Liberation Theologies | Bibliography | North America Pt. 1
Chapter 8: The Liberation of North America, Part 1
Bibliographies
662. Bullough, Vern L., W. Dorr Legg, Barrett W. Elcano, and James Kepner, compilers. An Annotated Bibliography of Homosexuality. 2 vols. New York: Garland Publishing, 1976.
An excellent resource. Contains 12,794 items: books and articles, arranged by topic, with indexes of authors and a brief interpretive essay. Religion and ethics are found in items 5081-5575, vol. 1, pp. 331-62.
663. Dickerson, Fay, and Paul D. Petersen, eds. Liberation Theology, Black Theology, and the Third World. A Select Bibliography from the Files of the ATLA Religion Database. 4th, rev. ed. Chicago: American Theological Library Association, 1982.
A huge bibliography, mostly of the journal literature, with listings by subject and author. Unannotated.
664. Dynes, Wayne R. Homosexuality. A Research Guide. New York: Garland Publishers, 1987.
Books and articles, 4858 items with annotations, listed alphabetically by author and arranged by topic. Indexes of subject and personal names. Items on Philosophy and ethics appear on pages 314-32; items on religion on pages 321-54. Religious topics include general, biblical studies, main Christian denominations, gay churches and organizations, gay clergy, the religious backlash, Judaism, and new age spirituality.
665. Evans, James H., and G. E. Gorman, eds. Black Theology. A Critical Assessment and Annotated Bibliography. New York: Greenwood Press, 1987.
A very thorough treatment, with articles and books arranged by topic, and then alphabetically by author. It is divided into three main topics: origin and development, liberation, feminism and Marxism, and cultural and global discourse. This bibliography deals with not only African-American theology but also with African, feminist and other liberation topics.
666. Fisher, William H. Free At Last. A Bibliography of Martin Luther King, Jr. Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1977.
Works by King, on King, on his life, reviews of books on him. Unnumbered, arranged alphabetically.
667. Fodell, Beverly. Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers. A Selective Bibliography. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1974.
Not seen.
668. A Gay Bibliography. Eight Bibliographies on Lesbian and Male Homosexuals. New York: Arno Press, 1975.
Photostat-quality, typed pieces grouped together indiscriminately. No index.
669. Hackett, David G. The New Religions. An Annotated Bibliography. 3d, rev. ed. Berkeley, CA: Center for the Study of New Religious Movements, 1981.
Some useful information, arranged by topic and author, on black and native American religion, though under the sobriquet “new.”
670. Horner, Tom. Homosexuality and the Judeo-Christian Tradition. An Annotated Bibliography. ATLA Bibliography Series, no. 5. Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1981.
Books, articles, essays, pamphlets and papers, bibliographies totaling 459 items. Two appendixes of biblical references and periodicals of gay religious organizations. Indexes by subject and author.
671. Johnson, Timothy V. Malcolm X. A Comprehensive Annotated Bibliography. New York: Garland Publishing, 1986.
Works by Malcolm X, books and dissertations on him, articles and news reports from the mainstream, African-American, left-wing and African press. Also sections on FBI files, book reviews and indexes.
672. Martin Luther King, Jr. Papers Project, eds. A Guide to Research on Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Modern Black Freedom Struggle. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1989.
Not seen.
673. Martinez, Julio A. Chicano Scholars and Writers. A Bio-Bibliographical Directory. Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1979.
Includes material on Virgil P. Elizondo on pages 137-39 .
674. Pyatt, Sherman E. Martin Luther King, Jr. An Annotated Bibliography. New York: Greenwood Press, 1986.
Books and articles, 1277 items arranged alphabetically by author and subdivided into the following subject categories: King’s published works, biographical materials, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, marches and demonstrations, major awards, FBI and government operations against him, his philosophy, assassination, commemorations, and eulogies. Provides name, subject and title indexes.
675. Raynham, Warner R. Bibliographies Relating Various Areas of Theological Study to the Black Experience in America. Boston: Boston Theological Institute, 1973.
Not seen.
676. Richardson, Marilyn. Black Women and Religion. A Bibliography. Boston: G.K. Hall, 1980.
Entries cover black American women’s religious life in literature, music, art, audio-visual and reference materials, and in autobiography and biography.
677. Tucson Ecumenical Council. Sanctuary Bibliography. Tucson, AZ: TEC, 1982; rev. ed. 1985
Not seen.
Liberation Theology for the Rich?
678. Anderson, Gerald H., and Thomas F. Stransky, eds. Liberation Theologies in North America and Europe. Mission Trends 4. New York: Paulist Press, 1979.
Section 2 covers black theology with work by Wilmore, Cone, the black theology Project, Andrew Young, and Pannell, among others. Part 3 samples feminist theology, with essays by Radford Ruether, Schüssler Fiorenza, Wahlberg, Mollenkott, and Russell. Part 4 covers Asian American theology, Part 5 native American with work by Vine Deloria, and Part 6 Hispanic American theology with essays by Cesar Chavez and Leo Nieto. See also 156.
