Theology in the Americas
Views, An Exchange of
EXCHANGE OF VIEWS Theology in the Americas More like a 'happening' Waltham, Mass. To the Editors: Although I have deep respect for Peter Steinfels's writing ability and perceptive social...
...Criticisms will be creative only when they are raised from those who struggle alongside, not look down from above...
...Everyone danced...
...The professor beside me commented "You have to take this man seriously...
...The whole conference had been taken over by the left...
...It also agreed that each particular project, with its designated number, recruit its own people in light of the divergent ideological viewpoints within its ranks...
...My correspondents rightly stress that I was not...
...Of course the people I talked to could have imagined this discrimination...
...These references provide an emotional backdrop, but they actually have very little logical connection with the validity of the political stance chosen by Theology in the Americas in this country...
...2. TIA and the labor movement...
...But in fact my statements about the revolutionary avant-garde were not my "central political assertion...
...James Cone «poke for the many groups when he noted that even though there are universal dimensions to oppression, there is a need to recognize that victims are particular people who are "not all in the same boat...
...Holland, Cox, and West really should read more carefully...
...But when that racist reality is absorbed into our consciousness and we take it back into that work-a-day white world, we see that world with new eyes, new sensitivities, new awareness...
...But the oppression of Polish workers and Polish intellectuals and Polish religious believers, and the resistance this oppression has provoked, are matters of long standing...
...it also recognizes the need to support progressive rank-and-file dissident groups who must fight the union bureaucracy as well as management...
...labor movement is neither inflexible nor dogmatic...
...El Salvador, Nicaragua, and the Philippines," and to the sacrifices and sufferings of people in those areas...
...It should be obvious that the TIA working document was prepared far in advance of the conference (in the fall of 1979, to be exact)—hence, months before the Polish struggle escalated and temporarily grabbed the limelight from other gallant liberation struggles, e.g...
...seminary students from all over...
...They are trustworthy, they are not anti-TIA, and their experience is in no way rebutted by the facts that Cox and West mention...
...Harvey Cox and I could have a good argument about the relative weight of the revolutionary avant-garde phenomenon, as distinct from other historical factors, in accounting for Communist dictatorships...
...nuns from Denver...
...12] had been written by someone who attended it...
...Harvey Cox finds this impossible to credit because of a DSOC presence in Detroit...
...All this variety of individuals and contexts does not seem to prevent TIA from making some pretty definitive—dare one say dogmatic—judgments about America, capitalism, international affairs, etc...
...Steinfels (who did not attend the conference) gives the false impression that the Third-World coalition (he wrongly adds white feminists) "took over" by maumau tactics and that this "takeover" was anti-socialist and anti-white...
...It is easy enough to blame the "real world" for this rather than to look at the left itself more critically...
...Cornel West believes that the charge of discrimination is refuted by detailing the criteria that were established for attendance...
...I had long been aware of the widely divergent worldviews of these groups, and marveled at their ability to unite...
...But I think that such sentimentality also might have something to do with elementary political errors...
...But this heterogeneous flavor is missing from Steinfels's report...
...These seemed to come from some of those unidentified people Peter Steinfels must have interviewed, and from parts of the Black caucus...
...In one sense, the concrete descriptions by Sydney Brown and Harvey Cox (and the reference to "happenings" by Norman Faramelli) are a healthy counterpoint to my article...
...As a person with equal loyalties to both DSOC and TIA I hope that we can avoid any further perpetuation of sniping at each other, an activity which all "lefts" (including Christian ones) seem to do with such consummate skill, much to the delight of those who wish we would all just shut up and go away...
...1 do believe, however, major forward steps were taken in the joining together of those very divergent ethnic groups, and I hope the ethnics, the women, and the whites chosen for the staff and board of TIA will be people who have the keen, critical, analytical eye necessary to effect social and political change...
...The American Indian participants held a tree-planting ceremony...
...If such individuals were in fact available for comment, then West has a valid complaint—but not with me...
