Faith and Ideologies
West, Cornel
Books: WHITHER LIBERATION THEOLOGY?. L IBERATION theologies are the principal forms of Christian prophetic thought and action in our contemporary age. They represent the ways of life...
...This neo-Kantian vocabulary, found in Emst Cassirer and Susanne K. Langer, is highly suspect...
...But is not his own technocratic conception of faith a reduction of meaning to mere use, planning, and efficacy...
...New York THEME: The Educator~ Role In Inviting Youth into the Public Sphere Dr...
...Bonaventure University...
...Jamaica...
...This move requires not only rigorous interdisciplinary tools, but also more intense interaction with secular colleagues -- thereby facilitating more religious participation within the larger public conversation in society and culture at large...
...Can faith be a set of "premises" which delimit what we can and do know and also be a "x "God's special favor toward the poor, the oppressed, and the handicapped serves as theme for these sermons and addresses by a major theologian...
...II sion now so subtly relaxed that after almost two hundred years of pleading and debating, with both, Washington and Rome, and dying in their nation's wars to prove themselves true Americans, American Catholics 'now appear so absorbed by their cultures to be barely distinguishable in social and ethical behavior...
...A powerful analysis ot~ and indictment ot~ our modern world" nBernard Ramm, American Baptist Seminary of the West ISBN 0-06-062238-5 $19.95" *Suggested consumer price At bookstores now HFIRPER ROW I I] I SRN I::RRNEISCO 27 January 1984:55 certain type of knowledge...
...On this question of the politicization of youth the workshop seeks to break new ground in the evolving theory of youth ministry...
...and M.T.S...
...At this point one is forced to conclude that Segundo's intellectual project yields philosophical confusion...
...His book illustrates the severe limitations of opting for a full-blown philosophical anthropology...
...Professor of Religious Education and Catechetical Ministry...
...That is, i n contrast to Wittgenstein's view that language constitutes our social world, Segundo holds that language expresses private worlds...
...In this hook, Segundo's ambition and audacity lead to organizational fragmentation and philosophical confusion...
...For information or for a catalogue, write or call: CATHOLIC THEOLOGICAL UNION 5401 South Cornell Chicago, Illinois 60615 [312] 324-8000 27 January 1984:57...
...Segundo's aim in this text is threefold...
...An uncommitted and detached liberation theologia~ is ' co, tradiction in terms...
...The theological concerns of liberation theology are now shifting to either philosophithinking: tl~e enablingof young people to find a public voice and forms of l~ublic action on social tssues...
...John's University...
...Furthermore, if liberation theologies have taught us anything, it is that Christian thinkers must be organically linked Ethics & isolation AMERICAN CATROLIC SOCIAL ETRICS TWENTIETH CENTURY APPROACHES Charles E. Curr~a Notre Dame, $21.95, 353 pp...
...After May 1st tuition will be $150.0015lus lodging and meals...
...And as the tentacles of secular professionalism and vulgar politicization further pervade our seminaries and divinity schools, even the theological task itself could become passe...
...Like all serious modes of inquiry, liberation theologies are predicated on crisis -- on human situations of tremendous danger and incipient possibility...
...In American Catholic Social Ethics, Father Charles Curran, of Catholic University, one of our foremost moderateA deep respect for our religious traditions...
...But, following Mannhelm, if morality is socially constituted, philosophical anthropology is undercut...
...Makes a powerful impact" nLibraryJournal ISBN 0-06-065907-6 $12.95" LIVING FAITH B e l i e f and Doubt i n a Perilous World Jacques Ellul "Literally, a stream in the d e s e r t . . . Sociologist and historian Ellul becomes passionate evangelist of an intense life of spirituality...
...Since these "premises" circumscribe the limits of human knowledge, they are immune from rational validation, hence "self-validating...
...If so, he promotes the very program he fears...
...The last direction performs a crucial propagandistic role, but provides little, if any, intellectual depth...
...2) retreat into versions of philosophical anthropology (that is, a philosophy of human existence) which appeal to Kant, Hegel, Feuerbach, or the early Marx and thereby subvert systematic theology -- as in Juan Luis Segundo's The Liberation of Theology...
...We offer the M.Div., M.A...
...So why defend Fromm's exorbitant claim...
...To put it crudely, liberation theologies were expected to both change the world and keep theology alive...
...or (4) resort to practical writings in journalistic styles which attempt to reach the general literate laity and clergy -- as in James Cone's My Soul Looks Back...
