Liberation Theologies | Bibliography | Latin America Pt. 1
Chapter 7: Latin America, Theory and Praxis, Part 1
Bibliographies
366. Dahlin, Therrin C., and others. The Catholic Left in Latin America. A Comprehensive Bibliography. Boston: G.K. Hall, 1981.
An excellent introduction to the materials available, including both violent and nonviolent movements for change.
367. Kirk, John M. “Religion and Politics in Revolutionary Cuba: A Bibliographical Guide” Revista Interamericana de Bibliografia 37, 3 (1987): 27-43.
Not seen.
368. Wagner, C. Peter. A Catalog of the C. Peter Wagner Collection of Materials on Latin American Theology of Liberation. Pasadena, CA: Fuller Theological Seminary, 1974.
Books and articles arranged by author and year, in all languages. A useful resource for earlier work.
Introduction and Background
369. Antoncich, Ricardo. Christians in the Face of Injustice. A Latin American Reading of Catholic Social Teaching. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 198??.
Readings cover such issues as economics, politics, and competing ideologies, all with a focus on church teachings and their confrontation with the realities of oppression and injustice.
370. Bamat, Thomas. “The Catholic Church and Latin American Politics.” Latin American Research Review 18, 3 (1983): 219-26.
A review article. The church’s activities throughout Latin America are the single most important development since the Cuban revolution.
371. Beeson, Trevor, and Jenny Pearce. A Vision of Hope. The Churches and Change in Latin America. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1984.
Examines the plight of Christians who have opted for the poor and the message of liberation theology in the face of repressive regimes in Latin America. Discusses the situation there, the nature of Christian mission, including some analysis of liberation theology and its chief proponents, and analyzes the situations in Cuba, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Paraguay, Peru, Mexico, and Central America. A useful survey. Good bibliography, arranged by topic, mostly of political issues.
372. Bigo, Pierre. The Church and Third World Revolution. Sr. Jeanne Marie Lyons, trans. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1977.
Part 1 examines the themes of revolution from the viewpoint of history, including the themes of marginalization, dependency, and liberation, including a brief survey of the modern revolutions and their interpreters.
Part 2 examines the political aspects of Christian faith, including Jesus and his age, the themes of eros, power, and wealth in the Bible, forms of liberation; the church’s own response to the world and its temptations; and the attitude of the church and its people to the political issues of the day.
Part 3 then examines the role of Marx and Marxist analysis in the Third World. Finally, Part 4 develops some ideas for the future based on the notion of community in special economic and political senses and the role of democracy in the world today, both in its capitalist and socialist senses. The book concludes with a study of the role of violence in the world and in the church, seeking a way to break from its vicious cycle, to build a just society, and to wean the church itself from its “violent” use of power and to become, instead, a prophetic force in the seeking of true peace based on justice.
373. Block, Walter, and Donald Shaw, eds. Theology, Third-World Development and Economic Justice. Vancouver: Fraser Institute, 1985.
Not seen.
374. Bruneau, Thomas C. The Political Transformation of the Brazilian Catholic Church. London: Cambridge University Press, 1974.
Essential background to the change in the hierarchy’s stance from collaboration and Constantinian alliance, to critical support, and then to an embrace of the people, support of base Christian communities and dynamic nurturing of liberation.
375. Cleary, Edward L., O.P. Crisis and Change. The Church in Latin America Today. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1985.
Surveys the new leadership, changes from Medellin to Puebla, the new theology of liberation, base Christian communities, the emergence of the laity, the conflict between the church and the national security state, and the emergence of the leadership role of the Latin American church in world Catholicism today. A very good introduction.
376. Comblin, José. The Church and the National Security State. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1979.
This is a work of theological observation and reflection. It begins with a discussion of forms of theology, academic and liberation, European and Latin American. It then reviews the influence of Marx and the methods of modern social science on Catholic thought and goes on to outline a new “theology of revolution.” Comblin then briefly traces the history of Latin America from colonialism to modern times, the creation of the national security state and the role it plays in worldwide geopolitics and as a bolster to local elites.
The doctrine of the National Security State has, in effect, become a new theology, since it underpins the elite rule of military dictatorships with supposedly Christian sanctions and goals. Comblin next discusses the role of the church as the subservient tool of the state, its growing criticism, and ensuing conflict. This conflict is expressed in new theologies, in new practice of organization and evangelization, and in new divisions between a true church of the people and the false myths and brutal force of the political ideology of the state.
