LIBERATION AND THEOLOGY
Aman, Kenneth J
THE VIEW FROM DETROIT LIBERATION AND THEOLOGY The conference "Theology in the Americas: 1975" began on a warm August evening in Detroit. It was to last a solid week: August 17-23. Looking at the...
...Examples: Herbert Edwards of Duke evangelically expressing Black anger, disappointment, and, strikingly, Black hope...
...Juan Luis Segundo, listening attentively for hours, trying to catch the difference between liberation here and in Latin America...
...Hard to say...
...Frederick Herzog made a valiant attempt from the Protestant side, but his Barthian approach could not match the Latin Americans' more Marxian analyses for actual contact with liberation processes...
...At the same time, the organizers began to recognize the need for social scientists from the United States...
...KENNETH J. AMANNNETH J. AMAN...
...Tones had been deeply influenced by the meeting, Chris-tianas por socialismo (Christians for Socialism) held in Santiago during the spring of 1972...
...Fortunately, almost all of them found this some-what unaccustomed posture a liberating one...
...The idea was to set up a genuine working exchange: Participation would be by invitation only...
...Tensions of all kinds cropped up: Blacks versus Latin Americans, women versus male Chi-canos and Latin Americans, Puerto Ricans and Chicanos ' versus Blacks, and most significantly, all of these in-creasingly against the dominant white male middle-class...
...theologians in direct contact with tenuous movements for radical social change (where the odds strongly favor repression...
...Yet the very meaning of the theology of liberation tended to alter such a simple program...
...The significance...
...if one is going to describe the oppression of another, he/she had better get it right...
...theologians had little choice but to listen...
...In church circles, this conference was something of an opening to the left, signaling as it did a willingness to incorporate Marxian analysis into theological reflection...
...Agreement even on the nature of oppression, much less its cure, became painfully difficult...
...To paraphrase the Latin American theologian, Segundo: perhaps it is enough now that theologians themselves are becoming liberated-precisely through their contact with those on the margins of our society...
...In some ways, the very event of the conference was itself the result of a liberating process...
...Thus one of the clearest conclusions of this conference was that it is not possible now to construct a general theology of liberation for the United States...
...Rosemary Ruether, part of a circle of ten women,-patiently waiting her turn in the communal and conversational presentation of feminist theology...
...There were only some rather un-satisfying references to possible liberation themes in such historical Catholic personages as Orestes Brownson, John A. Ryan and John Courtney Murray...
...As one speaker noted, his absence was more instructive than any address,he might have given...
...Significantly, the only attempt to draw up a genuine North American liberation theology ended in dismal failure...
...Participants were vir-tually unanimous in asserting that the struggles of op-pressed peoples for liberation were indeed fertile ground for a new theology...
...Everyone met in small "com-munities" as well as en masse in plenary sessions...
...They ranged in composition from an all-clerical group in Brooklyn to a Black-White mix in Durham, North Carolina to a large repre-sentation from an entire neighborhood (mostly Chicano) in Las Vegas...
...Torres is no longer welcome in his native Chile, but his very exile made him anxious to have South American theologians enter into dialogue with North Americans...
...All acknowledged the interrelatedness of class oppression, racism and sexism, but few felt satis-fied with any existing explanation of that interrelated-ness...
...So it be-came easy to challenge a conference in which all dis-cussion appeared to be on a theoretical plane, even if some of that theory (the Latin American) had as one of its sources the experience of revolutionary struggle...
...For example, the first day was given over entirely to various Latin American theologians and social scientists...
...The whole effort was received with reserve and even anger - by Blacks, Chicanos, women, etc...
...The invitation lists were broadened signifi-cantly, to include representatives from all these groups...
...The theme of liberation provided an overall unity, and this theme took on a whole assortment of nuances as it was approached first biblically, then sociologically...
...They were almost as unanimous in believing that the task of constructing such a theology had hardly begun...
...Altogether one might have ex-pected a cozy group of perhaps fifty scholars...
...While often interesting, the various papers read in Detroit were by no means the most impressive aspect of the conference...
...Roughly translated, this means simply that theory must be drawn from life (particularly that part of life which is...
...Even the more featured speakers strove to communicate the experience of oppression as well as analyses of that op-pression...
...the struggle for liberation), and not vice versa...
...One of the most notable "events" of this first day was in fact the conspicuous absence of Gustavo Gutierrez (author of the well-received Theology of Liberation...
...But much more notice-able were the Blacks, the Chicanos, the women, and of course the Latin Americans (who were to give the con-ference its special thrust as a "theology of liberation...
...For centuries, Blacks have looked forward to Sunday, not for religious reasons, but because it was a day when they were truly free of the "boss...
...And it was relatively easy to get sponsors for the event, notably the National Council of Churches and the United States Catholic Conference...
...What really came through, however, was the commitment and vitality of these Latin Americans: Chilean ministers and priests without a country...
...The very organization of the conference clearly placed process before content...
...Now they envision a time when every day will be Sunday...
...As papers and addresses go, most of these were extraordinarily good...
...social scientists well aware that they are charting new terrain, far removed from the value-free data of much sociologi-cal work...
...And when he did arrive on Friday, his emotional identification with Blacks, Chicanos and women in the United States became symbolic of the liberation about which all were talking...
...now from the macroscopic point of view of geo-history, now on the concrete level of actual concrete communities in Uruguay or Panama or wherever...
...An uncontested tenet of liberation theology, drawn from Marxian theory, is that praxis takes precedence over theory...
...The tenor of the conference, however, was now very different...
...The conference was the brainchild of Sergio Torres, a Chilean priest...
...He was wrong...
...One participant commented: "With this mix, the con-ference should either explode into bits or be a spectacu-lar success...
...Apparently, one does liberation theology at his/her own risk...
...Michelle Russell, a young Angela Davis-like sociologist, giving a brilliant, slashing, yet compassionate exposition of racism and sexism which brings the whole conference to its feet Three American Indians (including a nun in full habit) explaining softly the no-exit situation of many native Americans...
...North Americans would be asked on the basis of their theological expertise...
...Eventually, about sixty groups were meeting...
...The conference itself came to mirror the reality of the struggle which was talked about incessantly...
...This conference was rich in vignettes...
...Yet in the end the effort to span differences, to forge alliances, prevailed more and more...
...that we must for the indefinite future struggle with a variety of particular theologies which reflect the particular struggles experienced by vari-ous groups in the United States...
...The very best among Latin American theologians were quickly lined up, including Gustavo Gutierrez, Juan Luis Segundo, and Jose Miguez-Bonino...
...Blacks and women demanded significant roles in the conference...
...Reflection groups were set up across the United States, and all participating theologians were asked to become part of some group...
...Looking at the crowd of arrivals, one could spot a sprinkling of familiar faces from theology and social ethics...
...On the Catholic side, no attempt to theolo-gize was made at all...
...Groups involved in liberation definitely intended to speak...
...Thus when the conference on liberation theology ac-tually convened, there was a working group of about two hundred...
...Perhaps the most well-known theologian in Latin America today and certainly the most important Peruvian, he was unexpectedly de-tained in that country as it apparently slipped close to a right-wing takeover...
Vol. 102 • September 1975 • No. 14