679. Armerding, Carl E., ed. Evangelicals and Liberation. Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1977.
A collection of essays by K. Hamilton, S. C. A. Knapp, Armerding, H. M. Conn, and C. H. Pinnock on Gutiérrez, the contributions – negative and positive – of Latin American liberation theology, and a liberation theology for North Americans.
680. Bayer, Charles H. A Guide to Liberation Theology for Middle-Class Congregations. St. Louis, MO: CBP Press, 1986.
The author points to the fact that if liberation theology is to be valid for the whole church, it must also address the situation of the affluent and middle class of the North and the “captivities” that they suffer. This book is thus intended as an introduction for pastors in order that they may then introduce the problems and questions posed by liberation theology for their own congregations. Bayer attempts to address these issues through the normal functions of the parish: worship, preaching, counseling, liturgy, biblical study, education and social welfare, political involvement and service, stewardship, and evangelism.
He begins by highlighting the captivity of both prisoner and goaler, the contributions of liberation theology and the base communities, the practical work of evangelization, the emptiness of middle-class life, the problem of Marxism and a new biblical hermeneutic, Christian involvement in political action, the problem of violence, liberation of blacks and women, the particular forms of captivity of First-World citizens, and the value of passion as a means of liberation from our materialism, boredom and “prophylactic life.” The book concludes with a discussion of liberation theology in its apocalyptic dimension.
681. Brackley, Dean, S.J. People Power. Together We Can Change Things. New York: Paulist Press, 1989.
Not seen.
682. Brown, Delwin. To Set at Liberty. Christian Faith and Human Freedom. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1981.
This book is addressed to the white middle class of North America and attempts to apply the lessons of Latin American liberation theology for it. It discusses freedom as a contemporary issue, as a historical concept, and in the thought of Sartre, Marx and Whitehead. It then goes on to discuss some theological themes of freedom from the viewpoint of liberation theology: God, sin, Christ, and salvation.
683. Brown, Robert McAfee. Spirituality and Liberation. Overcoming the Great Fallacy. Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1988.
Not seen.
684. —. Theology in a New Key. Responding to Liberation Themes. Philadelphia, PA: Westminster Press, 1978.
This is an attempt to respond as a North American to the themes of liberation theology, and to ways that make that theology meaningful to North Americans and their own oppressions and alienations.
After reviewing his themes Brown surveys Catholic social teaching of the last century, the progress of the World Council of Churches, and the impact of Latin American developments from Medellin on. He then briefly outlines the major new elements of liberation theology and examines the principle of “hermeneutic suspicion” with which liberation theologians approach the scriptures. He then reviews the various criticisms of this theology.
Brown next embarks on a study of some elements for a North American theology of liberation and presents some models for a church of the future, including faithful remnant and “Abrahamic minority.” Contains a brief annotated bibliography.
685. —. Unexpected News. Reading the Bible with Third World Eyes. Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1984.
Interprets key biblical texts from the viewpoint of Third-World peoples and theologies in order to sensitize North Americans to forms of oppression that their own unconscious assumptions may make them party to. Texts include selections from Exodus, 2 Samuel, Jeremiah, Daniel, Matthew and Luke. Contains a very brief, annotated bibliography.
686. Carmody, John. Theology for the 1980s. Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1980.
Examines the elements that include a theology of ecology and process theology, liberation theology from Latin America, a new theology of personhood, new understandings of the nature of God as “boundary” and a return of Christology to the historical Jesus as a model for contemporary life.
687. Chopp, Rebecca S. The Praxis of Suffering. An Interpretation of Liberation and Political Theologies. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1986.
Examines the major figures of both theologies, including Gutiérrez, Bonino, Metz, and Moltmann to show the similarities and cultural differences in the theologies while discussing their formal questions.
688. Costa, Ruy O., and Lorine Getz, eds. In Solidarity. Liberation Theologies in Dialogue. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1990.
Theologians from both North and South America discuss the various forms of liberation theology to which their situations have given rise. Original essays by Costa, Getz, Cone, Ruether, Ellis, Shaull, Cox, Schüssler Fiorenza, and Richard, among others.
689. Damico, Linda H. The Anarchist Dimension of Liberation Theology. New York: Peter Lang, 1987.
Goes beyond the links between liberation theology and Marxism to the intellectual roots in anarchy, along a path laid out by José Porforio Miranda. Liberation theology’s “emphasis on freedom, justice, and love, its denunciation of political and economic structures of domination, its emphasis on action, and its vision of a future free from all servitudes reveal an indebtedness to anarchism.”
690. Donders, Joseph G. Risen Life. Healing a Broken World. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1990.
Donders applies the lessons of inculturation and liberation theology to a North American audience whose religion is “bourgeois,” private, and inner. He offers instead the insights of Luke the physician who seeks to bring Jesus’ message of healing and community to an atomized First World, to reunite the life of the spirit with that of society in an integral spirituality that speaks of integral liberation for the individual, the church, and society.
691. Dorr, Donal. Integral Spirituality. Resources for Community, Peace, Justice, and the Earth. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1990.