377. —. Retrieving the Human. A Christian Anthropology. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1990.
Rejects the Manichean duality so deeply ingrained in so much of quietistic Christian spirituality: that body and soul are two separate realities, that inner spirit is distinct and more lofty than the body and its needs. Instead, Comblin calls for a unified view of human nature, in which the soul is the life of the body, indistinct from it, and that therefore the needs of the body become indistinct from the spiritual needs of the person, and vice-versa. He examines the scriptures for textual foundations of a praxis for the theologian and church worker.
378. Dussel, Enrique. A History of the Church in Latin America. Colonialism to Liberation, 1492-1979. 3d ed. Alan Neely, trans. Grand Rapids, MI: W.B. Eerdmans, 1981. See 57.
The Latin American church entered the twentieth century as truly marginal: impoverished, powerless, and cut off from European Christendom. At the same time, from the 1930s a reawakening among the laity and the survival of collegiality among the region’s hierarchy insured that the church would become a strong force for change, especially after Vatican II and in the face of the national security state’s brutal defense of “Western Christian Civilization” in the 1960s and 1970s.
Traces the immense impact of Vatican II, of Paul VI’s Populorum Progressio, of CELAM (The Conference of Latin American Bishops), of the Medellin Conference, and emerging liberation theology. Follows the events of the 1960s and 1970s in Brazil, Argentina, Peru, Paraguay, and Cuba. Then examines the examples of several individuals, including Helder Camara, Leonidas Proaño and Fr. Camilo Torres as an introduction to the problem of violence in Latin America and the quest for an appropriate “vocabulary of peace” that will match the risk and the challenge of nonviolence.
Dussel also traces the reaction to liberation in North America, in the reign of terror unleashed against the church by the national security state between 1973 and 1979 (which created more martyrs for the church than the past 500 years combined) and at the councils of Sucre and Puebla. Surprisingly, however, Puebla ended as a triumph for the “People of God,” endorsed liberation theology, and put the church in Latin America clearly back in the tradition of Montesinos and Las Casas. (See Chapter 2. ) The church thus declared decisively that it sought not to replace one oppressor with another, not the rule of elites over the masses, but to take up the role of teacher and prophet to lead the people themselves to their own liberation. Liberation theology thus re-embraced the peaceful apocalyptic of the Catholic tradition as an understanding of the mysteries of history and a process of gradual revelation, leading the people from the womb of the present into a new age.
379. Foubert, Charles, ed. The Church at the Crossroads. Christians in Latin America from Medellin to Puebla (1968-1978). Rome: IDOC International, 1978.
This is a collection of essays grouped around several themes: the ten years of Latin American history from Medellin to Puebla; issues for the Puebla conference, including the growth of liberation Theology; the Latin American ecumenical movement; interviews with major participants; and documents from various theologians and prelates. The volume concludes with a bibliographic essay on recent works of liberation theology.
Contributors include Alain Touraine, Ralph Della Cava, Clodovis Boff, Ernesto Balducci, Míguez Bonino, Dussel, Atoncich, Richard, Balasuriya, Santa Ana, Helder Camara, and Johann Baptist Metz.
380. Gheerbrant, Alain. The Rebel Church in Latin America. Baltimore, MD: Penguin Books, 1974.
On the journey of Paul VI to Latin America in the midst of religious and political ferment; the Medellin conference; the new phenomenon of Christians entering revolutionary movements; Camilo Torres, and the prospects of a reformed, revolutionary church.
381. Goodpasture, H. McKennie. Cross and Sword. An Eyewitness History of Christianity in Latin America. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1990. See 59.
Selections from primary sources that go beyond the “important men” and let the people themselves – men and women and children, of all walks of life – speak for themselves. Excellent background for the emergence of a theology from the “grass roots up.”
382. Hanks, Thomas D. God So Loved the Third World. The Bible, the Reformation, and Liberation Theologies. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1983.
Uses a careful reading on the Bible to focus on the poverty and oppression of the marginalized, especially of Latin America.
383. Hanson, Eric O. The Catholic Church in World Politics. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990.
This is a comprehensive survey of Catholic politics and culture, its history, its organization and its ideology. Liberation theology and Latin America are treated as examples, but the main focus remains on Europe, North America and the U.S. conflict with the Soviet Union.
