Intro to Liberation Theology / Prophetic Views of Religion
The Inception of Liberation Theology
In 1969 the Peruvian Catholic Priest Gustavo Gutierrez used the term liberation theology in an academic presentation to theologians in Uruguay. Shortly afterwards he wrote a book called Teología de la Liberación. He used the word “liberation” in contrast to the the word “development”. The status quo view was that Latin America was in a process of development by European ideas, and as such needed guidance from the US and Europe. Gutierrez instead chose the word liberation, indicating the forces which claimed to be developing Latin America were actually exercising oppressive control over it, not too unlike the earlier ideas of resource extraction via colonization. Latin America as well as other places needed freedom or liberation, not development.
Just about the same time that book was released, the African American Theologian James Cone wrote about MLK, Malcolm X, and the African American experience of following and understanding God while being oppressed by the US Government in a book he called A Black Theology of Liberation.
James Cone would say that growing up in the lynching era of the black south, when he read about Jesus hanging on a tree, he made the connection to African Americans who were hung on trees. A powerful empire which crushed an ethnic minority in the first century was a lot like a powerful empire which crushed an ethnic minority in the 17th-20th centuries. The God of history, the God of justice, was on the side of these minorities, no matter if the Romans or White Slaveholders claimed divine precedent for their oppressive regimes. That would be a false god.
Many accuse liberation theologians of being too focused on improving the situation of the poor to the detriment of employers, ideas normally associated with Karl Marx. A proto- liberation theologian, Martin Luther King would say:
“The great tragedy is that Christianity failed to see that it had the revolutionary edge. You don’t have to go to Karl Marx to learn how to be a revolutionary. I didn’t get my inspiration from Karl Marx; I got it from a man named Jesus, a Galilean saint who said he was anointed to heal the broken-hearted. He was anointed to deal with the problems of the poor. ” -Autobiography of MLK Jr. Ed. Clayborne Carson p. 351
His study of Jesus and his experience of oppression as a black person in the Southern US was enough to see that those who owned the property were invested in keeping their workers in a position which would not allow them autonomy. Jesus came to bring good news to the poor, a new kingdom of the poor in spirit — not of Rome, not of the religious elite. It was clear to MLK that the moral arc of the universe would not allow exploitation to exist and that God (or shall we say History? Nature? Justice?) is always on the side of the oppressed. This is the first principle of liberation theology— God has a ‘preferential option for the poor’ (as the Catholic liberation theologians would say it). The poor in spirit are blessed by the God of the universe, the kingdom belongs to them, even apart from doctrinal commitments.
Another Liberation Theologian, Brazilian Arch Bishop Helder Camara, would say “When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why are they poor, they call me a communist.”
One of the best and most accessible resources I have found for understanding some of the shocking differences in this different understanding of Jesus and the Bible is Noam Chomsky’s 6 minute retelling of the fate of Salvadorian Liberation Theologians Oscar Romero, Ignacio Martin Baro, and others had at the hands of the US supported El Salvadorian Government:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNDG7ErY-k4
Barack Obama had some controversy during his presidential campaign when his pastor in Chicago (speaking from his experience as an African American in the US and the 400 years of transatlantic slavery, Jim/Jane Crow, segregation and government brutality) was discovered to have said “it’s not God bless America, it’s God Damn America.” Though he was actually quoting the US American pragmatist philosopher William James who said in 1898 “God damn the U.S. for its vile conduct in the Philippine Isles” both are an echo of the Prophet Amos’ words “Alas for you who desire the day of the Lord! Why do you want the day of the Lord? It is darkness, not light” (Amos 5:18). Obama opted to distance himself from Rev. Jeremiah Wright and another of his aids, Cornel West, who will come up later.
For Liberation Theologians, the first century Jewish Palestinian named Jesus advocated for oppressed people against the empire and their religious elite. For that, he was killed. There are also forms of Liberation Theology in Islam and Judaism through people like Fareed Esack and Marc H. Ellis, it can be seen in every religious tradition.
Shortly after Liberation Theology became a term there arose Liberation Psychology (Ignacio Martin Y Baro — one of the Salvadorian priests killed by the US backed Salvadorian military) and a bit later liberation philosophy (Argentine/Mexican philosopher Enrique Dussel). Same ideas, different disciplines.
Paulo Freire, a Brazilian who wrote Pedagogy of the Oppressed is probably the most well known Liberation Theologian, though is rarely cited as such.
Probably the original pioneer of this modern way of seeing Jesus and acting on it was the Colombian Priest Juan Camilo Torres Restrepo (often just Camilo Torres) whose dedication to God compelled him to join the revolutionaries. He was killed in the struggle — “If Jesus were alive today he would be a guerrillero.”
Many of the Latin American Liberation Theologians studied in Belgium, Germany and/or France. There are the seeds of their ideas in theologians such as Johann Baptist Metz and Dietrich Bonhoeffer who were trying to make sense of Christianity in light of the German Church’s mass endorsement of Hitler.
James Cone would say he studied the required white theologians but his understanding of black liberation theology came from his experience as a poor black person in the south. When he read about the cross, a place where an empire asserted their power over an ethnic minority, he saw the lynching tree, where White US Americans asserted their power over an ethnic minority.
Conspicuously absent from my review is the Feminist branch of liberation theology, begun by Mary Daly and Rosemary Radford Ruether. In 2003 Marcella Althaus-Reid wrote a Latin American liberation theology influenced book The Queer God, saying that God was on the side of those marginalized due to their sexual identity. (Anyone objecting to the LGBTQ question might start by comparing them to the arguments used for the biblical justification for American slavery, there are verses which say “slaves be obedient to your masters” and they were used in the same way).