The influence of Latin American liberation theology is felt in its translation for a North American mainstream audience, for whom oppression and marginalization are more often read about than felt or lived. Dorr therefore presents a synthesis of new theological directions: both the integration of inner spirituality and moral integrity with the concerns for the poor and oppressed and the fate of creation itself. This new integralism is the meaning of peace, justice, and liberation.
692. —. Spirituality and Justice. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1985.
Bridges the gap between inner piety and social activism by demonstrating that they must be integrated into a single view of God, the world, and salvation.
693. Dorrien, Gary J. Reconstructing the Common Good. Theology and Social Order. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1990.
The kingdom of God that liberation theologians speak of is a social order here on earth. What is the nature of that order if it is to be neither capitalist nor communist? An emerging movement, called Christian socialism by its analysts, seems to be the direction of the emerging political and economic praxis. Dorrien here examines the thought of both Latin American liberation theologians, such as Gutiérrez and Míguez-Bonino, along with theologians from the First World, including Tillich, Moltmann, and Ruether. The solutions to specific conditions embedded in this new political theory are not totally conditioned by the socio-economic or cultural structures of a particular time and place but emerge from a long-standing Christian tradition of social teaching and practice.
694. Evans, Alice F., Robert A. Evans, and William Bean Kennedy. Pedagogies for the Nonpoor. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1987.
Attempts to take the lessons of liberation theology and the methodologies of Paulo Freire and apply them to a North American, comfortable, and educated audience. In keeping with the essential liberation theme that theology must spring from the roots of actual practice and reality, the authors address such issues as world hunger, economic dislocations caused by capital flight and multinational relocations, and parenting for peace and justice.
695. Ferm, Deane W. Contemporary American Theologies. A Critical Survey. New York: Seabury Press, 1981.
This includes a survey of Protestant theology from 1900 to 1960; the new secular thought of the 1960s, black theology, South American liberation theology, feminist theology, evangelical, and Roman Catholic trends; and comments on the future of American theology. Examines the development, major tenets and contributions, and the criticisms of these theologies.
696. —. Contemporary American Theologies II. A Book of Readings. New York: Seabury Press, 1982.
This is a book of readings from secular, black, liberation, feminist, Evangelical, and Roman Catholic theologies.
697. Furfey, Paul Hanly. Love and the Urban Ghetto. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1978.
This is a reflection on liberation theology born out of Furfey’s own experience of discrimination and marginalization growing up Irish in WASP Boston at the turn of the century. It is also the result of his experience of the Catholic Worker, of meeting Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin, of establishing similar houses in Washington, DC, and then of seeing the impact of liberation theology first-hand in Latin America in the 1970s.
Topics include the paramount importance of Christian love over and above our current bourgeois theology and morality; the structures of social sin; the sin of poverty in death, despair, and marginalization; the contributions of Catholic liberalism and radicalism in North America; and the revolutionary situation in Latin America. Furfey concludes with remarks on the feasibility of forging a theology of liberation that might create a society far more along the lines of the moderate socialisms of Europe than either capitalist or communist paradises.
698. González, Justo L., and Catherine González. In Accord. Let Us Worship. New York: Friendship Press, 1981.
A new liturgy that seeks to include the rituals of all religious traditions and peoples from the viewpoint of liberation theology.
699. —, ed. Proclaiming the Acceptable Year. Valley Forge, PA: Judson Press, 1982.
A collection of sermons by Míguez Bonino, Cardinal Arns, Choang-Seng Song, Allan Boesak, Winston Lawson, Virgil Elizondo, Roy Sano, James Cone, Joan M. Martin, Letty Russell, and Robert McAfee Brown on liberation themes.
700. —, and Catherine Gunsalus González. Liberation Preaching. The Pulpit and the Oppressed. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1980.
Aimed at the pastoral instruction of a North American clergy. Seeks first to define what liberation theology really is, then proceeds to problems of interpreting scripture according to liberation precepts. Also discusses traditional aids in biblical interpretation, the development of a liberation hermeneutic among white male preachers that will lead them to ask the right questions from scripture. Final chapters deal with the dynamics of liberation preaching and the process of liberation itself.
701. Green, Susan. Bread and Puppet. Stories of Struggle and Faith from Central America. Burlington, VT: Green Valley Film & Art, 1985.
Whether performing on the streets of Brooklyn, NY or in the valleys of rural Vermont, the Bread and Puppet Theater has long combined the political and the religious, the nonviolent with the commitment to liberation in ways that make them a unique North American theological force. Whether portraying the struggle of Oscar Romero and the people of Central America or creating new dramas about greed, exploitation and power, and the faith that the earth itself will protect its own creatures, Bread and Puppet has created a remarkable series of symbols, mythological depictions, and liturgies that are accessible to North Americans of every class, race, and religion. This is an excellent collection of their work.
702. Gundry, Stanley N., and Alan F. Johnson, eds. Tensions in Contemporary Theology. 2d ed. Grand Rapids, MI: W.B. Eerdmans, 1983.
Essays by Bernard Ramm, Vernon Grounds, Harold B. Kuhn, Harvie M. Conn and Harold O. J. Brown on European theology, the theology of hope, process theology, recent Catholic forms, and liberation theology.