...Second, to explore how these two ideas relate to one another, using Christianity and Marxism as interlocutors...
...THEME: Starting From Scratch: Developing a Parish Youth Ministry Program Dr...
...FORCED OPTIONS SOCIAL DECISIONS FOR THE 21ST CENTURY Roger Lincoln Shinn Ilarper & Row, $16.95, 267 pp...
...no matter how half-baked that idea may be...
...Even John Dewey, no friend of modern Luddites like Martin Heidegger, grappled more seriously with the reductionist implications and managerial consequences of crude means-ends analyses...
...Segundo rightly exposes the dimension of faith in modern and postmodern science -- a point noted by David Hume and refined by Michael Polanyi -- yet his means-ends mode of philosophical and political analysis reeks of technocratic rationality...
...He must either fall back on neoKantianism and provide an account of faith as an anthropological dimension or adopt a Mannheimian sociology of knowledge and give up talk about such dimensions...
...Director, New England Consultants in Youth Ministry...
...Is this not viciously circular...
...rorrRmtsrry SPIRITUAL INTEGRATION FOR MINISTRY THEOLOGICAL INTEGRATION FOR MINISTRY A four-part program of theological courses, A flexible program of theological courses, pastoral experience, life in community, and using theological reflection seminars as the spiritual direction, with theological reflection primary means of integrating theory and seminars, praxts...
...At one point in his text, Segundo endorses Mannheim's "real sociology of kn.owledge" yet still characterizes the indispensable unconditional absolute as a value, a "transcendent datum...
...Thus, for the last decade, Catholics--now with like-minded fellow Christians-- have begun asking themselves if the spiritual cost of membership in the Country Club has been too high: even the liturgy for the Fourth of July reflects this questioning as it warns against nationalism and has us pray that we might "ward off the pride that comes with worldly wealth and power...
...Like Immanuel Kant and Matthew Arnold, Segundo wants to preserve the transcendent character of moral conduct yet create a comprehensive secular discourse which subsumes religion...
...They will: (1) relapse back into traditional kinds of systematic theology equipped with new themes, motifs, and insights -- as in Jon Sobrino's Christology at the Crossroads...
...This evolution of liberation theologies is particularly noteworthy in that these theologies ushered forth from an academic discipline which suffers from an immense identity crisis...
...They represent the ways of life and struggle of Christians around the world who have convinced remnants of the church to open its eyes to human misery and oppose socioeconomic systems and political structures that perpetuate such misery...
...Herman Lombaerts...
...Cornel West class, racial, and sexual equality...
...Yet Segundo also defines faith as a "certain type of knowledge...
...John's University...
...Black, Feminist, Native American, Hispanic, and especially Latin American versions of liberation theology have made major contributions to Christian thought and the life of the church...
...Chairman Department of Theoloqv St...
...The first alternative is essential but limited...
...The church theologians are not likely to put forward sophisticated social analyses, just as the more broadly engaged social theorist cannot possibly do justice to the complexities of church theology -- though both can write for a wider audience...
...Professor of Religious Education...
...He ends his book calling for the creation of "an effective cultural tradition" -- a task to be achieved only if the supreme evolutionary quality, flexibility, is internalized and transmitted to the younger generation of freedom fighters...
...PLACE: Cathedral College...
...Surely not...
...Or does Segundo mean that the premises are socially derived and hence we know them through social and historical analysis...
...That is, issues involving value are reduced to technical matters...
...CTU is one of the largest Catholic Schools of Theology in the country...
...A tenwith prophetic churches and progressive movements...
...Rather it is a warmed-over version of neo-Kantianism -- much less refined than those found in Wilhelm Dilthey or Jurgen Habermas...
...OR former Director of Network, a Catholic Social Justice lobby...
...Yet his defense of Erich Fromm's claim that Marx put forward a philosophical anthropology -- which is true for the early Marx but rejected by the later Marx -- is perplexing...
...Mass...
...Mary Street Toronto, Ontario Canada M4Y 2R5 Commonweal: 56 In his discussion of faith, Segundo relies upon a pre-Wittgensteinian view of language...
...The third line of development is the most fruitful and challenging...
...The methodological mandate for systemic social analysis of structures of domination in light of the good news of Jesus Christ is forcing many theologians, preachers, and laity to take seriously the works of Karl Marx and Max Weber, Simone de Beauvoir and W.E.B...