384. Kadt, Emanuel de. Catholic Radicals in Brazil. London: Oxford University Press, 1970.
Traces the Catholic left from the 1930s to the origin and development of the MEB.
385. Kee, Alistair. Domination or Liberation: The Place of Religion in Social Conflict. London: SCM Press, 1986.
Kee examines feminist, black and Latin American liberation theologies and finds that they all represent a new change in religious life: away from an alliance with power and domination and toward a new voice for the oppressed. In a final chapter he examines the rise of the religious right wing in the U.S. in the 1980s.
386. King, Paul G., and David O. Woodyard. The Journey Toward Freedom. Economic Structures and Theological Perspectives. Rutherford, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University, 1982.
Not seen.
387. Lange, Martin, and Reinhold Iblacker, eds. Witnesses of Hope. William E. Jerman, trans. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1981.
Documents the sufferings of Christians under the national security state in Latin America between 1968, in the wake of the Medellin Conference, and 1980. During these years over 1,500 bishops, priests, nuns, religious lay workers, numerous Indians and poor campesinos were imprisoned, tortured, murdered, and “disappeared” precisely because of their witness as Christians in seeking peace and justice according to the call of Medellin and Vatican II. The editors cite many examples from around the region, ranging from Archbishop Oscar Romero (See 631-641) and the American religious women martyred in El Salvador (See 642-647), to the plight of the poor and oppressed in Chile, to indigenous peoples exterminated in Brazil. This often recalls the Acts of the Christian Martyrs. It should. Foreword by Karl Rahner, S.J.
388. Latorre Cabal, Hugo. The Revolution of the Latin American Church. Frances K. Hendricks and Beatrice Berler, trans. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1978.
After a brief survey of the church’s role in Latin America from Alexander VI to John XXIII, the author surveys the effects of Vatican II in social, scientific, ecclesiological, and political realms.
389. Lernoux, Penny. Cry of the People. New York: Penguin Books, 1982.
In minute, often painful detail, this journalist and expert on Latin American political and religious affairs narrates the sufferings of the Latin American people under the national security state of the 1960s and 1970s. Her theme is the concerted U.S. policy of supporting military coups and dictatorships, and their rampages of arrest, torture, disappearances and murders against those struggling for human rights, most especially the Roman Catholic church. The church itself underwent a dramatic change from conservative bulwark of the status quo to the most dynamic force for change in the region in the period after Vatican II and Medellin, and it consequently suffered more martyrdoms than at any time since the Roman Empire.
Sometimes reading like the acts of the martyrs, sometimes like pure investigative reporting, sometimes like war correspondence, Lernoux’s narrative is riveting and emotionally packed. Her research is meticulous, based on first-hand interviews, newspaper and magazine accounts, church and government documents. The book covers the rise of the new dictators, the church’s response, and numerous examples of the repression that this response invited, including ones from El Salvador, Chile, Mexico, and Brazil.
It then documents the role of the U.S. in training and motivating the Latin American officer corps that has unleashed this persecution, the doctrine of the national security state, designed to protect U.S. development and regional elites, the role of U.S. multinationals, and the work of the CIA. Also examines the new ideology of “family, tradition, and property” that has been the rallying cry of oligarchs and death squads throughout the region. Lernoux also details European and U.S. funding for the repression.
The book then examines the role of the Catholic church in resisting this repression, the divisions within the church’s hierarchy and between hierarchy, lower clergy, and laity in working out a new “option for the poor,” and finally the U.S. role in supporting the church’s progressives and reactionaries in Latin America. This work is a shocking eye-opener for any North American who is concerned with U.S. government and church policy toward Latin America, and it is still an indispensable introduction to events there.
390. —. The People of God. (See 120).
Latin America has probably been the most important battle field in John Paul II’s attempts to impose his “Restoration” on world Catholicism, not only because the Latin American church is now numerically the most important element of world Catholicism, but also because it is the birthplace of both liberation theology and of the base Christian communities, both of which have taken up the call of Vatican II for the church to embrace the world and to involve the laity and its experience in the deepest processes of doctrinal and practical development of the church.