703. Haight, Roger, S.J. An Alternative Vision. An Interpretation of Liberation Theology. New York: Paulist Press, 1985.
This book is an attempt, by a sympathetic observer, to translate and assimilate the insights of Latin American liberation theology for a North American audience. It also seeks to present a unified picture of this theology in all its features, from a strictly theological point of view, without reference to the world of praxis in politics, economics, or history.
Topics include the origins and nature of liberation theology, its methodology, its discussion of faith; the image of God, its Christology and soteriology, the role of the spirit, sin, grace, salvation and spirituality; the principles of liberation theology for the church and its structures; the role and nature of the sacraments; ministry, spirituality. The book concludes with a discussion, and reprint of, the Instruction on Certain Aspects of the ‘Theology of Liberation.’ (see 123-124).
704. Haughey, John C., S.J., ed. The Faith That Does Justice. Examining the Christian Sources of Social Change. New York: Paulist Press, 1977.
A collection of essays in honor of then Jesuit General Pedro Arrupe. Contributors include Avery Dulles, William Dych, John R. Donahue, William J. Walsh and John P. Langan, Ricard Roach, David Hollenbach and Haughey. David Hollenbach’s “A Prophetic Church and the Catholic Sacramental Imagination” reviews various forms of justice theology, including Political and liberation theologies.
705. Herzog, Frederick. God-Walk. Liberation Shaping Dogmatics. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1988.
When one walks with Jesus in his healing and liberating work, one abandons liberalism – simply talking about an abstract God whom many in North America assume dead – to God-walk, the practical experience of finding God alive through work and life for justice in the world. Herzog finds his first inspiration in the civil-rights and black theology movements, for it was here that North Americans were first reawakened to the realities of sin and oppression and to the chance of liberation.
Herzog’s book is basically a theology primer: reexamining the basic categories of religious doctrine – scripture, authority, creed, Christology, fall and salvation, justification and grace, the sacraments, Christian anthropology and ecclesiology – all from a liberationist experience of struggle. As with all liberation theology, the sacramental and spiritual lives are indistinguishable from the life of action in the world: the human person and role in creation are unified; salvation comes to the individual and to creation in the very same process.
706. —. Justice Church. The New Function of the Church in North American Christianity. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1980.
This is an attempt to forge a new theology for North Americans without a “hermeneutics of suspicion,” and instead to employ a “hermeneutics of volition,” that focuses on God’s will in attempts to free the bourgeois church from its obsession on control. Topics discussed include the Gospel as a story of praxis, the problem of power in the church, the role of Jesus in teaching vulnerability, especially in the age after Auschwitz, the Bible and Marxism, North American applications of a liberation theology, the call to justice for our churches, and the necessary shift from liberal to liberation theology.
707. —. Liberation Theology. Liberation in the Light of the Fourth Gospel. New York: Seabury Press, 1972.
See 35.
708. Hurley, Neil P. The Reel Revolution. A Film Primer on Liberation. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1978.
Hurley’s approach is especially appropriate for a North American theology of liberation, since he treats the heart of the kinetic, high-tech mythology of American life that is the essence of the movies.
Themes for the films examined here fall into the following: peaceful liberation, the charismatic liberator, degrees of consciousness raising, violence and liberation, the anatomy of exploitation, the liberation philosophy of Chaplin, Latin American cinema and human liberation, liberation and the future, and suggestions for film studies on liberation themes.
709. Imboden, Roberta. From the Cross to the Kingdom. Sartrean Dialectics and Liberation Theology. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1987.
This Canadian theologian turns to sociology for the grounding of a structuralist, “materialist” foundation of faith narrative in the same way that Sartre did for existentialism’s individualism. She seeks to illumine the themes of personal freedom, commitment, and fidelity as bases for changing the social order through a rejection of Marxist categories and by using Sartre’s own concepts of fused group, structures of scarcity, and totalization as a means of interpreting the Gospel narratives of Jesus and the apostles, the collapse of their messianic hopes in the cross, and the new message of the resurrection and mission.
Imboden reminds us that the cross and the kingdom are the two extremes of the Christian message, and both form the basis of a radical critique of twentieth-century society in both its realities of oppression, suffering, and marginalization and its ideal dreams. Much of her inspiration comes from Latin America’s base communities and liberation theology. Imboden’s work is an attempt to create a First World response. It seeks to contribute to a meaningful praxis for her time and society.
710. Kavanaugh, John Francis. Following Christ in a Consumer Society. The Spirituality of Cultural Resistance. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1981.
Liberation for North Americans must come in the form of liberation first from our commercial values that negate both community and the individual through materialist consumerism. This is an attempt to apply the Gospel message of the beatitudes with the messages of liberation and solidarity.
711. King, Paul G., Kent Maynard, and David O. Woodyard. Risking Liberation. Middle Class Powerlessness and Social Heroism. Atlanta, GA: John Knox, 1988.
