TOWARD A POLITICIZED CHRISTIANITY

...The church must not only proclaim and preach...

...We are builders—not merely interpreters—of a future which has God for its dynamism," wrote Metz, in a statement recalling Marx's oft-quoted observation on Feuerbach: "The philosophers have interpreted the world in various ways...

...The situation in Latin America was markedly different...

...Yet it could also be seen as capable of evoking a real protest against the real anguish caused by an unjust socio-economic order...

...That theology had been developing in Latin America for several years...

...Thus, there is a political theology (and I would say largely that of liberation theology) in the following developments, selected from among many...

...Yet, like Hamlet or Faustus, it was translated into every major language precisely because it could not be contained within the net of particularity...

...This same concept of the human orientation toward the jtral power contending diating role even effecnow...

...The crackdown on Czechoslovakia in 1968 and the expulsion of Roger Garaudy from the French Communist Party in 1970 showed that it was still far from high noon for the Christian-Marxist dialogue, but at least a new day had dawned...

...A major instrument in God's shaping hand is the virtue of Christian hope, which had, too often in the past, been privatized and made an excuse for non-involvement in the affairs of a messy and naughty world...

...And what can Marxism learn from Christianity...

...The Marxism of Commonweal: 393 institutions had forcibly prevailed over a Marxism of men...

...Whatever interest the Christian-Marxist dialogue may have sparked in Europe (and it was never great), it had little resonance in Latin America precisely because it had little relevance...

...Bennett's view, I think liberation theology has addressed itself to, and been at least partially heard by, the churches of Europe and North America, the "dominant churches," as Third World theologians term them...

...Today," he writes, "all ambiguous and abstract appeals for peace fall on deaf ears," and he cites as an example Pope Paul's address to the United Nations...

...The theology of liberation must be indigenized, not homogenized...

...Cardinal Suhard's "Decline or Fall...

...Although written by different theologians working independently of each other, these reflections are a surprisingly consistent presentation of political theology— indigenously American...

...If, however, in the words of the 1971 Synod, "action (emphasis added) on behalf of justice is a constitutive dimension of the preaching of the Gospel," then it becomes clear that a totally apolitical Christianity is a caricature, and that to proclaim a purely privatized Gospel is to proclaim a Gospel which is truncated and, indeed, blasphemous...

...The human person is not finished and complete, but is always in process, moving beyond the present situation...

...Girardi, Dubcek and thousands of like-minded, both Christian and Marxist, got their answer when tanks rumbled into Prague in August, 1968...

...But good theology, or good pastoral reflection, will always be like a good work of artistic creation—capturing the universal within the tight net of the particular...

...It is also a continent which has been exploited by its more powerful neighbors...

...The population of Argentina is almost totally of European descent...

...The vision of what should be clarifies our perception of what is, and drives us to actions which will make the present the matrix of a more truly human future...

...The per capita income of Argentina is eight times that of Bolivia...

...It was not mere rhetoric when Alexander Dubcek became first secretary of the Czech Communist Party...

...When thus read, the Scriptures reveal more than "the underground Bible" of Ernst Bloch...

...Similarly, the theology of liberation and both the pastoral exhortations and pastoral practices of Latin America have set up resonances far beyond the situations they analyze and seek both to address and redress...

...Paradigm it was not, but perspective it is, not unlike the subject photographed by two or three different cameras from different angles or distances...

...These and similar statements by Garaudy proved too disturbing for those who held power in the French Communist Party...

...rns of inlence...

...This brought together twenty-two theologians from Africa, Asia and Latin America...

...Against this background, the term "development" became a negative one for many Latin Americans, including many theologians...

...The polis must never be confused, however, with the Heavenly Jerusalem, which remains the horizon of human hope but lies always beyond purely human achievement...

...President Kennedy launched the Alliance for Progress, the United Nations proclaimed a "development decade (s)," and Populorum Progressio spoke of "development as the new name for peace...

...Far from staying aloof from the world, Christians must see it as an arena of struggle which summons them, as Christians, to a commitment to bring about change here and now...

...Gustavo Gutierrez's A Theology of Liberation is the most widely read theological book of the decade among Filipinos...

...Argentina has an illiteracy rate of eight percent, while that of Bolivia is a crippling 85 percent...

...The theologians who are the architects of liberation had their advanced training in Europe, but found that this theology had little to say to the majority of Latin Americans, marginalized by structures of economic and social oppression...