...I don't believe so...
...Are they addressed anywhere in the conference's working document...
...That was no quip, tasteless or otherwise...
...labor leaders are by and large committed to capitalism is, as West says, true...
...politics...
...We wanted to say "We know, we know"—but kept realizing we didn't know, needing to be reminded that if one is of color, one is of color forever, in a world of white power, never fully protected against the next subtle, or razorsharp, jab of discrimination...
...NORMAN J. FARAMELLI A learning experience Heath, Mass...
...At Detroit II there was a genuine search for political-economic alternatives...
...Back to the white world we all live in...
...I would submit that domination by Third-World references, and the corresponding conceptualization of American politics in Third-World terms, has impaired left-wing political thinking and strategy in the U.S...
...The Hispanics sponsored a fabulous fiesta with a local Puerto Rican band...
...FINALLY, the question of emphasis...
...Let me conclude with an appeal...
...I do not agree, however, with what seems to be the central political assertion of his article, namely that the deployment of a revolutionary avant-garde is the theory that has "led to the personal and party dictatorships of the Communist nations...
...So when he says that "it can reasonably be demanded that Theology in the Americas . . . demonstrate a basic clarity about what kind of socialism it has in mind," my eyes focus on the "it...
...At its worst, this kind of invocation (should we call it "Third-Worlding...
...Perhaps it is only an advanced case of jadedness that makes me smile at Sydney Brown's W.P.A...
...I never suggested that the transfer of control was not democratically accomplished...
...First, his attack on the Leninism implicit in the strategy of many of the planners is bound to harden them in their Leninist convictions and further isolate them from the mainlines of American society...
...One marked contrast, however, was the rich cultural ethos (including a sense of humor) of the ethnic groups compared to the rational, humorless slogans of white participants who stressed "socialist alternatives...
...The real issue is that the construction of any political-economic alternative has to recognize the particularity (or social/ Commonweal: 654 cultural ethos) of each group prior to blurting out universalized slogans...
...Therefore it is necessary to set the record straight...
...Deep cleavages, mistrusts, and angers mysteriously softened, smoothed over, and were healed the last evening when wine and Puerto Rican music swept us into gaiety and dancing...
...We left the conference amidst flying rumors...
...This commitment is revealed not only in its domestic practices and policies, but also in the movement's widely documented support of U.S...
...I cared that they not simply be upwardly mobile clergymen of color who were well on their way to getting their piece of the American pie...
...I do not dispute many of these judgments...
...These from anxious white feminists...
...Steinfels's friend encountered obstacles not because of her connection with DSOC but rather because of her relation (or lack of relation) with a particular project...
...5. The "takeover" at Detroit...
...I pick and choose...
...Brown, in effect, charge me with precisely such misemphasis...
...workers are committed to capitalism...
...This committee, representing the nine projects of TIA, agreed that women and Third-World peoples should constitute at least fifty percent of the conference participants...
...A high point of the week for me was a "labor history tour" of Detroit...
...Hence, it is more than likely that Mr...
...I can certainly understand their sense of solidarity with admirable people who have endured in the struggle for social justice, and their sense of exaltation at the heterogeneity of the Detroit participants...
...Democratic socialists in my judgment, should follow a path of dialogue rather than condemnation...
...Most of them are good people, who are committed to the poor, scandalized by our social system, and hungry for any resources which may help them change it...
...Because I was white, I was excluded, was not welcome...
...Arriving at the conference, I entered a large, noisy dining room, and was startled to find it peopled by friends extraordinarily dear to me, gathered from the far corners of the American world, both north and south...
...No doubt Messrs...
...Fourth, and most important, Mr...
...As one who attended both Detroit I and Detroit II, I found these conferences more like "happenings" than typical conferences...
...I say this as one who objected well beforehand to the uncreative direction it was taking, an objection confirmed by the event itself...
...as well as facile divisions into oppressors and oppressed, verges on intellectual bullying...