This is an attempt to do liberation theology for middle-class Americans that must first attempt to overcome American individualism and their unwillingness to associate themselves with working-class and poor concerns. The book first identifies the American middle class, then examines its structural characteristics, its real powerlessness in the face of corporate wealth, and the inevitability of ideology arising from such relationships. The two final chapters attempt to show how the insights of liberation theology can be applied to the U.S. and the emergence of a new church.
712. King, Paul G., and David O. Woodyard. The Journey Toward Freedom. Economic Structures and Theological Perspectives. Rutherford, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1982.
This book is a collaboration between an economist and a theologian. It is an attempt to both understand liberation theology in its Latin American socio-economic and spiritual contexts and to import a form of liberation theology for a North American audience. Sharing the insights of each scholar, this book also hopes to give the practical edge to the praxis of creating an alternative world out of the vision of theological wisdom and economic knowledge.
The authors discuss a broadening of the liberation agenda; U.S. economic and social institutions; religion in America, including our new “civil religion;” the American economic miracle; the need to bring enough to all; the message of the Gospels; community, freedom, and the reality of the suffering “other;” the need to reorder economic priorities and structures; and some tentative suggestions for a route there.
713. Krass, Alfred C. Evangelizing Neopagan North America. The Word That Frees. Scottsdale, PA: Herald Press, 1982.
This is both an evangelically radical and a contextual examination of the process of evangelization in a society that idolizes power and itself in a schizophrenic and narcissistic way. Mirrors many of the themes of liberation theology.
714. Lamb, Matthew L. Solidarity with Victims. Toward a Theology of Social Transformation. New York: Crossroad/Continuum, 1982.
Real theology must be take up the preferential option for the poor and the oppressed that informs social and political action to transform their condition.
715. Lernoux, Penny. People of God. (See 120).
If liberation theology centers on the self-empowerment of the people through a critical reflection on their own practical experience in the world and how that experience reveals the working of God in creation, then the experience of the North American people, its search for pluralism and democracy in church structures, and its attempt to implement the teachings of Vatican II are American forms of liberation theology.
Lernoux focuses on several aspects of the papal attempt to squelch many of the most important elements of American Catholicism in the post-Vatican II era: greater involvement and voice for the laity, the role of women in the church and its leadership, the function of the clergy for service and not rule, a critical role of the laity’s experience in sexual teachings, the strength and unity of the U.S. bishops’ conference when teaching on peace and justice as the true province of the church, and the involvement of local individuals and churches in such struggles as the Sanctuary Movement where the links between North and Latin American liberation are the most clear.
716. Levi, Werner. The Catholic Church, the Theologians, Poverty, and Politics. New York: Praeger, 1989.
A solid introduction and survey. In reviewing this book in the Catholic Historical Review (76, 2, April 1990, pp. 323-24) James V. Schall, S.J., a contributor to right-wing critiques of liberation theology (see 820), exults in what can only be characterized as an unseemly manner at the collapse of “Marxism,” and feels that his work has therefore been done. His trashing is ample evidence that conservative circles in North America continue to be haunted by any discussion of liberation theology and are all too willing to revive the red-baiting of the McCarthy era against such examples of serious scholarship that seek to explain and understand.
717. Macquarrie, John. The Faith of the People of God. A Lay Theology. New York: Charles Scribner’s, 1973.
This is an attempt at a theology that matches the reality of the (then) growing role of the laity within the church. It discusses the people of God as the primary theological datum, and theology as the focus of a religious view that encompasses all of life. This “lay theology” is not a simplified, or anti-clerical one; it does not grow from a professional theological-clerical class but sees the laity as a full equal in the work of the church and the spirit. The laity is also a people, not a faceless mob or ecclesiastical underclass. Macquarrie’s theology is thus fully one of liberation in its insistence on the primacy of praxis and the role of the people of God. He also develops a Christology, theology of sacraments, ministry and mission, prayer, eschatology, and ecclesiology in keeping with this outlook.
718. Mahan, Brian, and L. Dale Richesin, eds. The Challenge of Liberation Theology. A First-Wold Response. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1981.
A collection of essays that includes Dorothee Sölle, Lee Cormie, James H. Cone, James W. Fowler, Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, Langdon Gilkey, and Schubert M. Ogden.
719. McFadden, Thomas M., ed. Liberation, Revolution, and Freedom. Theological Perspective. College Theology Society. New York: Seabury Press, 1975.
Essays by Francis P. Fiorenza, Mary I. Buckley, Elizabeth Bellefontaine, James Cone, T. Richard Shaull, Letty M. Russell, Carl Starkloff, Silvio E. Fittipaldi, Stephen Casey, Leonard Biallas, James Gaffney, Francis J. Reilly and William J. Sullivan on the historical roots and meanings of liberation in the Judeo-Christian tradition, contemporary liberation theologies, including black, feminist, and native American; the question of violence; and criticisms of liberation theology.
720. Merton, Thomas. “Faith and Violence,” in The Nonviolent Alternative. Revised edition of Thomas Merton on Peace. Gordon Zahn, ed. New York: Farrar, Strauss Giroux, 1980, pp. 185-207.