...Obviously, though, that solicitude can be pushed father david s. toolan, s.J., teaches religious studies at Canisius College in Buffalo, New York, and is on the staff of the Center for Comparative Spirituality in Berkeley, California...

...it tended to neglect the oppression of women and natives in Latin America...

...For despite moments of vision like those in the garden at Cassiciacum and at Ostia—like ours perhaps after Vatican II—he found himself returned to a life of protracted labor, conflict, and the infinite postponement of his deepest wishes...

...The development of a contemporary politicized Christianity does not, of course, exhaust the richness We asked for it and got it...

...The key answer to that question, in the view of Gutierrez and others, was to reread the Scriptures through the prisms of the poor...

...Broadly similar to the theology of hope developed by Metz is that of Jiirgen Moltmann...

...Garaudy had been a leading participant in the European dialogue, and had brought that dialogue to the United States, most notably, perhaps, in his series of discussions with Quentin Lauer, S.J., of Fordham University...

...It is significant that it did not originate in an academic setting, but in the discussions of theCommonweal: 395 ologians with "ordinary" people, including the poor in slum and countryside...

...Argentina and Bolivia are adjoining nations, but they might as well be on separate continents...

...At the meeting itself 150 bishops working with 100 perili elaborated a total of sixteen documents designed to give authoritative directions to the thought and action of the church in Latin America...

...Another major presentation of political theology is the pastoral letter of the Catholic bishops of Appalachia, "This Land is Home to Me...

...Metz and Jiirgen Moltmann...

...it must act, and it must act on behalf of "the wretched of the earth...

...Indeed, distinct but related theologies of liberation are already being developed in Africa (including South Africa) South Korea, Sri Lanka and the Philippines...

...It is a remarkable ecclesial document, as much for its easy intelligibility as for its content...

...One can only plead the necessity of selectivity in such a broad sketch as this, and apologize to those whose names or points of view have been omitted...

...Paul and St...

...Almost ignored were the theological reflections which preceded each of the major topics around which the Bicentennial process had focused: Church, Ethnicity and Race, Nationhood, Humankind, etc...

...Giulio Girardi is an Italian theologian who had participated more extensively in the dialogue, and who had a more immediate knowledge of Marxism than did Rahner...

...The irony lies in the fact that he loathed traveling, even while self-consciously choosing the image of a long highway, an iter, and the wayfarer, a peregrinator, as expressions for the quality of mature Christian existence...

...Second, Bloch thought he had discovered a kind of underground Bible, those many passages which ring out against those who oppress the poor and powerless...

...It is unfair to single out two or three figures among the Christian respondents in the European dialogue, even as it was unfair to have featured Roger Garaudy among the Marxist participants...

...Christian hope, then, by looking toward the future and moving toward it, revolutionizes and transforms it...

...It could be regarded as an opiate, lulling the masses into an acceptance of the unacceptable and defenses of the indefensible on earth because religion offers the promise of that "pie in the sky by and by...

...Education for justice demands a renewal of heart, a renewal based on the recognition of sin in its individual and social manifestations...

...For Garaudy, Marxists needed Christianity to prevent their view of human life from being flattened into a one-dimensional universe...

...It has frequently been observed that this meeting at Medellin was to the church in Latin America what Vatican II was to the church universal...

...Summing up these two emphases in Bloch, Moltmann described him as "a Marxist with a Bible in his hand, who hoped for greater things than socialism was able to give...

...The Latin American theologians, both Catholic— Gutierrez, Segundo, Assman, Dussel et al.—and Protestant—Alves, Miguiez Bonino, Couch, et al.—have insisted on the contextualization of their theology...

...It was carved into colonies by European nations, principally Spain and Portugal...

...Although most North Americans and Europeans tend to regard Latin America as a homogeneous blob, it is a continent of great diversity and startling contrasts...

...The West, with the exception of Salazar's Portugal and Franco's Spain, was democratic and capitalistic...

...But there were also many non-theologians, including Native Americans, Puerto Ricans and Chicanos, each "delegation" with a strong representation of women...

...Augustine been present at Vatican II, he might have forewarned us with an ironic smile...

...it e wretched :eming side rld's people ;tely acting eedom, by education, >f both opine what it the future nsforms it...

...Gunnar Myrdal has estimated, for example, that United States corporations, directly or indirectly, control or decisively influence between 70 and 90 percent of the raw materials of Latin America, and probably more than half of its industry, banking, commerce and foreign trade...