While no single model for a Latin American church exists, Lernoux demonstrates how the pope and Cardinal Ratzinger, aided by a reactionary Curia, and far-right elements within Latin American society, and quasi-fascist lay groups, have attempted to disrupt the unity of such progressive churches and bishops’ conferences as that in Brazil, while contributing to the division and ineffectuality of such churches as the Chilean and Peruvian. In Central America Lernoux shows clearly the workings of a papal double standard calling progressive churchpeople to task for political involvement in Nicaragua, for example, while aiding and abetting the political agenda of a conservative hierarchy, their support of the contras and links to the Reagan administration.
Lernoux narrates splendidly the political struggles of the Latin American bishops’ conferences against the Curia and traces clearly the political issues – if not the theological ones – of the pope’s inquisitions of leading liberation theologians Gustavo Gutiérrez and Leonardo Boff. Excellent introduction to the political and broadly ecclesiological issues involved in the fight over liberation theology.
391. Levi, Werner. From Alms to Liberation. The Catholic Church, the Theologians, Poverty and Politics. New York: Praeger, 1989.
Attempts to examine the question of the relationship between the church’s rhetoric on issues of poverty and its willingness to foster change. Examines church theology and social thought on poverty in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, including the role of Vatican II. Then surveys liberation theologians on the causes and remedies of poverty, including the issue of violent revolution, and compares them with those of nineteenth-century church thought. In Part 2 Levi examines the political consequences of this thought in the Latin American churches and the state; and he concludes with discussions of John Paul II, the Vatican and North American responses to liberation theology. Bibliography.
392. Levine, Daniel H. Religion and Politics in Latin America. The Catholic Church in Venezuela and Colombia. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981.
Religion is a vital and important factor in Latin America today; it is not a vestige of the past. These two countries provide case studies of the church’s influence and the forms that it takes. The work tends to focus on the hierarchy, however, and devotes little attention to the base Christian communities. It also links liberation theology to Marxist and socialist political aims.
393. —, ed. Churches and Politics in Latin America. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications, 1980.
This is a collection of essays centered around the following themes: background and general issues, the spectrum of religion and politics, and patterns of innovation. Contributors include Renato Poblete, S.J., Phillip Berryman, Robert Calvo, Katherine Anne Gilfeather, M. M. Thomas Bruneau and Margaret E. Crahan, among others. Issues include the impact of Puebla, the Christian left, the role of religious women, base Christian communities, and the influence of Marxism.
394. —, ed. Religion and Political Conflict in Latin America. Chapel Hill, NC and London: University of North Carolina Press, 1986.
Essays by Levine, Berryman, Thomas C. Bruneau, Mainwaring, Susan Rosales Nelson and others on religion, the poor and politics in Latin America, the rise of popular religion, the role of religion in El Salvador’s civil war and Nicaragua’s revolution, the base communities in Brazil, and the church’s role in Chile, Colombia, and Bolivia.
395. Maduro, Otto. Religion and Social Conflicts. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1982. Second ed., Robert R. Barr, trans. Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2005.
Introduction to the interactions of religious, social, and political spheres in Latin America today. Good background for the development and meaning of liberation theology.
396. Mainwaring, Scott. The Catholic Church and Politics in Brazil, 1916-1985. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1986.
A narrative and interpretive history in three parts. Part 1 traces the church from 1916 to 1964, in the era of neo-Christendom, reform and the birth of the Catholic left. Part 2 discusses the church and the military regime, from 1964 to 1973. Part 3 brings the history up to 1985, including the growth of the popular church, its politics and rise and fall. This is a detailed, well-documented study that gives full attention to new currents in religious thought, including liberation theology, with an excellent bibliography.
397. —, and Alexander Wilde, eds. The Progressive Church in Latin America. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1989.
Essays grouped around the themes of Central America, Brazil, and Peru by Margaret Crahan, Ana Maria Doimo, Catalina Romero, and Luis Pasara, among others. A good amount of discussion of liberation theology.
398. Marins, José, and team. Cry of the Church. Witness and Martyrdom in the Church of Latin America Today. Quezon City, Philippines: Claretian Publications, n.d.
Not seen.
399. Mutchler, David E. The Church as a Political Factor in Latin America, with Particular Reference to Colombia and Chile. New York: Praeger, 1971.
Seeks to examine the church’s role in affecting political and social change, with special emphasis on these two countries. Examines the church bureaucracy, church involvement with political change on various levels from prelates, to orders, to individuals; to the church’s role as a structural institution, and the detrimental effects of the church’s involvement with such efforts. The author, who looks at sociological structures from a purely secular viewpoint, concludes that the church’s role will become increasingly marginal.
