have attempted to be as complete as possible, within the scope of the project.

As I have noted above, this bibliography is designed to give the English-speaking reader an introduction to, and a mastery of, the materials readily available. We were fortunate that so much on Latin American liberation theology had been translated into English through Orbis Books of Maryknoll, Meyer-Stone, and now other major presses, and so many other forms of liberation theologies: feminist, creation, and black are basically already available in English through presses like Crossroad/Continuum, Harper & Row, Seabury, Westminster, Fortress and Abingdon. Simply presenting these materials would be both a comprehensive survey and a solid introduction. In addition, journals, such as Concilium, which is devoted to the works of Vatican II, have published many volumes of collected essays as special issues around the central themes of liberation theology. Other journals of note include Signs for feminist theory, Radical Religion, Exchange, and others, which are listed here.

The statements of important political and theological opponents of liberation theology have also been included. Such materials will help explain the importance and the continued controversy of this vital Judeo-Christian tradition. One important area of research has not been included: unpublished dissertations specifically on liberation theology. Even a hasty glance through Dissertation Abstracts, now happily in electronic form, or through the catalog of Union Theological Seminary in New York City will reveal a growing flood of such dissertations. In general, one can say that they tend to focus on one aspect of liberation theology: the formal links between mostly Latin American — but sometimes African or Asian — liberation theologians and their intellectual forebearers among the academic theologians of Europe. Such an approach, while useful, tends to implicitly interpret liberation theologies in a way very different from what their major proponents see them to be: not as reflections of praxis, and the praxis of a suffering oppressed majority at that; but as a stage in the intellectual history of Europe, with an emphasis on orthodoxy as a measure of success or failure (closeness to European models), benefit or danger (amount of Marxist influence).

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CRITICISM AND INFLUENCE

This last form of analysis, whether positive or negative, betrays an important North American concern: the impact of liberation theology upon economic and social structures in the Third World and here at home. Despite the materialist obsessions of many of liberation theology’s critics who see it as an essentially economic and political form of discourse, one must stress at the outset that the primary “economics” in these works remains the economics of salvation in the classic theological sense. Yet many critics in the First World, especially those of North America with links to the U.S. administrations of the 1980s, tended to focus on liberation theology’s Latin American form, and on that form’s supposed Marxism.

Liberation theologians, especially in Latin America, have, in fact, made Marxism an important, while not central, element of their theological discourse. This derives from several factors: the realities of poverty and oppression, linked with the right-wing military dictatorships of Latin America during the 1970s, the popularity of Marxist theory in historical and sociological analysis in Latin American intellectual circles, and the very real hopes that the Marxist revolution in Cuba in the 1960s seemed to offer for Latin America’s impoverished peoples.

Any theologian writing in Latin America who was at all aware of his or her context therefore would feel it necessary to make some recognition of Marxism: whether to condemn it (as many on the right did), to study and use its influential analytic tools (as many in Latin America, Europe, and North America have done), or to embrace the Marxist revolution and equate it with the mission of the church (as some, very few, did).

Many of the most important liberation theologians seem to fall into the second category, using Marxist forms of analysis as only one methodological tool for describing structures of oppression and alienation, of marginalization and domination. The very fact that we use these terms, in fact, highlights the problem, because Marx and his school originated our discussions of these very categories. In fact, in calling into question the obvious references to Marxian class and economic analysis, one may as well call into question the very foundations of modern sociology, history, or economics for borrowing or criticizing Marxist methodologies and categories. Marx, like Max Weber, Freud, or Einstein (as much as this might still discomfort some high Catholic church officials and U.S. conservatives) is part of the modern psyche and intellectual vocabulary. To deny his importance would be the equivalent of denying the discovery of nuclear fission.

Yet, as an attorney recently told me with some surprise after studying Gutiérrez’ A Theology of Liberation, a careful reading reveals far less Marx than Jesus, far more strict, and classic, theology than attempts to analyze social or economic problems. Despite this, however, the late 1970s and 1980s saw a steady stream of condemnations of “Marxist” liberation theologians from U.S. neoconservative intellectuals; a constant reiteration of the tragic story of Camilo Torres, the guerilla priest killed with revolutionaries in Colombia in 1966, tracts that seem to claim that this priest’s hasty political pamphlets and diary were the root and core of liberation theology; or that the polemical statements about Christianity by Nicaragua’s former minister of Defense, Tomas Borges, were to be seriously considered the soul of liberation theology.

Perhaps not coincidentally, the 1980 document prepared by the Santa Fe Group, neoconservative think-tankers, stressed that one of the best ways to counter the growing religious influence of Latin America’s liberation theologians on political and economic life was to press a consistent campaign to discredit them through several clearly defined means. These included the maligning and belittling of the concerns of the theologians, attacking the motives and qualifications of the theologians themselves, and finally incessantly associating them with Marxist political and intellectual influences and thus with the Soviet bloc. A look at many of the materials, and their consistent themes, presented in Chapter 8 under the section, “The Northern Reactionaries,” will bear this out.

In this warfare the neocons had straunch and important allies. Pope John Paul II and his then chief agent, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, head of the revived Holy Office of the Inquisition, relentlessly pursued what they also considered the Marxist taint of any liberation theology not controlled, or sanctioned, by the Vatican. Using a “Polish” model of church government that defines the “People of God” as the loyal troops who form their battalions behind the leadership of the pope in his declared wars against godless communist regimes, the Vatican forced confrontation, humiliation, and occasionally (admittedly) some clarification of the lives and intellectual positions of liberation theologians. Yet, despite the onslaughts of the 1980s, liberation theology survived, matured and spread.

The reasons for this were several. One is that at its heart liberation theology appeals to an other world: not an otherworldly appeal, but to a world beyond the grasp of political systems, consumer or command societies, or their mass media. The creators and audience of liberation theology are the solitary reader and the thought and action of small groups of individuals. In keeping with the truest meaning of the Gospels these have come together to discuss a biblical passage or to address themselves, in the light of a biblical text, to some small, very local problem and condition that would appear dull and unimportant to the electronic world of the multinational corporations who define what discourse is in the late twentieth century. They will, instead, take up the issue of a drainage ditch, or an unfair landlord or farm manager far from the centers of power and influence, completely unknown and ignored by the worlds of print or electronic media that define power and influence.

This continuing influence is one of the primary motivations for compiling this volume, for while much has been written and recorded on Third World theologies, the influence of liberation theology on our own North American culture and society continues to have immense and widespread potential. This has been due both to the rising influence of the minorities within the United States who will soon constitute the majority of U.S. citizens, and because North American churchpeople and churches are becoming increasingly aware that the problems of North American society and the continued relevance of their religions must be divorced from right-wing and reactionary agendas in politics, culture, economics and in our attitudes toward the Earth and creation. Liberation theologies have addressed the progressive agendas of all these issues and offer both serious scholarly foundations and spiritual impetus for this work of peace, justice and renewal.

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Updated 11.16.09