...I will not comment on Steinfels's unspecified suggestion that what he calls "key elements" in the TIA were "at least 'close to' the Communist party and other Leninist sects...
...I am sorry that my correspondents have so little to say about it...
...Second, Mr...
...Oddly enough, this tendency runs directly counter to that "contextualization" that is so important in liberation theology...
...And thereby, of course, harmed the cause of the Third World...
...I simply don't know what Professor West means by my "tasteless quip" about being told that the conference's organizers were on vacation...
...Second, his references to a "takeover" by minorities as a deja vu of the late sixties and as "self-destructive . . . mau-mauing" bears no relation to what actually happened and seems a racial slur...
...had taken over the labor dialogue...
...Clearly there are some labor unions which authentically represent the interests of their members...
...I ran the gamut of joy, anger, outrage, sadness, rejection, reconciliation, challenge, and laughter...
...It is also true that by and large U.S...
...For me, the conference was a deeply stretching, moving, troubling, learning experience...
...But there are limits to the usefulness of such experiences and reactions as political guides...
...Finally, despite Steinfels's assertion, there was absolutely no "mau-tnauing" at Detroit...
...The entire TIA staff would be out of work by next week" . . . and so on...
...The most moving statement at Detroit came from a young Catholic priest who had just been released from a Filipino prison after spending four years in it for opposing the Marcos regime...
...The complexity of historical causes and contexts does not prevent TIA from prejudging strategies recommended by the Milton Friedmans of the world or from judging the violations of rights that assorted juntas claim to be necessitated by their particular historical reality...
...However, neither the conference objectives nor the working document's section on the socialist alternative mention decentralization or, for that matter, liberties...
...Professor West seems to think that he disposes of this problem by citing a phrase from TIA's Detroit- objectives about the exploration of "creative" forms of socialism...
...I was surprised mat I did not feel mis was asking too much...
...It is hundreds of Christians in a variety of contexts trying to be faithful to the Gospel in the real political world...
...A similar double standard pervades Joe Holland's pleas for "dialogue" and criticism only from "alongside...
...Just as clearly there are some which do not...
...Another was with a minister from Appalachia who is now gearing up for the contract fight the miners will undergo this coming spring...
...How "close...
...There should, however, be a place for whites as wejl...
...SYDNEY THOMSON BROWN Set the record straight New York, N.Y...
...It acknowledges the significant yet limited role played by marginal progressive figures in the movement's leadership...
...Both repeatedly refer to "Third-World concerns ," to the' 'hard battlefields of...
...The 1980 presidential election vividly Commonweal: 660 illustrated the extent to which left-wing alternatives have been pushed to the margins of U.S...
...The Religion and Labor caucus played a vigorous role at Detroit II, and will I hope continue to play such a role in the future...
...One of the best conversations I had was with a black woman who is a local officer in the UAW...
...To the Editors: Although I have deep respect for Peter Steinfels's writing ability and perceptive social analysis, I think it would have been wiser if the report of the Theology in the Americas Conference ["Name Your Socialism," Sept...
...Third, although I often quarreled with the assumptions and policies of the planners of the conference (perhaps more than anyone), I did not notice many DSOC people or democratic socialists willing to put in all the time and energy over the past six years to create and sustain Theology in the Americas...
...capitalism...
...By my count, of the roughly five hundred people there, half were white and half were people of color, half were Catholic and half were Protestants, half were men and half were women...
...Liberal, caring, white male friends, who had experienced this exclusion before, said to me "We must go with whatever they decide...
...labor movement is based on the undeniable commitment of the majority of the movement's leadership to the preservation and promotion of U.S...
...Many came directly from hard battlefields of liberation struggles in El Salvador, Nicaragua, and the Philippines...
...Both espouse types of socialism that differ in some respects from mine...
...This opinion prevailed in Detroit, and neither Cox nor West says otherwise...