...Murray, Popes John and Paul...

...Metz saw in Marxism a challenge for Christians to abandon that emphasis on "life in the world to come" which had marked so much of Christianity for centuries...

...the spread of military, usually repressive, regimes...

...hence it was to be above the struggle, a neutral power able to effect reconciliation and love between contending parties...

...In Latin America, the question is: How proclaim God, the loving Father, to nonpersons...

...Many other religious orders and congregations have given similar priority to the struggle for justice...

...Those who hope in Christ can no longer put up with reality as it is, but begin to suffer under it, to contradict it...

...As developed by the meeting, however, the theme took on a threatening concreteness...

...In a passage reminiscent of Augustine, Moltmann writes: "This is why faith, wherever it develops into hope, causes not rest, but unrest, not patience but impatience...

...Garaudy moved from a rigidly dogmatic Marxism to an undogmatic, rather amorphous Christianity...

...It had become increasingly secularized, and religious practice continually declined...

...A theology of development needed to be replaced by a theology of liberation...

...But it has also spoken to the First World, in the judgment of North American theologians such as Harvey Cox, Robert McAfee Brown, John Coleman, Frederick Herzog, Gregory Baum and John Bennett, among others...

...The above statements, and the entire synodal document on "Justice in the World," make it plain that certain basic thrusts of liberation as a political theology have now entered, not only into Catholic theology, but also into "the mind of the church...

...While fully sharing Dr...

...Another response to Marxism had now begun to appear in the "theology of hope," a political theology largely associated with names of J.B...

...Indeed, he suggested that development was an instrument for protecting the status quo, and expecting people to be grateful for it...

...This award the future, as we have seen in Metz and Moltmann, neither rescues nor absolves us from the present...

...He was expelled, as mentioned earlier, in November, 1970, for "incorrect thinking," the Marxist equivalent of heresy...

...It could also help Christians become more authentic by throwing the often pitiless glare of Marxist analysis upon the gap between Christian profession and performance...

...Girardi, as a Christian, had tried to summon Marxists to a purified version of Marxism drawn largely from the writings of the young Marx...

...As Garaudy saw evidence of metanoia in the Second Vatican Council, Girardi saw the same possibility in the fact that Marxists could enter into dialogue with Christians...

...The New Testament ends with an exile on Patmos describing the hounding out of Jesus's followers by a political regime which John described as bestial...

...The point is not to interpret the world, but to change it...

...Both religion and Marxism were capable of metanoia...

...because it is in part addressed to us...

...To paraphrase Gutierrez, in the North Atlantic nations, the evangelical question may be: How proclaim God to people who have abandoned Christianity—the non-believer...

...If Medellin were animated by Vatican II, it was also heavily influenced (some would say infiltrated) by theologians of liberation, many of whom were prominent among the periti...

...as the dominating power in the Western hemisphere, the great power by which these theologians see their countries exploited, or on which they feel an unwelcome dependence...

...Marxism could teach Christians how to translate into concrete strategies and structures their lofty vision of human dignity and human solidarity...

...One of the values he discovered in Christianity was its insistence on both the possibility of and need for metanoia, conversion, continuing fresh starts...

...the immense and growing gap between the wealthy elite and the poor within each nation of the continent who are so inhumanly poor precisely because the rich are so inhumanly rich...

...Bennett writes: Liberation theology is important for us in the U.S...

...They deserve serious study as theological texts, quite apart from the resolutions and recommended actions which they preface, and are readily available in "A Call to Action," issued by the United States Catholic Conference...

...Not Toyota, but a pilgrim church...

...In the 1950s Garaudy had been a hard-line Marxist, an unpromising candidate for authentic dialogue of any kind...

...Karl Rahner had been writing about "the anonymous Christian" several years before the ChristianMarxist dialogue was more than a clearing of the throat on either side...

...The hopeful Christian knows the difference between liberte and the perfect freedom of the children of God...

...But, like some "heretics" in the history of the church—Aquinas, Galileo—he had helped open doors that could no longer be slammed shut and bolted by either rigidly dogmatic Marxists or Christians...

...that of Bolivia is 60 percent Indian and 35 percent of mixed blood...

...The problem would be not to justify the fact of political theology, but to write the history of theology otherwise: Augustine, Aquinas, Luther, Calvin, Cromwell, Jonathan Edwards, Bonhoeffer, J.C...