This is a troubled work reflecting Merton’s grappling with nonviolence in the late 1960s and his movement toward a “theology of resistance.” The modern state is without any justice; it is, in fact, St. Augustine’s great band of robbers. Society condemns the isolated, individual violence of criminals while it participates fully in corporate and technological violence in war, and in the violence of poverty. True peace cannot be order alone.
Was Camilo Torres, the Colombian priest turned guerilla, right in his use of force? Is there a valid theology of revolution? Is force to be used if Christianity fails? Merton remains troubled by these questions and calls for the development of a theology of resistance, an activist nonviolence that seeks to bring justice and real peace, while avoiding the moral aggression of self-righteousness.
Merton then turns to contemporary events and declares the Vietnam War an overwhelming atrocity tied to America’s suicidal drive to self-destruction. He condemns the draft law as unjust and illegal, as the forced acting out by the young of the manias of their political leaders. In the Civil Rights movement Merton believes that nonviolence may be dead and is not effective. He upbraids white liberals and calls on them simply to act as witnesses, not to attempt to lead the movement. He concludes by praising the “death of God” theology for freeing religion from the restraints of institutionalism and ambiguity. This essay looks forward to several elements of a North American liberation theology.
721. Migliore, Daniel L. Called to Freedom. Liberation Theology and the Future of Christian Doctrine. Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1980.
Examines both the importance and limitations of interpreting the Gospels as the message of freedom. Liberation theology, in the Third World, among people of color and women, is not a fad but a necessary task for the church, as is the reordering of the church’s mission toward freedom. Such a realignment is the work of all Christians, not just the clergy. Finally, however, all theologies are inadequate when measured against Christian love and acts of solidarity. Discusses scripture as the liberating word, Jesus as a new type of liberator, the theology of the Trinity in human liberation, a spirituality of liberation, and Christian faith as liberation from the bondage of death.
722. Min, Anselm Kyongsuk. Dialectic of Salvation. Issues in Theology of Liberation. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1989.
Min, a philosopher at Belmont Abbey College in North Carolina, offers a thorough examination of the theology of liberation from a Hegelian dialectical point of view and endorses it strongly as a truly contemporary and original form. Thus, his work is less on its theological and ecclesiological nature than on liberation theology as an intellectual system. In this his analysis is ironically more free from polemic and more focused on its central concerns.
Topics include an examination of liberation theology, its roots in philosophy and praxis, and criticisms from such thinkers as Schubert Ogden, Dennis McCann and Charles R. Strain, and from John Paul II and Cardinal Ratzinger. The book also examines the theology’s relationship to praxis and hermeneutics, and the dialectic of salvation and liberation that establishes one of the central tensions in the movement. The book concludes with a much-needed examination of the Vatican’s own “theology of liberation” that focuses on its theology of sin and salvation, its anthropology, its notions of personal and social sin, and notions of liberation. Good bibliography.
723. Neal, Marie Augusta. A Socio-Theology of Letting Go. The Role of a First World Church Facing Third World Peoples. New York: Paulist Press, 1977.
This is an attempt to create a theology of the rich: a theology of liberation that will allow us (relatively) wealthy North Americans to live in solidarity with the peoples of the Third World and that will free us from the oppressions of our own obsessions with power and materialism. This is the process that Neal sums up in the phrase “letting go,” and abandoning our own brand of what Robert Bellah termed “civil religion”: that legitimization and elevation of our own forms of secular life into a national religion, with its own idols and altars.
In response Neal proposes a new religion of prophesy that will decry our oppressions and our false gods, including our belief that we have a right to 70% of the world’s wealth. Neal’s final call is for a “theology of relinquishment” that will bring salvation to both rich and poor.
724. Nelson-Pallmeyer, James. The Politics of Compassion. A Biblical Perspective on World Hunger, the Arms Race, and U.S. Policy in Central America. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1986.
The author’s perspective grows from the insights he has gathered in the Third World, through the base Christian communities of Central America and their Bible study classes. He attempts here to apply these insights to a wealthy, powerful North American audience. “Christians in North America, particularly those who are affluent or comfortable,” he notes, “will understand the message of Jesus only if we let the poor be our teachers.... We can seriously hope for a world with more justice and less hunger only if we understand history, economics and theology from the vantage point of the poor.”
With this as the basis, the author then examines this “call to compassion,” the process of liberating theology from its colonial outlook in Latin America, the impact of North American economic interests on the poor in Central America, the biblical basis for stopping the arms race and turning resources toward the cure of hunger and deprivation; and finally avenues for action and hope. The book concludes with a listing of resources: organizations and periodicals that can help.
725. Quigley, Thomas E., ed. Freedom and Unfreedom in the Americas. Toward a Theology of Liberation. New York: U.S. Catholic Conference, 1971.
Articles by Goulet, Harvey Cox, Joseph Green, Louis Colonnese, Helen Jaworski, Ruether, James Douglass and others on the conflict between development and liberation, dependence and domination, A Call to Action, powerlessness in contemporary society, Latin American liberation theology, liberation as salvation from sin and oppression, activism and contemplation. Includes an essay on a theology of liberation.