...Cox's and West's misreading of my point about the Polish workers' struggle reveals how little they have confronted my argument...
...I would want to disagree with his use of the examples of Zimbabwe and (especially) Nicaragua, as well as insist that it will be some time before democracy and socialism can be said to be established there...
...The same problem arises, perhaps in a more serious way, in the letters from Harvey Cox and Joe Holland...
...I look forward to the funding Joe Holland will provide Commonweal and my family so that this broadening can come about...
...The evidence he presents to defend such a grand accusation is shoddy, even for political journalism...
...My impression is that the double standard is so ingrained in certain segments of the left ("liberation struggles" actually means "struggle against Western capitalism") that no one even notices any more...
...I don't give whole-hearted unanalytical trust to anyone...
...3. The politics of leading individuals in TIA...
...JOE HOLLAND The author replies: I am grateful to my correspondents not only for the compliments with which they precede their criticism, butfor giving me an opportunity to clarify certain things in my original article...
...That U.S...
...I feel sure that had the participants in Detroit known about it, most would have supported and applauded it...
...You realize, he won the Nobel prize...
...I need to know who people are, what they value, how they treat their women folk, what they think of the American economic system, how they act out their beliefs...
...The reason why the ethnic/feminist groups did not seize upon the unifying theme of a "socialist alternative" was less related to a fear of being manipulated by the conference organizers and more to a concern for "particularity" in understanding liberation motifs...
...These absences render his article a major disservice to the Christian left in the United States...
...Cox and West insist that TIA is not dogmatic on this subject., I only know (and only said) that there was a current of opinion in the organization that would lump "the majority of American labor leaders" with "corporate capitalists" as the adversaries of American workers...
...But I did not write that all DSOC members (and especially prominent ones like himself) were banned...
...Of course I knew that the working document and the conference pre-dated the strike...
...the activities of the AFLCIO's American Institute for Free Labor Development...
...TIA's critical attitude toward the U.S...
...He refers only to a friend who encountered obstacles, with no mention whatsoever of the criteria worked out over two years ago by the democratically constituted National Committee of TIA (of which I was a member...
...By and large, they are not intellectuals with the leisure to reflect on substantive questions in the socialist tradition...
...We whites were there to hear and take it all...
...Black theologian Dr...
...That is, Blacks, Asian-Americans, Hispanics, Native Americans and feminists were not willing to dissolve individual differences under any rubric of universal oppression or universal liberation...
...We cannot avoid exerting our critical faculties about what engagements are most promising...
...There were persuasive statements on panel after panel from people involved in labor, many from Detroit itself...
...May I also add that I do not find the road TIA has been traveling leading to "an intellectual, political, and moral dead-end...
...In a world in which bishops are assassinated and Christians are tortured and exiled for being part of the search for liberation, those of us who are democratic socialists in the Western parliamentary sense must not prejudge our sisters and brothers whose historical reality necessitates other strategies...
...One didn't say "Oh no, I can't dance...
...I would not trust persons simply because they are white...
...Maybe he should spend a little time in the Third World, perhaps at least a month in Chile living in a poor squatter settlement...
...It seems obvious to me that such dictatorships, which I vehemently oppose, are the result of a complex of historical causes, not just of avant-garde theory, and that in some situations (such as Zimbabwe and Nicaragua) some kind of avant-garde simply had to make a move...
...And to counteract it, I put on record, in italics, the vote of confidence that even critics of the Detroit meeting voiced about TIA's long-range prospects...
...we must give wholehearted trust to the people of color...
...imperialism abroad (e.g...
...I have little doubt that delegates to meetings of very different political hues—right to life congresses come to mind—have at least analogous experiences...
...Well, I did have second thoughts, and I even expressed them in my article...
...4. TIA's failure to "name" its socialism...
...It is just possible that the persons Steinfels refers to may have had difficulty getting preregistration because the planners were seeking to achieve just this remarkable admixture...
...in El Salvador, Guatemala, South Africa, etc...