...Not all pastoral ministry, for example, can or should be politically oriented, nor should all prayer...

...When independence was won through armed struggle in the nineteenth century, the new nations found themselves still economically dependent on the so-called developed world, principally the United States...

...The preparation for the Conference was conciliar in mode...

...Our hope, and the hope of the world, is that in this dramatic tension between man and institution, the final victory will belong to man...

...The powerlessness of the poor in Appalachia, the letter argues, is due to a systemic evil, 16 June 1978: 39S and the roots of that evil are to be found in the factors which determine the decisions of the major businesses which dominate the region: technological rationalization and maximization of profits...

...the Christian imperative for liberation, then only the tint of the skin and relative weight of the shackles change...

...The spirit of Pope John was opening the church to the world and the world to the church...

...Together they have emerged as two of Europe's most influential modern theologians precisely because of their insistence that the Scriptures must be proclaimed not only in the sanctuary but in the street...

...For this reason, Populorum Progressio, despite its strength, seems also to have a major flaw: although preoccupied with the poor, it is addressed to rich nations and persons, and calls on them to solve the problems of poverty and injustice...

...While recognizing that in the past this mediating role of the church was occasionally proper and even effective, Moltmann feels that it is anachronistic now...

...In turn, the Latin American bishops, with many of the same periti, were to influence strongly the 1971 Synod of Bishops meeting in Rome to reflect on and respond to the question of "Justice in the World," a theme assigned to them by Pope Paul VI...

...It is both interesting and significant that Metz and Moltmann were influenced in their theological thinking by Ernst Bloch, the East German Marxist philosopher...

...Further, much of their analysis of oppression did not apply to the situations of blacks, women and Hispanics in North America...

...Postwar Europe had been sundered into East and West, and these geographical divisions signified important political and economic divisions as well...

...Where Marxists show a genuine respect for truth, love and human solidarity, these values can be traced back to their ultimate source in Christ...

...In the months before, a basic document was widely circulated to elicit opinions...

...Many of the resolutions debated at Detroit were of controversial nature, and therefore seized the center of media attention, both secular and religious...

...Centuries of a dominantly legalistic interpretation of Christ's death could never quite obscure the fact that the cross was not an altar of sacrifice but a diabolically cruel instrument for the torturedeath of Rome's political subversives as well as dangerous criminals...

...The decline of Stalinism revealed cracks in the Marxist monolith, and such major Communist Parties as those of France and Italy were opting for accommodation and pluralism...

...The it is always ition...

...In the 1960s "development" was the word which seemed to hold the key which would unlock a better future for the have-not nations...

...Theresa of Avila, Pascal and Claudel, and the Christian meaning of the transcendence of love were to become foreign to it...

...The theme was an invitation to abstraction, collective introspection or evasive speculation: "The Future of Religious Life That We are Building Together...

...The problem was that, despite the insistence on development, nothing happened, or rather, that the developed nations continued to grow at the expense of the underdeveloped...

...The key to the future of religious life was seen to be poverty—both a more authentic living of the vow of poverty and service and solidarity with the involuntarily poor...

...Thus liberation theology grew out of dialogue, first with people whose lives were scarred by the realities of Latin America, then among the theologians themselves...

...Ten years after the launching of the Alliance for Progress, Senator Edward Kennedy stated the situations it had intended to ameliorate had only grown worse...

...between egalite and authentic solidarity...

...If we try to discern "the signs of the times" in the light of these events, we are drawn to the conclusion that the Christian Church must be pastorally identified with the poor everywhere, and be no longer a mere teacher of justice, but a witness to justice...

...Full entrance into the life of the polls is, then, not an option but an obligation for the Christian...

...The word has an interesting, and important, history...

...This realization, in turn, suggested to Garaudy a Marxian rethinking of religion...

...Peace with God means conflict with the world...

...It must take its place on that teeming side of the street where more than half of the world's people live in dehumanizing poverty...

...Authentic Marxists could be anonymous Christians—to their surprise and, perhaps, anger at being thus drawn unwittingly and unwillingly into the camp of their ideological adversaries...

...The "Bishops' Call to Action" meeting in October, 1976, was, it will be recalled, the culmination of the official Roman Catholic observance of the American Bicentennial under the rubric of "Liberty and Justice for All...

...Similar disparities can be found in the neighboring nations of Chile and Peru...

...When pressed by a given historical circumstance to reflect upon its political role, the church most often moved to the middle of the street It was to serve all...

