Recently the Vatican silenced El Salvadoran liberation theologian Jon Sobrino (as it has others such as Leonardo Boff in the past). One reason made public is that priests are not supposed to participate in politics. I can certainly understand such a policy in terms of clergy not campaigning or running for public office. (The Vatican earlier forced Father John Drinan to resign from the U.S. Congress because of this policy.) As an advocate of separation of church and state this policy makes sense to me.
However, so far as I know, Sobrino was not running for office or participating in partisan political campaigning. His offense seems rather to be speaking out prophetically against governments that oppress and practice violence against their people–especially the poor.
Now, I realize liberation theology is another hot issue among evangelicals (and Catholics). But what isn’t? I have read a lot of liberation theology (and books and articles by its opponents) and met and talked with two leading liberation theologians: Gustavo Gutierrez and Jose Miguez Bonino. I have also heard other speak such as Jose Miranda. I wrote the chapter on liberation theology in 20th Century Theology: God and the World in a Transitional Age (1992) co-authored with Stan Grenz. I have also heard leading theologians and ethicists speak against liberation theology. I studied under Wolfhart Pannenberg who lectured against it. I have also heard and read Michael Novak who speaks out against it.
There are aspects of Latin American liberation theology with which I disagree. In particular, I am critical of its apparent utopianism through economic change which seems very much influenced by Marxist theory of the emergence of a “new humanity” through class struggle and revolution.
However, many of the criticisms of liberation theology seem to me to miss their mark. The accusation that it is against doctrine and reduces theology to praxis is simply wrong. When people say such things against it I know they have not read widely or deeply in it. For example, Leonardo Boff wrote profound volumes on dogmatics including the Trinity. Most of the liberation theologians do not reject dogmatics or doctrine but only wish to add to it the dimension of social ethics because that has been neglected in their contexts.
One criticism that often arises has to do with violence and revolution. To the best of my knowledge, however, no leading Latin American liberation theologian has advocated violence except in response to violence. Gutierrez restricts church activism for political and economic change to two practices: denunciation and annunciation. Others emphasize conscientization (teaching the poor of Latin America that poverty is not their fault).
The issue of violence only appears in the context of institutional violence already being practiced by some governments against their own people. For example, “death squads” and right wing paramilitary groups sponsored by governments have been responsible for slaughtering peasants and political activists and priests and nuns who dared to speak out against oppressive regimes.
I find it ironic that conservative Americans denounce violent revolutions in other countries, then celebrate our own every July 4. Why was it right for us to overthrow our government (British rule over the colonies) using violence just because of “taxation without representation” but wrong for people being subjected to violent oppression in Latin America to do the same?
Anyone who has read about the American War of Independence knows that many pastors led the men of their congregations to join the Continental Army. Some of them strapped on swords in their pulpits and led the men out of the church building into battle.
Also, is seems ironic to me that we criticize German Christians during the 1930s for not publicly denouncing the National Socialist Party and Hitler but turn around and criticize Latin American Christians when they publicly denounce regimes that act in much the same manner as the Nazis.
I am not a liberation theologian because I am not a member of an oppressed group. But if I were a citizen of certain Latin American or African or Asian countries I very well might be a liberation theologian. Here I can only give them verbal support INSOFAR as they are speaking out on behalf of justice for the poor and oppressed. That does not mean giving them unqualified support with regard to everything they say or do. But, then, I don’t give that to any human movement.
Liberation theology has fallen on hard times in recent years. Partly that’s a result of more just governments coming into power in most Latin American countries. It’s also a result of some excesses on the parts of some liberation theologians. (E.g., I heard Miranda declare “I am not a communist, but I am a Marxist. And I am a Marxist because I am a Christian!” Also, it seems to me, the original Sandinista regime in Nicaragua over reached in its attempts to establish social justice through land redistribution.) It is also partly the result of the fall of world wide socialism and the rise of the new conservatism throughout the world. Liberation theology tended to thrive on the spirit of the 1960s.
I see much irony, however, in conservative Americans’ over reaction to liberation theology. Immediately after WW2 General Douglas Macarthur became virtual military dictator of Japan. One of the first things he did was forcibly break up the great plantations owned by the upper class and redistribute it among the peasants. If that’s okay for us to do in Japan, why is it in principle wrong for Latin Americans to do it in their own countries? (Earlier I said the Sandanistas went about it the wrong way; I didn’t say it’s wrong in principle.)
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