...To the Editors: Peter Steinfels's analysis of the Theology in the Americas conference was disappointing for several reasons...
...The C.P...
...I cared that there be good strong feminists on the staff and board, along with people with a keen eye for theological and systemic analysis...
...The problem is that historically reports of left-wing views have been exaggerated or abused...
...Peter Steinfels is obviously a gifted intellectual, who has made and will continue to make important contributions to the American left...
...I do wonder why TIA should suddenly become so permissive and modest when it comes to some basic judgments about forms of socialism...
...Third, his remark concerning the lack of reference to the courageous struggle of Polish workers is, to put it bluntly, downright cheap...
...E.g., it is not true that America's poor "are for the most part people of color...
...But phrases like these are open to all sorts of readings...
...For me the interaction and energy generated by this blending of Christians involved in such a variety of actions resulted in one of the best conferences I have ever attended in my life...
...The conference had been taken over on the contrary, by middle class Black clergymen...
...May it not be the residual legacy of colonialism which leads many democratic socialists to be distant from Third-World concerns, and then condemnatory of shortcomings...
...More important, it is intellectually and morally bankrupt...
...In both those lands, incidentally, it now seems evident that after such a struggle real democracy is not in fact ruled out at all...
...I was distressed because it seemed to me that Theology in the Americas was doing this badly needed exploration a grave disservice...
...I find this reply highly unpersuasive...
...It is neglect of facts like these that reveals the sectarian mentality...
...The plunge from my initial intense joy at this gathering of like-minded co-strugglers for justice, to this clear-cut exclusion, wrenched my soul...
...As a member of DSOC I strongly believe in democratic socialism with equal emphasis on both words...
...But I might suggest that barring the possibility of turning all American voters into peaceand-justice professionals who travel around the globe, it would be shrewder to concentrate on why so many of them find conservative rather than liberal (let alone socialist) alternatives more credible at this time in this country...
...The statement about "decentralized democratic control" that "precludes poverty and protects liberties" is his own gloss on the text—a welcome one...
...More rumors...
...Steinfels's attempt to argue that a critical perspective on the U.S...
...It was not right...
...I can love and care, but trust is something else...
...Harvey Cox, in fact, reinforces this point when he speaks of the different meanings which can be attached to words like democracy and socialism...
...feisty feminists from the east, west, north, and south...
...There were people at Detroit II working both these avenues...
...I find it one of the brightest hopes for the church and for theology today on an otherwise grim horizon...
...ordinary workers, secretaries, judicatory staff members—people united in a life-long shared struggle for human justice in the name of the Christian church...
...My Commonweal: 658 article did advert to the aspect of the meeting they describe (it "brought together a lot of old friends, and created some new friends, and there was surely much encouraging talk and even a bit of spiritually refreshing socializing"), but clearly my main concern was elsewhere...
...His thesis maintains that Blacks are by nature genetically inferior...
...as much as any other factor over the last decade and a half...
...The Third-World coalition, along with the other conference participants, acknowledged and endorsed the democratic process initiated by the National Committee of TIA years ago...
...Surely this is an instance in which a plurality of approaches must be maintained...
...I was also reunited at Detroit with a former student of mine, a Nicaraguan Baptist minister who has spent the past three years in the Sandinista battle against Somoza...
...In such a situation, all dogmatisms, both those that would exclude a DSOC perspective and those which would exclude Christians who have been forced to commit themselves to a more overtly revolutionary or even to an armed struggle strategy, must be avoided...
...Or female forever, in a world of male power...
...Cox is too good a logician to need me to point out that the fact that some DSOC members were present does not mean that others encountered no special obstacle in applying...
...I was aware, as I wrote, of the "danger of misemphasis in such an outsider's view...
...Holland, in effect, confirms the connection...
...The same also holds for his tasteless quip about all the official organizers being on vacation—which is false but not worth pursuing...
...I wrote just the opposite...