...Brussels THEME: Worship and a Public Voice for Youth: Finding the Proper Connections Joseph Moore...
...In stark contrast to The Liberation of Theology, Segundo's Faith and Ideologies is more a phenomenon than an event, a symptom of the second alternative in the evolution of liberation theologies rather than a mover and shaker on the contemporary scene...
...In my opinion, the major intellectual task of liberation theologians is to continue to reexamine and reshape the traditional doctrines of the church, engage in more serious efforts of social theory, cultural criticism, and historical reconstruction, and write palpable and intelligible essays and texts for the nonacademic literate laity and clergy...
...Segundo is the most ambitious and audacious of the Latin American liberation religious thinkers...
...Liberation theologies are the predominant forms of critical consciousness within the Christian church that respond to the dangers of class, racial, and sexual privilege, and project the possibility of I FAITH AND IDEOLOGIES Juan Luis Segundo Orbls, $14.95, ~ pp...
...Here confusion sets in...
...Owing to his imprecise and amorphous definitions of faith, it is difficult to follow his comparative criticisms of Pannenberg's notion of trust and Tracy's conception of religion...
...Washington...
...A scholarly search for tomorrow's answers...
...Margaret Brennan, I.H.M...
...Without some fort, of ecclesiastical and political praxis, cri~ ical consciousness becomes :,': sounch, brass and theological reflection a tinklii~g cymbal...
...John H McKenna...
...it preserves precious links with elements of the tradition and church but at the inescapable expense of intellectual marginality in our secular intellectual milieu...
...This positive dialogue and candid alliance with both the Academy and political movements helps break down the walls of demarcation between divinity schools and universities, preachers and political activists...
...Yet, ironically, Segundo persists with this expressivist view of language even after invoking the work of the later Wittgenstein which precludes any such view...
...it sidelines many narrowly trained theologians and gives prominence to Christian and secular social theorists, cultural critics, and historians...
...In regard to this precarious though pregnant situation, liberation theologies more than likely will move in one of four directions...
...Surely not...
...But beneath this intense intellectual ferment and heated political discourse lurks a hidden truth: the high moment of liberation theology has passed...
...And even if one decides to do so, it is better to revise already refined versions rather than create one's own out of thin air or derived from anthropologists and psychologists...
...He understands "' faith" to be the human acquisition of meaning and value principally by means of socialization...
...To add more confusion, Segundo understands faith as "the fund of saved energy on which all human planning is based...
...Michael Warren...
...Du Bois, Anthony Giddens, and Christopher Lasch...
...Ideology" is taken to be the human techniques of efficacy and predictability necessary to actualize one's value-laden ends or goals...
...His claims regarding Marx's rejection of philosophy for science and opposition to ontological materialism are persuasive...
...We are the theological home for over twenty religious communities of men and an ever-increasing number of religious women, lay women and lay men...
...Such concrete crises invariably generate forms of critical consciousness...
...DIRECTORS/THEMES: Carol Coston...
...In short, his primary intention is to displace theology and put forward a new philosophical anthropology...
...After brief generalizations of the periods of consciousness-raising, violent action, and repression, Segundo tries to go beyond mere economic and political analysis and accents "the ecological state of human beings" in relation t o nature, the state, and class exploitation...
...The second option, philosophic anthropology, is a trap to be avoided by both theologians and philosophers Commonweal: 54 alike...
...After a rather idiosyncratic though interesting interpretation, Segundo highlights human "access, through the medium of language, to the vast, structured realm of meaning and values...
...University of louvain...
...degrees as well as the Certificate in Pastoral Studies...
...Following Gregory Bateson's Steps to an Ecology of Mind, Segundo defines faith as a "partially self-validating" set of "epistemologieal and ontological premises" which human beings impose on "the flux of happenings" for purposes of order and coherence...
...The section on Christianity and Marxism is, though far from original, competent...
...The theological theme of God's identification with the poor and oppressed now resounds throughout our seminaries, takes shape in some of our ecclesiastical agencies, and regulates the practices in a select few of our churches...
...But in Chapter I entitled "Toward A New Statement of the Problem," it becomes quite clear that Segundo's philosophical anthropology is not new at all...
...Hence, the early enthusiasm for liberation theologies can be attributed not only to the relevance of their perspectives for the oppressed but also to the hope that these theologies would breathe new life into a fading and faltering mode of intellectualreflection...
...The second and third parts of Segundo's book are much better than the first...