Lilian Calles Barger gives the intellectual history of the Latin American, African American and feminist liberation theologies, in her 2019 book A World Come of Age: An Intellectual History of Liberation Theology.
Prophetic Views of Religion
Liberation theology is very related to another term, the prophetic.
The Hebrew Bible (Christian Old Testament) is called in Hebrew, the TaNaKh:
Torah — The Teaching/Law
Neviim — The Prophets
Ketuviim — The Writings
According to tradition, the Torah was first compiled by Moses, a prophet, a revolutionary, leading slaves out of Egypt. Then there were the former prophets like Joshua and the Judges, Samuel etc. (former means before the Babylonian exile) advocating for the oppressed against their oppressors, seeing a reality which could exist and organizing the people towards that vision. The latter prophets such as Isaiah, Amos, Ezekiel, Malachi (after the Babylonian exile), did the same in advocating for the oppressed against their oppressors who are often the very priests at the temple. Jesus is in line with the tradition of the prophets, advocating for the oppressed and questioning the priests. The Ketuviim, the writings, is mostly poetry, often written as reflections on the prophetic voice.
In his book, Democracy Matters, Cornel West has two short essays “Forging New Jewish and Islamic Democratic Identities” and “The Crisis of Christian Identity in America” in which he says that we have Imperial/Governmental versions of religion — such as “Constantinian Christianity” and “Clerical Islam”, with the contrasting Prophetic traditions of Judaism/Christianity/Islam. He doesn’t often use the term liberation theology, but liberation theology resonates with his term “prophetic”.
According to West when he says “prophetic” what he is referring to is Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel’s study of the Hebrew prophets called The Prophets. Released to the English reading public in 1962 it was a revision of his Univ of Berlin PhD of 1929. In 1934 Heschel was made the director of the Central Organization for Jewish Adult Education in Frankfurt by Martin Buber. 1934 was also the year Hitler merged the offices of chancellor and president. Heschel was one of the last Jews deported from Germany in 1938. Heschel would go on to work alongside MLK in the Civil Rights Movement. Cornel West is connected to MLK, and it’s probably why West uses the term “prophetic” rather than liberation theology.
Here’s some of what Heschel said about the prophets:
“Prophecy is the voice that God has lent to the silent agony, a voice to the plundered poor, to the profane riches of the world. It is a form of living, a crossing point of God and man. God is raging in the prophet’s words.”
Raging words such as,
Isaiah 1:15–17 — “When you stretch out your hands, I will hide my eyes from you; even though you make many prayers, I will not listen; your hands are full of blood. Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your doings from before my eyes; cease to do evil, learn to do good; seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow.”
Ezekiel 16:49 — “This was the sin of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy.”
Heschel again writing to explain his involvement in civil rights: “There is immense silent agony in the world, and the task of man is to be a voice for the plundered poor, to prevent the desecration of the soul and the violation of our dream of honesty. The more deeply immersed I became in the thinking of the prophets, the more powerfully it became clear to me what the lives of the prophets sought to convey: that morally speaking, there is no limit to the concern one must feel for the suffering of human beings, that indifference to evil is worse than evil itself, that in a free society, some are guilty, but all are responsible.”
Social Gospel and Christian Socialism
The other term which is very similar but precedes Heschel’s “prophetic” or Gutierrez’ and Cone’s liberation theology, is the late 19th/early 20th century ‘Social Gospel’. Walter Rauschenbusch wrote probably the most seminal work for that movement titled Christianity and the Social Crisis. It starts with a chapter on the Bible as understood through the prophets. There was also a large stream of Christian Socialists including Charles Sheldon who coined the phrase “What Would Jesus Do?”.
Fundamentalism (and its later revision Evangelicalism) arising in the early 20th century can be seen as a response to the Social Gospel. The Social Gospel, like the prophets, was much more concerned about the orphan, the widow, the oppressed, than it was with whether or not you kept the biblical law as interpreted by the “capitalist, imperialist, white supremacist patriarchy” (quote from bell hooks). You can read a bit more about that moment in the early 20th century here.
Some Modern Prophetic Voices of Liberation:
All these movements remain alive today through some of my favorites like Cornel West, Bruce Rogers Vaughn and young movements like that of Brandon Wrencher and Liberating Church in North Carolina, Mark Van Steenwyck and the Center for Prophetic Imagination in Minneapolis MN, Damon Garcia on the Central Coast of California, Sarah Ngu who cofounded Churchclarity.org and now works at Forefront Brooklyn Church. The Institute for Christian Socialism is a new institute offering national resources but based in Tennessee.
Contact me through my instagram or my facebook if you want to find other people near you, and/or consider yourself a liberation theology / prophetic voice for others!
Post-Script: This is my initial attempt to introduce Liberation Theology/Prophetic Views of Religion, most of it I stand by, but I’ve done more research and I continue to see earlier and less Eurocentric roots. Names such as William Apess, Nat Turner and Frederick Douglass. The term Liberation Theology dates to Gustavo Gutierrez in the late 1960s. Prophetic is from the Hebrew Bible, but this modern concept goes back perhaps to Max Weber in the early 1900s, certainly Abraham Heschel in 1929. I once personally asked the Irish Theologian John Dominic Crossan why he didn’t use the term Liberation Theology for his writing about Jesus as a revolutionary and he responded “because all theology is Liberation Theology.” Jesus came to bring good news *to the poor* (Isaiah 61:1, Luke 4:18). As is repeated frequently in the Biblical Library, the good news is not good news to all: Amos 5:18–24 , Luke 6:24–25, 2 Corinthians 2:15–16, James 5:1–6.
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