...As an active member of DSOC I was happy to meet several other members there, to see the display of DSOC literature in the Commonweal: 656 resources room, and to discover that a special meeting to introduce DSOC and its concerns took place at Detroit...
...Steinfels believes that we must "choose our socialisms...
...The strength of Detroit II was its diversity...
...But while stressing the lack of logical connection, West says nothing about the factual connection, specifically in TIA's case, between such an attitude toward the labor movement and such a general political outlook...
...Nothing could be further from the truth...
...Regarding what Steinfels considers TIA's attitude toward the labor movement, again I experienced the conference differently...
...It's stupid...
...There was no' 'takeover.'' The conference changed from day to day in response to the movement and sentiment of participants...
...And to suggest that mis viewpoint is the monopoly of the Communist party (or other Leninist groups) and supportive of a Gulag is ludicrous...
...peter steinfels 21 November 1980: 661...
...Steinfels calls "an intellectual, political and moral dead-end," but rather to a new level of Christian engagement in the struggle against racism and sexism which is adamantly anti-imperialist in character and creatively socialist in content...
...Harvey Cox finds my statement on this matter "vaguely sinister" and hopes I had "second thoughts" about it...
...One simply danced...
...Black, White, Asian, Hispanic seminary teachers...
...I can't say, however, that these letters are very encouraging...
...My solution was to conclude, "Leave personal politics . . . out of it"—in other words, let TIA insiders be monarchists, Maoists, or members of the Mickey Mouse Club—just as long as the organization is fundamentally clear about the kind of radical alternatives it favors and rejects...
...I don't agree* either with basic Leninist assumptions of politics, but I believe it would be possible to begin a dialogue early on with religious people who are moving in a Leninist direction...
...I can care about people, but I'll trust them when I know who they are and how they act...
...CORNEL WEST Member of Coordinating Team, TIA Executive Director, Black Theology Project, TIA Assistant Professor, Union Theological Seminary Avoiding dogmatisms Cambridge, Mass...
...Readers may judge for themselves whether the events described in these letters qualify as a "takeover...
...I had meant to make completely clear not only that fact but also that I have had no close involvement with Theology in the Americas ("I write all this as an outsider to Theology in the Americas...
...Faramelli and Mrs...
...but I have seen no proof of this claim...
...I heard of no doctrinaire insistence on working only with labor dissidents...
...If anyone was banned from Detroit II because of DSOC membership, that would be a serious wrongdoing...
...In retrospect, I found the people I trusted best were the people I knew, and had learned to trust...
...If members of a religious social action group were reported to be sympathetic to Opus Dei or to have taken the same position on the Panama Canal treaty as Moral Majority, would Cox suggest that such reports be ignored as unworthy of mention...
...Such vague tags salve a few consciences while evading the real issue...
...Mindless trust is not only patronizing...
...Blacks, Hispanics, Asian-Americans and Native Americans came together in a single caucus...
...Second, some readers assumed I was present at the Detroit meeting...
...We left, willing to wait and see...
...And believe me, I have attended plenty...
...1. Discrimination against DSOC members...
...How about it...
...If Mr...
...I did, nevertheless, feel picky about who those ethnic representatives might be...
...Steinfels had but read an application to the conference he would have seen that TIA purports "to explore a creative form of socialism" which under decentralized democratic control precludes poverty and protects liberties...
...Stalin and Pol Pot thought their forms of socialism "creative," and in a diabolical way they were...
...I would like to return to this question of emphasis, but first some matters of clearcut difference...
...When the various projects were made responsible for the future leadership, it was by a vote of the entire assembly...
...What I said was that in my experience during the late sixties, Organizations that had suspended the normal one-person/one-vote principle in order to give minorities stronger voice almost always found themselves eventually caught up in a self-destructive "species of manipulative rhetoric—popularly known as 'mau-mauing.' " I mentioned this as a past problem that I hoped would not be repeated...
...Anger, outrage, bitterness from people of color and women...