726. Radical Religion Collective, eds. The Bible and Liberation: A Radical Religion Reader. Berkeley, CA: Community for Religious Research and Education, 1976.
Not seen.
727. Ramsay, William M. Four Modern Prophets. Walter Rauschenbusch, Martin Luther King Jr., Gustavo Gutiérrez, Rosemary Radford Ruether. Atlanta, GA: John Knox Press, 1986.
These include Walter Rauschenbusch and his call for an activist “social Gospel,” Martin Luther King, Jr. and his work for justice and liberation; Gustavo Gutiérrez and his theology of liberation, and Rosemary Radford Ruether and her feminist theology. Examines their lives, religious foundations, salient features of their work and thought. Good sketches.
728. Raphael, Pierre. Inside Rikers Island. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1990.
Rikers is the maximum security prison on an island in the middle of New York City. The author, a former French worker-priest, builds a new “prison theology” from the experience of the inmates as he attempts to build a Christian community there based on the Gospels. This is a clear example of a liberation theology that grows out of the North American experience.
729. Rodes, Robert E. Law and Liberation. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1986.
Deeply indebted to Gustavo Gutiérrez and the theology of liberation, Rodes here attempts to apply liberation theology’s goals to the North American legal framework. Topics include poverty, trivialization (i.e., the process in North American life in which consumerism and materialism seem to overtake all human values and push them toward the mundane), powerlessness, rootlessness, sex, and violence,
This is a fascinating attempt to create a North American liberation theology, but one that is of its essence North American: it is practical, legal, and concerned with changing the ways in which the wheels of our society turn.
730. Ruether, Rosemary Radford. Liberation Theology. Human Hope Confronts Christian History and American Power. New York: Paulist Press, 1972.
A collection of essays published in the early 70s on such themes as the origins of liberation theology, celibacy and eschatology, Judaism, Christianity and anti-Semitism, the failure of women’s liberation within the church, feminist and ecofeminism, black theology; building a community of liberation; and the limits of a white dominant theology of the left without the insights of the Third World.
731. —. The Radical Kingdom. New York: Harper & Row, 1970.
A survey of the theology of revolution. Traces its development from the Puritan Revolution, through the Enlightenment, nineteenth-century utopianism, Christian socialism, and Marxism. In the modern world Ruether discusses crisis theology; secular, death of God, post-Christendom theologies; the theology of hope; and Christian-Marxist dialog. She concludes with the U.S. scene in the 1960s, and the implications for an internalized view of revolution that changes “minds instead” and focuses efforts and hopes on ultimate salvation.
732. Runyon, Theodore, ed. Sanctification and Liberation. Liberation Theologies in Light of the Wesleyan Tradition. Oxford Institute on Sanctification and Liberation. Nashville, TN: Abingdon, 1981.
Essays by Runyon, Míguez Bonino, John Kent, Nancy Hardesty, James H. Cone and others on the liberation themes in Wesleyan tradition.
733. Samuel, Vinay, and Chris Sugden, eds. Sharing Jesus in the Two Thirds World. Evangelical Christologies from the Contexts of Poverty, Powerlessness and Religious Pluralism. Grand Rapids, MI: W.B. Eerdmans, 1983.
Not seen.
734. Sano, Roy I. You Can Be Set Free. Nashville, TN: Graded Press, 1977.
This is a pamphlet designed as an introduction to the themes of a liberation theology for comfortable North Americans, using biblical stories, analysis of American middle-class life; an exposition of the U.S. as a world empire, problems of racism and sexism and the prison that we have made of our own comfort and protection.
735. Shaull, Millard Richard. Heralds of a New Reformation. The Poor of South and North America. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1984.
A liberation theology for the North American based on Schaull’s work among the poor and marginalized of the continent.
736. Sider, Ronald J. Rich Christians in An Age of Hunger. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1977.
This is an attempt at a practical, ethical Christian way of life to relieve the mass oppression and suffering of the world’s poor. Discusses the vast inequalities of wealth between the rich North, especially North Americans, and the world’s poor; a biblical perspective on poverty and God’s identification with the poor; economic relations of distribution and equality among the Jewish people of the Hebrew scriptures; the biblical approach to structural evils and economic relationships.
Part 3 then examines some practical steps to put Judeo-Christian values into practice. These include a graduated tithe, a new life style of conservation, communal living, anti-consumerism, the house church and the structural changes that these can bring about. This is a practical liberation theology for North Americans that is even more relevant to the world of the 1990s.
737. Snyder, Howard A. Liberating the Church. The Ecology of Church and Kingdom. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1983.
A liberation theology for the North American church. The author focuses on the dichotomy between church as institution that perpetuates its own structures and the church as the agency of the kingdom – the sacrament of the world – transforming and bringing the world to the justice God’s creation intended for it.
Themes include new models for the church as the instrument of justice; liberation and the kingdom; a new ecclesiology of service; the church as sacrament, community, servant and witness; a church that serves the kingdom in ministry, in liberating its theology, as a new covenant with the creator and as the agent for a new form of life that reflects the Christian values of the kingdom. Final sections deal with the ministerial role of the laity, women, the poor, and pastors as servants.