...The theology of liberation has grown out of reflection on the context of Latin America, where life for the masses is limited by economic neocolonialism...

...That new kind of maturity, a spiritual leap, which Vatican II signaled and to which the council called us, represented, we now realize, a calculated risk which inevitably exacts a price...

...Out of this context of what they call economic colonialism, the theologians of Latin America have developed a political theology, not of hope, but of liberation...

...Many were caught unprepared, and one of the ambiguous strength-weaknesses of the Catholic tradition, epitomized in Dostoyevski's Grand Inquisitor parable, is solicitude for the unready...

...The reference to Pope John XXIII helps situate much of the current interest in political theology...

...The theologians, then, were offering, not a paradigm, but a perspective, even as the bishops at Medellin were speaking of their church, not the church...

...Europe is not Latin America, and Latin America was no longer importing European theology, as it had throughout its history...

...History seems to show, however, that effective altruism—rare enough in individuals —is seldom found in nations or groups possessing wealth and power...

...Thus the church becomes a constantly critical voice in whatever society it finds itself, capitalist or socialist of whatever variety...

...As suggested above, certain themes of liberation theology have entered into the thinking of the Christian Church, particularly those which center about the Exodus-event and the Christ-event...

...There is a Marxism," he wrote, "that is open to dialogue, the Marxism of men...

...It does not calm the heart, but is itself this unquiet heart in man...

...The very God who creates men in his image and likeness, creates the earth and all that is in it for the use of all men and all nations, in such a way that created goods can reach all in a more just manner, and gives them power to transform and perfect the world in solidarity...

...In that paper, Gutierrez pointed out that, in the concrete order, development had come to mean gradualism and reform—tinkering with the machinery which produced injustice, rather than dismantling it...

...What does the Bible, and therefore the church, have to say to those who live in squalor, hunger, illiteracy, whose lives are completely determined by the decisions of those at the top of the pyramid...

...of the Christian message...

...Augustine, St...

...What emerged from Dar es Salaam, as from Detroit, was a consensus that liberation was the necessary theme of theology, but each must work out that theology in its own setting...

...Without the Council's Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, for example, Medellin might well not have taken place...

...He was, in a broad sense, a Catholic Garaudy, pointing to the gap between Marxist principle and practice, especially in Eastern Europe...

...And there is a Marxism that is closed to dialogue, the Marxism of institutions...

...A non-practicing Jew, Bloch had two concerns of interest to theology...

...Each of these groups must work out liberation within its own context, and had begun to do so...

...They show that justice is God's design for every member of his human family, and that the word and work of Jesus are centered about liberation...

...The church, throughout much of its history in most parts of the world, had aligned itself, almost unthinkingly, with those on the fashionable side of the street, the holders of power who would resist any effort to diminish or destroy that power...

...Girardi was a trusted member of the dialogue groups...

...It was the first time theologians had come together ecumenically from these three continents heavy with oppression...

...In the 1960s he had changed...

...Rather, then, than take a definition of liberation from theologians, I would prefer to take a definition shared by both the theologians and bishops of Latin America...

...The Latin Americans were told that even their theology of liberation has something of an elitist ring...

...Concretely, Garaudy pointed to the Second Vatican Council as evidence that even the Catholic Church could undergo metanoia, and be prophetic within society instead of benignly imparting blessings on things as they are...

...Interested Catholics everywhere have already begun to hear with increasing frequency such hitherto unfamiliar terms as "social sin," "sinful institutions," "orthodoxy and orthopraxis" (we shall be saved Jess by what we believe than what we do, and for the Christian, that is Christopraxis, as Frederick Herzog suggests), and "institutionalized violence...

...Indeed, it might be considered an extension of the Council into the specific context of Latin America...

...They thus came together, as they expressed it, "from the other side of the earth and the underside of history...

...Had St...

...It appears in the document on Justice issued by the Latin America Bishops' Conference (CELAM) at its meeting at Medellin, Colombia, in 1968: The American Church has a message for all men on this continent who "hunger and thirst after justice...

...The Scriptures show, not the God of the philosophers, but the God of the Magnificat, who casts down the mighty from their seats and exalts the lowly...

...Could it also be, as the bishops suggest, that these same factors account for the poverty and powerlessness of that vast Appalachia which we call the Third World...

...Ironically, the very term, "liberation," has caused both confusion and consternation among many theologians in the United States, despite the fact that our own revolution was fought to achieve the inalienable rights of "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness...