...Though we may have been excluded physically from that "people of color" caucus, we have become a part of that "people of color" awareness...
...To the Editors: The otherwise uniformly dependable Peter Steinfels bombed very badly in his report of the Detroit •conference of Theology in the Americas...
...The "people of color" returned from their caucus with demands for majority control of TIA—control in numbers of ethnic people on the board and staff, which of course meant financial control as well...
...more often, it is only distracting...
...At least in the United States, to do otherwise is politically suicidal...
...That's not impossible, and I'd be happy to help arrange it...
...Black, Hispanic, indigenous, Asian-American, white, and feminist participants spoke candidly and openly, listened to each other, expressed the need for coalitions...
...that those about whom I felt most uneasy were those I knew the least...
...mural, complete with worker priests, "feisty feminists," Blacks, Whites, Asians, Hispanics, all "swept into gaiety and dancing" by "wine and Puerto Rican music...
...After long discussions and dialogue—characterized by intense disagreement and mutual respectbetween elected representatives of the projects, a decision was reached...
...Unlike Peter Steinfels, I did attend the Theology in the Americas conference in Detroit...
...On the face of it, there is no reason that the political outlook of individuals working for a political organization should not be fair game for examination...
...Steinfels placed entirely too much emphasis on the background document (which was seldom referred to at the conference) and to the intentions of the organizers (which had little impact on the flow of the conference...
...In my article I used the word once and put it in quotation marks (a) because that was the term that others employed, and (b) because the word seemed only to approximate what occurred...
...I find his claim that members of DSOC were barred because of their membership in that organization highly implausible...
...Were any spokespeople for dissidents in Soviet-bloc nations invited to the meeting...
...That would seem to make it all the more necessary that at least one touchstone for any discussion of socialist alternatives should be the historical cases for which claims of "socialism" have been put forth...
...It all sounds too familiar, and I hope that on re-reading that paragraph Steinfels has had some second thoughts on whether it is wise or fair to employ this 21 November 1980: 657 form of rhetoric...
...My central argument was that you cannot seriously discuss socialist alternatives without acknowledging and analyzing the massive evils that have been committed and institutionalized in the name of socialism...
...I am sure that a month among the poor in Chile would enlarge my perspective as would a month in Cambodia, East Germany, Egypt, or almost anywhere...
...As long as Theology in the Americas is governed by a majority of ethnic/ feminist groups (which is precisely what the structure adopted in Detroit II allows), I would not share Steinfels's concern about TIA offering uncritical support for socialism or any other kind of political-economic alternative...
...Too much to take in, too much to feel...
...Steinfels's claim that various pressures were exerted to discourage applicants connected with the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee (DSOC)—of which he is a member—is unwarranted...
...Quite the contrary...
...There was all this and more...
...I also realize that for many Christians in many places in the world today, both democracy and socialism have different meanings than we attach to them...
...Since Theology in the Americas seemed to have affirmed a desire, in Norman Faramelli's apt terms, to turn from "universalized slogans" to a "concern for 'particularity' " a concern that might Very well include what I have in mind, I wished it well...
...Was there any criticism of'' socialist countries" (e.g., Vietnam, Cuba) contained in the working documents—or speakers chosen to address those problems at the conference...
...Their viewpoint is probably representative.of most conference participants, who are not much concerned (but perhaps should be) with the political questions I raised...
...It might have something to do with the kind of intellectual weaknesses and moral evasions found in the TIA working document...
...Sh'ockley fancies himself an authority on Black intelligence...
...And I did not say there was any "mau-mauing" at Detroit...
...I hadn't believed that, short of a conference on the far side of the pearly gates, such a coming together was possible—worker priests from Peru...
...All rumors...
...I did not, however, write that a concern with labor dissidents is necessarily tied to, or is a monopoly of, a Leninist outlook...
...HARVEY COX Criticism from within Washington, D.C...