738. Sölle, Dorothee. Beyond Mere Dialogue. On Being Christian and Socialist. Detroit, MI: American Catholics Toward Socialism, 1977.
This booklet takes up three themes: sin and alienation, the cross and class struggle, and resurrection and liberation. Much of her inspiration for this synthesis comes from Latin American theologians, including Segundo and Cardenal, much from Mother Jones. This is a theology of economic life that rejects a capitalistic focus on individual gain in favor of community and wholeness, and thus seeks a North American version of liberation theology.
739. Tabb, William K., ed. Churches in Struggle. Liberation Theologies and Social Change in North America. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1986.
This collection of essays is grouped around certain basic themes: theologies of liberation (including the themes of option for the poor, class struggle, black theology, Jewish liberation theology), reclaiming the Christian message in the North American churches, Marxism and religion, theology rooted in the community, and political activism and the mission of the church. Authors include Robert McAfee Brown, Rosemary Radford Ruether, James Cone, Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, Marc H. Ellis, Beverly W. Harrison, Gregory Baum, Norman Gottwald, Phillip Berryman, Cornel West, Donald W. Dayton, Gayraud S. Wilmore, Sheila Collins, and Richard W. Gillett. An excellent collection.
740. Taylor, Mark Kline. Remembering Esperanza. A Cultural-Political Theology for North American Praxis. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1990.
Combines the author’s own experiences as a youth in Guatemala with his reflections on how to apply the insights of liberation theology to a North American audience. The central focus of the oppression visited by, and on, North Americans is their spiritual and intellectual habit of abstraction, which allows both liberal optimism and conservative indifference to the sufferings of both their fellow citizens and the rest of the world. Here Taylor focuses on the particular and the singular to outline a path for our own liberation.
741. Theology in the Americas. New York: Theology in the Americas.
742. Vol. 1. Towards a North American Theology of Liberation. 1978.
Attempts to forge a new theology that grows out of North America’s different social, ethnic, racial, economic and sexual realities, that incorporates North American religious traditions, and exemplifies a communal or collective process. Elements examined include truth and praxis, faith, and ideology. The document also hopes to confront the dominant theological mainstream with new possibilities.
743. Vol. 2. A First World Response to a Third World Challenge. 1978.
Includes the Dar es Salaam statement of Third World theologians: their challenge to the First World; and the response from the congregation of the church in Wheaton, Illinois, on the peculiar nature of Christianity in the United States, its strengths and weaknesses, especially concerning the plight of the poor and the poor of the world. This is, at root, a First-World response, on the grass-roots level, to emerging Third-World theologies.
Other volumes include:
744. 3. Theology and the Politics of Appalachian Women.
745. 4. Black Theology Perspectives. Two Essays.
746. 5. Latin America and the Puebla Conference.
747. 6. The Workplace. New York Garment District.
748. 7. Puebla 1979.
749. 8. The Familial Economy of God.
750. 9. In Defense of Native Lands. The Mohawk Nation at War.
751. —. Is Liberation Theology for North Americans? The Response of First World Churches to Third World Theologies. 1978.
A collection of papers. Participants include Sergio Torres, Cone, Vine Deloria, Beverly Harrison, Gutiérrez, McAfee Brown, Ruether, Joe Holland, William Tabb, Robert Handy, Lee Cormie, Kathleen Schultz, Marie Augusta Neal, Edward J. Farrell, M. Douglas Meeks, and Jim Wallis. Themes include the challenges of Latin American, black, native American, Feminist theologies; analyses by sex, class and race, the legacy of the 1960s; and challenges to the U.S. economy; the Western theological tradition; and new alternatives for the church, including prophesy, the role of the poor, and the role of theology amid affluence.
752. Thistlethwaite, Susan Brooks, and Mary Potter Engel, eds. Lift Every Voice. Constructing Christian Theology from the Underside. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1990.
A sourcebook documenting the varieties of liberation theologies around the world
753. Unger, Linda, and Kathleen Schultz. Seeds of a Peoples Church. Challenge and Promise from the Underside. New York: Circus, 1981.
Articles by Gutiérrez, Arroyo, Ruben Zamora, Cora Ferro, Robert Lopez, Cornel West, Margot Power and others on liberation themes, including the emergence of the poor in history, solidarity with the peoples of South Africa and Central America, work and the human role in God’s creation, and building a people’s church in North America.
754. U.S. Catholic Conference. Statement on Central America. Washington, DC: USCC, 1982.
The bishops affirm the legacy of Vatican II, Medellin, Puebla, and the theology of liberation. They mourn the martyrdoms of Archbishop Oscar Romero and the four American churchwomen in El Salvador (See 642–647) and confirm the special tie of U.S. Catholics to their brothers and sisters in Central America. The bishops refute U.S. government contentions about communist infiltration in the region and declare that the church there is neither naive nor complacent. The basic threat is from hunger, poverty, and political tyranny.
