LIBERATION THEOLOGY

LIBERATION THEOLOGY. Liberation theology emerged from a long process of transformation in post-Enlightenment Christian theological reflection. As science and historical criticism challenged the findings of traditional metaphysical foundations of theology, theologians were widely expected to reconcile their findings with modern principles of analysis and criticism. Where theological reflection was previously focused on the metaphysical and supernatural, it became increasingly concerned with pragmatic and concrete problems.

Liberation theology originated in the 1960s in North and South America, although it was rooted in works by post–World War II European theologians like Rudolf Bultmann, Jürgen Moltmann, and Johann-Baptiste Metz. Among its foundational texts was The Secular City (1965), by the U.S. Protestant theologian Harvey Cox. It argued that, for religion to retain vitality in a secularized environment, theological reflection must conform to the concrete social and political challenges of the modern secular world; for example, he argued that contemporary problems like racism and poverty must be treated as theological problems as well as social problems. Selling a million copies in numerous languages, Cox was especially influential in Latin America, and with the 1971 Spanish-language publication of A Theology of Liberation: History, Politics, and Salvation by the Peruvian Catholic theologian Gustavo Gutiérrez (the book was published in English in 1973), liberation theology was given its name and became a new branch of theological reflection. By the mid-1970s, many exponents of liberation theology emerged in North and South America, including Catholics (Leonardo Boff, Mary Daly, Rosemary Radford Ruether, Juan Luis Segundo, Jon Sobrino) and Protestants (Robert McAfee Brown, James H. Cone). Thereafter, the influence of liberation theology expanded, becoming mainstream within the international community of theologians, especially influencing theological reflection in Africa and Asia.

Liberation theology had a mutually supportive relationship with important developments in the post–World War II era. First, it emerged amidst the European decolonization of Africa and Asia, supporting and drawing strength from the discourse around third-world poverty and global politics spurred by decolonization. Second, liberation theology both helped to affirm and was, in turn, affirmed by innumerable liberation movements, including the black power and sexual liberation movements in the United States in the late 1960s and 1970s, popular guerrilla movements in Latin American nations like Nicaragua and El Salvador in the 1980s, and the popular anticommunist movement in Central and Eastern Europe during the 1980s. Third, given its use of theological reflection as a means to "human liberation," liberation theology promoted the idea that theology should be political and activist in its goals; in the process, it was often distinguished from post–World War II fundamentalist theologies that generally placed a higher premium on metaphysical and supernatural concerns. In recent years, liberation theology has helped to promote a multiculturalist and human rights–based critique of contemporary politics, society, and culture.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Casanova, José. Public Religions in the Modern World. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994. Treats the global influence of theological thought from liberationist to fundamentalist theologies in the late twentieth century.

Cox, Harvey. The Secular City: Secularization and Urbanization in Theological Perspectives. 1965. New York: Collier, 1990. Twenty-fifth anniversary edition with a new introduction by the author.

Tracy, David. The Blessed Rage for Order: The New Pluralism in Theology. 1975. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996. Includes a learned, concise treatment of modern theology's relation to developments in the sociology of knowledge.

James P.McCartin

See alsoCatholicism ; Fundamentalism ; Protestantism .