...To the Editors: It is unfortunate that the fine analytical powers and intellectual fair play displayed in Peter Steinfels's The Neoconservatives are absent in his recent article on the Theology in the Americas (TIA) conference in Detroit...
...community organizers from Appalachia, Minnesota, California...
...We might even learn something ourselves in the process...
...These criteria, of which I was aware, left considerable discretion to the staff, and I remain persuaded that in some cases the criteria were applied so as to facilitate attendance and in other cases so as to discourage it...
...it was a plain report of what I was told when I called the TIA office, asked for three or four individuals and then asked if there were any other individuals responsible for the meeting whom I could reach in the next two days...
...His convictions about democratic socialism would hopefully be un-' changed, but his style might be more creative...
...It seemed right mat, in an organization whose goal is justice for the poor, and in a nation whose poor are for the most part people of color, a majority of the board and staff of TIA should be people of color...
...Liberation theology is premised on the assumption that the Gospel message is first mediated through the poor and oppressed, and hence (as many acknowledge) Black, Hispanic, Native American, and Asian-American religious traditions, as well as the religious experience of women, have a special message for us and a privileged place in a new theology...
...First, Mr...
...This decision does not lead to what Mr...
...Was he concerned about the political allegiances of the CELAM staff and advisors preparing for the Puebla meeting last year...
...Close in what way...
...TIA's critical disposition toward the U.S...
...I replied, "Not me...
...labor movement leads necessarily to a vulgar Leninist position on social change—and hence his linking TIA to "the Communist party and other Leninist left-wing sects" — is unconvincing...
...This was the central concern of my piece (as well as its title...
...I agree...
...TIA is not an "it...
...First, some readers assumed that I was criticizing the very idea of exploring socialist alternatives for the United States...
...There are many potential partners for dialogue, potential allies in struggle...
...On the plane home, a young professor of marketing from a Pennsylvania university sat by me, reading Playboy's interview with Professor Shockley (the Stanford University electronics engineer who won the Nobel prize for his invention of the transistor...
...There can, in fact, be many other reasons for supporting labor dissidents...
...But surely he would 21 November 1980: 659 admit, in turn, that our century has frequently seen these terms transformed into Orwellian grotesqueries...
...I still do...
...As for his curious statement that TIA did not support the strikes of the Polish workers, readers should remember that the conference took place in early August before news of that struggle reached America...
...To be sure, the conference verbal diet was too rich—panel after panel of challenge, diatribe, scholarly analysis, political confrontation...
...They were subsidiary to my point about TIA demonstrating a basic clarity about the kind of socialism it has in mind—to which Cox replies that TIA is not an "it" but "hundreds of Christians" struggling "in a variety of contexts," all of which rules out any prejudgment...
...In stressing the value of the Detroit meeting as a' 'happening'' or a "learning experience," Mr...
...What I am saying is that in both the actual operation and discussion at Detroit, I sensed a much wider variety of political and philosophical options than Steinfels found in the preparatory document (which was never referred to at Detroit...
...The process of seeing the conference in perspective was already under way . . . Tirades against racism, sexism, 21 November 1980: 655 exploitation are hard to take all in one place in five concentrated days...
...E.g., it is not true that her Shockley-loving, Playboy -reading young professor adequately represents the "real world" or the "white world"—any more than the drug-dealing hustlers who hang out in my neighborhood adequately represent ' 'people of color.'' S/he who lives by the stereotype will die by the stereotype...
...And I entirely agree with his suggestion that there are valid notions of democracy and socialism that may not fit our preconceptions or experience...
...For most participants, the issue is not whether a socialist alternative should be explored, nor whether the present political economy should be defended...
...Nor would I trust them simply because they are not white...
...If anything, union leadership is somewhat to the left of membership...
...Yet for now it must happen...
...The wording of that sentence, its vaguely sinister phrasing, and its failure to allow for any reasonable response made me feel very uneasy...
...Back to the real world...
Vol. 107 • November 1980 • No. 21