...Thus, when a conference was called in Detroit in 1975 to discuss "Theology in the Americas," it brought together Catholic and Protestant Latin American and J North American theologians both black and white, female and male...

...It was not a tidy, yawn-provoking assembly...

...But Christian hope, like charity, is inclusive, and the church itself "the sacrament of hope for all mankind...

...Ninety percent of its more than 300,000,000 population have been baptized, and Christianity, principally Roman Catholicism, remains a powerful political and cultural force...

...Garaudy thought that his distinction between religion as alienation and religion as protest could lead to two results: it could lead Christians to participate in "the revolutionary movement," and could blunt the general Christian charge that Marxism led to systematic atheism and hostility to religion...

...The same tension between universality and particularity was shown at another conference held in 1976 at Dar es Salaam, Tanzania...

...ann writes: into hope, impatience, lis unquiet no longer r under it, ct with the Metz and al thinking hilosopher...

...However accurate that might be, the fact is beyond doubt: a non-practicing Jewish Marxist played a shaping role in the development of a Christian theology of hope...

...Marxism would be the poorer," he wrote, "if St...

...Like Cardinal Newman and Teilhard de Chardin, Cardinal Suhard was an unseen, uncounted, but very real participant in Vatican Council II...

...As a consequence, he was able rather readily to absorb the "implicitly Christian" values of Marxism...

...What should be the response of Christians to this phenomenon, both as participants in history and as followers of Christ...

...The last General Congregation of the Jesuits (197475) called on its members "under the banner of the cross to commit themselves to the crucial struggle for the faith, and the struggle for justice which the faith demands...

...He began to talk about "Socialism with a human face," and his actions showed that he was concerned with a Marxism of persons, not persona, not merely a change of mask...

...By thus concretely acting to help the oppressed achieve justice and freedom, by destroying the present barriers of class, race, education, the church will effect the true reconciliation of both oppressors and oppressed and thus truly become what it has rarely been—a church for all...

...Christian hope not only impels toward political commitment but inspires political judgments...

...In the mid-1960s European Christian and Marxist thinkers began a series of meetings designed to chart their differences and, more importantly, to probe their common hopes for the future of humanity...

...Toict appeals an example preach...

...The climate for these meetings seemed propitious...

...The successive UNCTAD conferences (United Nations Conference on Trade and Development) have made it quite clear that the "have" nations are not about to change patterns of trade in order to benefit the "have-nots...

...his efforts were directed toward having Marxists themselves purge Marxism of the Stalinist legacy and present a human face to the hopes and aspirations of the world's people...

...The East was under Communist rule, and religion was practiced under severe restraints when permitted at all...

...It is all but impossible not to hear the language of Medellin and of the theologians of liberation in the following well-known (and controversial) statements of the Synod: Action on behalf of justice and participation in the transformation of the world fully appear to us as a constitutive dimension of the preaching of the Gospel, or, in other words, of the Church's mission for the redemption of the human race and its liberation from every oppressive situation...

...has subjected them: hunger, misery, oppression and ignorance, in a word, that injustice and hatred which have their origin in human selfishness...

...Suhard spoke of problems confronting, not only the church in France or Western Europe, but the church everywhere...

...These commitments converged at the Third Inter-American Meeting of Religious in Montreal, November, 1977, representing 300,000 men and women of religious congregations in the Western Hemisphere...

...If the subject is oppression vs...

...was centered on the past, present and possible futures of the French church in the 1950s...

...As is clear from his autobiography, he fought a constant battle against regarding human kind as utterly hopeless, fully cognizant that from his standpoint, despair would have been the unforgivable sin against the Holy Spirit...

...It is not surprising that Latin American liberation theology, speaking for the oppressed, should have a creative resonance in the Third World...

...In 1969 Gustavo Gutierrez, a Catholic theologian from Peru, was asked to prepare a background paper on the theology of development for SODEPAX, the Committee on Society, Development and Peace, jointly constituted the year before by the World Council of Churches and the Pontifical Committee on Justice and Peace...

...But every street has two sides and a middle...

...Even more, each could learn from the other...

...For them, the principal theological locus is the fact that the modern world is divided into rich and poor, among nations and within nations...

...It is the same God who, in the fullness of time, sends his Son in the flesh, so that He might come to liberate all men from the slavery to which sin...

...The first was his conviction of transcendence...