This is a presentation I made at the "Call to Action" congress in Milwaukee last November. My main point is that Liberation Theology is far from dead and in fact is moving into some very interesting areas lately.
The title of the workshop, “Recent Trends in Liberation Theology” is vast. I will speak mainly of some trends emanating from the Latin American Theological Commission of the Ecumenical Association of Third World Theologians (EATWOT) with whom I have most contact. I realize that, in doing so I am cutting a narrow slice of all that is going on: EATWOT has also an active Women’s Commission. It is organized internationally to include Africa, Asia and also minorities in the USA. Moreover EATWOT is not the only association of Liberation Theologians.
There is also the important work of Amerindia, a group that has contributed enormously to shaping the thinking of the Latin American Catholic Church. I repeat that I will speak only of two threads in one commission of this ecumenical association. Nevertheless those two threads already provide more than enough material for the time we have together.
I want, in particular to speak about the entry into the debates among Liberation Theology on religious pluralism and on ecotheology as well as, in relation to those two themes, the understanding of indigenous and Afro-American religions as well as women. I will be drawing heavily on an article written in preparation for the World Theological Forum at Belem in January, 2009 entitled “Los gemidos de la creacion y la Teologia de la Liberacion: Desafios de la onda ecologica a la actual Teologia de la Liberacion.”
Something about me: I am, at this point, not an academic and my academic “career” was quite limited. I have taught courses here and there but I prefer to keep my feet firmly planted in the muddy swamp of social struggles. And in the context of Liberation Theology that is clearly an advantage: my thinking is shaped by lived experience and often by very specific incidents.
We hardly need to be reminded of the origins of Liberation Theology. It arose as an attempt to reflect on the experience of the poor of the Latin American continent in their struggle for liberation from poverty and repression. It drew on a Marxist social analysis in order to understand that the situation in Latin America was not one of underdevelopment but of oppression and that the response to that situation would not lie in the area of development but of liberation. Thus, Liberation Theology undertook to describe, in theological terms, the path that the Latin American people were taking toward their liberation. Many supported Marxist revolutionary movements.
In the beginning there was, among Latin American Liberation theologians a strong bias against popular religion as practiced by the poor. Drawing on principles from Marxism they initially saw popular religion as practiced by the poor as an opium that was putting the people to sleep. Nevertheless they saw ways of developing the Biblical sources, the story of Exodus, in particular as a paradigm for understanding the situation in Latin America. They tried to turn the people against their traditional views to a new and liberating view of religion. However, some theologians took another path and studied the popular religious practices, and their syncretism with preColombian religions, and found liberating trends there as well. When Diego Irrerrazaval became president of EATWOT in the early 2000s the stage had been set for a turning point.
In 2001 EATWOT took up the project of examining a theology of religious pluralism.It was a decision taken by the organization as such and was led by the Latin American Theological Commission of EATWOT. The result was the production of four collections (volumes) in the series “Por los Muchos Caminos de Dios.” (There is a fifth not yet published.) A Portuguese version of these five volumes was also produced and a selection of the interventions was published by Lit-Verlag as Along the Many Paths of God.
The starting point for the theological reflection was the situation of Indigenous and Afro-American religions in Latin America (The religion of Pachamama on the Indigenous side and of Candomble, Santaría, Voodoo, for example), historically and in contemporary times. The basic orientation was that these religions had been repressed and even suppressed in the colonial period. Nevertheless they survive and are a vital part of the life of poor communities across Latin America. In examining carefully the experience of these traditions and especially those who practice them, extraordinary paths to God were discovered. The Theology of Religious Pluralism affirms that all these religions are valid paths to God and deserve to be treated with great respect. They contribute to our religious patrimony as humanity and complement many of the areas where the Christian tradition is quite weak. Moreover they recognized these traditions as autonomous in their own right and deserving of support.