400. Nuñez, Emilio A., and William D. Taylor. Crisis in Latin America. Chicago: Moody Press, 1989.
Latin American religious life and politics from an evangelical Christian point of view. Topics include the Latin American scene and background, post-conciliar Catholicism in Latin America, the situation for evangelicals, and the place of evangelical mission in the region. While hailing the changes of Vatican II that opened the ecumenical world for both Catholics and Protestants, the authors are wary of liberation theology, citing it as a “theological-ideological system,” and view base communities as a threat to evangelical efforts. The authors also look forward to what terrifies many Catholics: a split along Lutheran lines between the institutional and the “biblical” church similar to Luther’s. The book is ultimately a call for theological love of North Americans toward Latin Americans through their missions.
401. Philp, Peter. Journey With the Poor. Blackburn, VICT: Collins Dove, 1988.
This is a narrative of travels and encounters throughout Latin America with the poor and oppressed, a record of the struggles for liberation being waged by the poor themselves. Excellent first-hand experience of the broader trends usually found in political and economic analysis.
402. Pottenger, John R. The Political Theory of Liberation Theology. Toward a Reconvergence of Social Values and Social Justice. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1989.
This is a careful and scholarly appreciation of only one element of liberation theology: its political implications, if such can be extracted from the general way of doing theology. Pottenger recognizes the sides in the debate over liberation theology’s political content; but he states that its view that religion and politics are inherently intertwined is a factor of the situation that needs careful analysis, as no political scientist or philosopher has yet grappled with the precise nature of this political theory.
The book discusses the context of liberation theology in religion and politics, its theological methodology, the tensions between Marxist analysis and Christian doctrine, its assessment of Latin American economics in the region, world and in the national security state, the ethics of the theology vis à vis reform and revolution, and its overriding social theory. The book is well indexed and contains a solid bibliography.
403. Rubenstein, Richard L., ed. Spirit Matters. The Worldwide Impact of Religion in Contemporary Politics. Washington, DC: Washington Institute Press, 1987.
A collection of essays on the impact of religion on politics around the world. Includes articles by Wellington W. Nyangoni on Africa; Frank K. Flinn and Rubenstein on liberation theology and Latin America.
404. —, and John K. Roth, eds. The Politics of Latin American Liberation Theology. The Challenge to U.S. Public Policy. Washington, DC: Washington Institute Press, 1988.
A collection of essays that seeks to open North American eyes to the realities behind liberation theology, its nature, and the way in which it addresses the politics and economics of Latin America. Topics include the development of the theology, its relevance to the crisis of Western culture, its place in Western theological tradition, its views on violence, its response to underdevelopment, the base Christian communities, its relationship to Marxism, dependency theory, and Latin American revolutions.
Essays also treat liberation theology’s view of the U.S. and U.S.S.R., the U.S. bishops’ letters on war, peace and economic justice, and human rights and U.S. security.
Contributors include Senator David Durenberger, Paul Sigmund, Marc Ellis, Frederick Sontag, Roland Robertson, Michael Fleet, Humberto Belli, John Roth, Philip Berryman, Dennis McCann, John Cooper, and others. Good bibliography of books and articles.
405. Skidmore, Thomas E., and Peter H. Smith. Modern Latin America. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984.
A political and socio-economic account that traces modern structures from the colonial period and views Latin American history in terms of this neo-colonial “dependency.” Good, up-to-date bibliography.
406. Smith, Brian H. The Church and Politics in Chile. Challenges to Modern Catholicism. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982.
How can the church as a whole implement the aims of Vatican II? Marxist analysis seems a valuable tool; yet on the whole the church in Chile is hesitant to take up its prophetic role unless its own hierarchical structures are threatened. A sociological approach based on extensive field research.
407. Vaughan, Benjamin N. Y. The Expectation of the Poor. The Church and the Third World. Valley Forge, PA: Judson Press, 1972.
Surveys the problems with “development,” economic structures and faulty models, the seed for peaceful change, the end of old colonialism, and the beginnings of a neocolonial culture, the conflicts between historical culture and tradition and pressures for modernization. The author then discusses the role of education for development, the place of ideology, and the place of theology, mostly from the point of view of World Council of Churches activities. He concludes with reflections on the nature of humanity and religious mission.