...Does the mere possession of values mean that one adheres to a philosophical anthropology...
...Douglaston...
...Needless to say, these three activities require different persons working on different terrains...
...Juan Luis Segundo's Faith and Ideologies exemplifies the second option...
...If so, then can he consistently claim that faith is "an anthropological dimension as universal as the human species itself...
...Kieren Scott...
...11439 _9 Att: Youth Ministry Workshop (212)990-6161.Ext.6425 d•hnt S Name Address City State Zip _ _ UNIVERSITY Telephone: $1 John S Umversfly does nol d*scrlmlnate on |he basts of race color nahonal o t elhnlc origin rehgtgn age sex marllal slalus or hand*cap cal, cultural, social analytical, or historical concerns...
...He disregards the traditional intellectual division of labor in the university and eagerly pursues a daring idea...
...3) spill over into social theory, cultural criticism, and historical reconstruction which may take either Christian or post-Christian forms -- as in Elisabeth Sch'ussler-Fiorenza's In Memory of Her or Mary Daly's Gynecology, respectively...
...In addition to this technocratic image of faith, Segundo's attempt to link this conception of faith to his overarching theory of evolution -- with its desirable homeostatic mechanisms and the "best energy calculus" -- is utterly unconvincing...
...First, to infuse new content i n the categorical notions of faith and ideology...
...S t For Brochure/Registration Information Please Write: Rev...
...This book builds on his earlier work and puts forward a full-blown philosophical anthropology -- a detailed specification of "the universal dimensions of human beings...
...The original texts of James Cone, Mary Daly, and Gustavo Guti~rrez spawned widely diffused and dispersed theological currents...
...As with all ground-breaking upsurges, 27 January 1984:53 liberation theologies emerged with impressive power and insight and presently have evolved in diverse and multiple forms...
...Similar to Habermas, Segundo fears that meaning-structures (faith) are "structured in terms of efficacy (ideology) alone...
...Is the latter a transcendental form of knowledge, a special kind of knowledge that enables us to know the premises that constitute preconditions for knowledge...
...F.- = Regis College, the Jesuit Faculty of Theology in the Toronto School of Theology, offers two eight-month programs in theological study in the heart of downtown Toronto for men and women experienced in ministry...
...it succumbs to a seductive quest for universal categorical schemas that yield either formal results too empty for usefulness or transcendental frameworks that conceal their historicity...
...BOston...
...We offer you a talented and distinguished faculty, a superior library and a complete theological curriculum, all set in one of the most beautiful cities in the world...
...Raymond A . Schroth T HE STRUGGLE between the demands of staying Catholic and being American--between loyalty to an ancient universal faith and the allures of a prosperous democratic society forged by a unique, brief historical experience-has been the central tension of the story of the American Catholic church...
...New York THEME: Youth Politicization: Rethinking Youth's Role in Society COSTS: $12.5.00 per person plus lodging and meals...
...But it also could result in a new kind of theological evasion, a refusal to take seriously the difficult task of specifying Christian identity in a pluralistic world...
...Books: WHITHER LIBERATION THEOLOGY...
...Like Kant of the Critique of Practical Reason, philosophical anthropology has solely a self-validating, i.e., moral basis...
...Professor of Religious Education...
...Third, to examine the concrete situation of present-day Latin America in light of his philosophical perspective...
...In order to make clear how people "express in words their values-structure, their meaning-world," Segundo engages in some close readings of poems -- especially Gustavo Adolfo B6cquer's famous Rima...
...THEME: Finding a Public Voice for Teen Women Dr...
...Individual courses may be taken on a limited basis...
...Segundo rightly suggests that the continuity between the early and later Marx consists of his "ideal conception of the human being...
...Yet as the zenith of liberation theological reflection fades, we witness the proliferation of philosophical investigations, cultural critiques, social analyses, and historical reconstructions from Christian liberationist perspectives...
...And this fear is justified...
...Coordinator Regis College 15 St...
...Segundo's two "basic anthropological dimensions" are faith and ideology...
...But does such an ideal constitute a philosophical anthropology...
...The last section of Segundo's book is a sketch of " a Latin American anthropology" -- a reading of Latin American realities from 1950-1975 in light of his philosophical perspective...
...In short, liberation theologies have pushed religious thinkers beyond their usual parochial concerns and challenged churches to become more enlightened participants in the great politicai and economic issues of our time...
Vol. 111 • January 1984 • No. 2