This led some to call for a reconsideration of traditional Catholic doctrine to bring it in line with these new insights. In particular they joined their voices to those of people like Roger Haight and Fr. Dupuis SJ to call for a recognition of the presence of God’s Spirit in all the world’s religions and also for a reexamination of doctrines like the uniqueness of Jesus’ Incarnation and the universality of salvation in Jesus as presented in Church dogma.
Having pursued this reflection for several years, EATWOT then turned to the question of the ecological crisis. In doing so they were able to draw from the learning of the earlier reflections. In this respect I strongly encourage you to look in the bookstore here at the conference for the 2010 Global Latin American Agenda whose theme is “Let’s Save the Planet and Ourselves with It.” The contributions of the various authors are particularly significant and it can certainly serve as a terrific resource for pastoral and education settings during the coming year. If the bookstore runs out of copies, you can always contact the publisher (me actually). The address can be found at http://latinoamericana.org/English The planetary ecological crisis and the challenges this poses to Christians has burst upon the scene in Latin America even as they realize that they come a bit late to the scene and have a long way still to go.
I hardly need to tell you much about the ecological crisis or its importance, nor even perhaps about its origins and the current schools of thought. Latin American theologians have decried in no uncertain terms the crisis of the planet and its impact on the poor. For them the option for the poor must include, today, an option for the Earth. The understanding of the crisis has come largely through North American and European authors. However, it has also come from a candid look at the situation on their own continent. The situation in the Amazon region, where the World Social Forum and the World Theological Forum were held in January 2009, drove home the message.
Everyone admits that biblical traditions and their interpretation have radically shaped Western attitudes toward Nature and the Earth. The original texts, for example of Genesis, made sense in their agricultural milieu at the time of their writing. They were an attempt to point out that in the desperate and often painful struggle for survival of the time, humans were supported by God who called them to draw their sustenance from God’s gifts that they found around them.
However, times changed and especially when the sacred and the profane were separated in the 15th century. The cycle of separation reached its climax in the thinking of philosophers—I was really tempted to say “men”—like Descartes and Hume and the rise of “modern” thinking. Combined with the Industrial revolution and then contemporary global economic colonialism, that thinking has played an important role in the contemporary devastation of the planet.
However, there are other Biblical sources and other interpretations that have emerged in recent decades. It would certainly not be pertinent, or even possible, here to try to even outline that history. What I want to point to is that, in the last few years, liberation theologians in Latin American have been paying close attention to these issues. The combination of these two closely related concerns (the ecological crisis and the earlier interest in the presence of indigenous and Afro-American religion in Latin America) has led to some forceful conclusions. A culmination of that process of reflection can be seen in the recent II World Forum on Theology and Liberation in Belem, Brazil just before the World Social Forum at the beginning of 2009.(I should add that the Latin Americans have become extremely adept at using the internet to publish their reflections and to promote interchange).
At this point EATWOT has taken a further step in this process and embarked on a publication series dealing with the construction of a religious theology. This would not be a theology that supplants any other or any religious tradition but that tries to uncover a language that allows a dialogue that goes deeper than what has taken place so far in formal and informal processes of inter-religious dialogue. In an article to be published next year, Barros suggests that the problem with theology so far is that it has always framed itself within the tradition of the speaker. Thus the dialogues often assumed a point of view that did not leave everyone at the table on the same level. However, there are many starting points that could serve to initiate the articulation of a theology that bridges between religious traditions, without replacing them, and that does not presuppose any privileged place.(This may be a little hard for some Catholics to swallow, however….) Starting points can be found in creation spirituality, in the moral underpinnings of the desire for peace, compassion, dignity.
In another article by Marcelo Barros, he points to several areas of debate or of tension within the “new” Liberation Theology. These include the tension between an academic theology produced in theology faculties and the insertion in the world of popular life and struggle that is part of the classic Liberation Theology methodology. Most Liberation Theology is still produced by members of theological faculties with formation in classic institutions in Europe or Latin America. He points out that ecotheology is not merely a theoretical theme; it is a matter of life and death for the planet and most especially for the poor, especially the indigenous poor who live on the land.
On the other hand, ecological concerns have frequently, in the past, been considered a preoccupation of the middle classes even as black and indigenous peoples lived in veneration and care of nature. This is beginning to change but there is still a lot of work to do to elaborate a Liberation Theology based on what can be learned from indigenous and Afro-American religions in Latin America. Finally, there continues to be a tension between the opposition of Liberation Theology, from the very beginning, to oppressive dictators and oligarchies in government while refusing to criticize church leadership in any way. Often this happened in the hope that the bishops would move to embrace Liberation Theology and the causes it represents. Such has generally not been the case over the years and perhaps it will take committed laypeople (especially women) to take up the cause of developing Liberation Theologies that are free from hierarchical constraint.
In his reflections, Barros points then to several areas where Liberation Theology needs to develop a deeper reflection. It is a kind of map for the future of a new Liberation Theology. However, it is not just a projection.The work is already underway and there is already a body of work already published.While not extensive, it is impressive and some of it, like the work of Leonardo Boff, already dates back several decades.
These new trends include, as already indicated, a theology that makes a much stronger link between the traditional option for the poor and the option for the Earth.
In this respect there is also a need to develop a Liberation Theology that has really incorporated the contributions of indigenous and Afro-American religions as well as popular religious expressions. This is not easy because, as José Comblin once pointed out, “Liberation Theology opted for the poor and the poor opted for Pentecostal religions.”
It also needs to be recognised that the ecological movement developed quite outside the preoccupations of the Church and arrived only late in Latin America. There is a lot of catching up to do. Early Liberation Theology drew much from Marxist social analysis without swallowing Marxism as a whole.
In a similar way Liberation Theology needs to study seriously the new paradigms that are developing as well as the contributions of science such as the history of the universe and quantum theory. While work has been done to point out elements in the Bible that in fact call for a love and care for the Earth (rather than its subjugation), it has to be recognized that, for all kinds of reasons such as the need at the time of the writing of the early texts to oppose religions of nature as practiced by surrounding nations that where oppressing them. Thus, there will be times when the limitations of the Bible must be recognized and we will need to look to what the Spirit is saying through other sources, and even other religious traditions, in order to correct and complement our theological understanding.
Much of Liberation Theology is based on an epistemology that is rooted in the traditional Roman-Greek model as elaborated in the Middle Ages by people like Thomas Aquinas and that are totally incapable of dialogue with the modern world.So Liberation Theology needs to develop its ecological thinking that deals with issues like creation, salvation, nature and history, the place of humans on the planet and the divine call of every human being.
Barros indicates that Liberation Theology needs to work at developing a more holistic vision of the universe that manifests the presence of God’s Spirit in the world of Latin America and in dialogue with Indigenous and Afro-American religions.
Liberation Theology is faced with the challenge of shifting its framework from one that is anthropocentric to one that is cosmocentric. Liberation Theology initially focused on the Exodus event as paradigm. However the anthropocentric and patriarchal dimensions of that story have infected the theology. Liberation Theology today is called to critique those elements.
There is work to be done in ethics and spirituality. Liberation Theology has often had difficulty with the spiritual dimension, perhaps seeing it as too individualistic. However Liberation Theology has profound roots in a spirituality of listening to the Spirit in order to live an option of mercy, compassion and solidarity with the oppressed. Now there is needed an ecological spirituality that is macro-ecumenical and pluralist (in the sense of recognizing as valid the many religious paths to God). This will be a spirituality that is ordered to the discovery of meaning in life and to the discovery of the divine in the other.
While early Liberation Theology focused very much on the struggle of the poor for their liberation from oppression, to the point of supporting revolutionary Latin American movements, today the challenge is to develop a global, pluralist, world-wide ecotheology that will integrate the dimension of the subjectivity of the “subject” (agent) of liberation. In this respect Liberation Theology needs to develop a theology of the construction of peace based on the cause of the oppressed (the Earth, all life on Earth, human life on Earth).
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