Chapter Four - Domination and Political Theology - Section Nine

Liberation Theologies as Critiques of Domination

Through applying elements of critique to their own theological reflections, Latin American theologians developed a radical theology labelled liberation Theology. Rather than a pietistic theology created in the quiet of seminaries, Liberation theology was created in situations steeped in centuries of colonial and neo­colonial Christianity riddled with endemic injustice and murderous militarised regimes, often armed and aided by so­called developed world governments. Liberation theology and recent German political theology, and Protestant and Catholic grassroots praxis, are very close, but it would be making far too much of the similarities to argue that they are identical for practical purposes. Alfredo Fierro, a Spanish commentator on contemporary political theologies, nevertheless stresses their important ecumenical component and argues that there are three major points of agreement: concern with praxis, public action, and a critical approach (Fierro, 1977: 19 ­ 33). The practical component of theology lies in the application of biblical teachings on reconciliation, redemption, and justice to address specific historical situations and problems. Faith cannot be something exclusively experienced and practised in secret or in private, but must also manifest in civil society through practical application of theology in everyday life. The critical aspect of theology has a number of foci, most important being the complicity of the historical and contemporary Church with oppressive structures and regimes, and the oppressive structures and regimes themselves. The critique is brought to bear on the Church, pushing for its radicalisation and renewal, as much as it is directed at the wider society. The critique is, especially in the case of liberation theologians, also deeply influenced by Marxist methods of social, economic, and political analysis, and by Marxist stress on praxis. One distinctive feature of liberation theologians lies in the style of language they often use. While political theologians tend to use careful and even restrained language, the liberation theologians tend to use vigorous and excoriating language, denouncing, and attacking by naming the forces and institutions they argue are responsible for the injustice from which their theology emerges and to which it attempts to speak. In this sense, they share a linguistic heritage with the Old Testament prophets, and with Jesus himself, all of whom used extraordinary descriptions of their targets for criticism. From an Asian perspective, in 1981 at Kuala Lumpur, the Christian Conference of Asia convened a consultation on People's Movements and Structures of Domination in Asia. In the Report of the consultation, Oh Jae Shik wrote that Domination implies a system to control others. Domination is an ideology to realise the desires of the powerful. Domination is also a belief system which holds people to be generally ignorant and powerless and therefore concludes they need to be ruled. It is a world outlook and an understanding of humanity that believes a privileged group are born to wealth and power. When these elements are put together into an organic structure then there emerges a demonic manifestation of human sin. This structure perverts the order of creation, destroys the human spirit as well as the body and does so in the name of the new society (Shik, 1981: 7). The Christian Conference of Asia meeting focused on militarisation as a major manifestation of domination in the Asian region, but by no means did participants overlook connections between economics, development, and political structures as all contributing to domination reinforced by increasing militarisation of politics throughout the region, as well as highlighting the role of Christians in the struggle for more human and humane development. The influence of the French socialist­Catholic philosopher Emmanuel Mounier, a founder and editor of Esprit from 1933, figured highly in inspiring revolutionary Christian activity in Latin America. ...it was the events of postwar agitation by the underdeveloped world's exploited peoples which irrigated fundamental soul­searching in the lower clergy ­ the priests and missionaries living in the actual scenes of misery. Seeing their flock constantly deprived, constantly rebelling, and constantly put down by foreign­wrought, dehumanizing machines (be they mercenary troops, elite corps, special advisers, bombers, or automatons called the police), these men of God began to cry out against the established disorder of the institutionalized greed known as the system. Meekly at first, then increasingly more vociferously, they denounced the injustices around them as injustices against God (Gerassi, 1973: 14). This denunciation often extended to active guerilla warfare, or to persistent nonviolent resistance and organising, both modes of struggle involving religious and laity. A dynamic process of cross­fertilisation and radicalisation took place between political and liberation theologians and activists as both informed the other with their political and theological critiques. Theologians whose work influenced the development of liberation theologies included Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Johannes Baptist Metz, Jürgen Moltmann, and Wolfhart Pannenberg (Lazareth, in Bonino, 1975: viii). The catalytic event for South American Liberation Theology was the Second General Conference of Latin American Bishops (CELAM II) held at Medellin, Colombia, in 1968. The Medellin Statement explicitly indicated that the Bishops ...opted positively for the poor, the voiceless, the oppressed. [The Medellin Statement] identified the source of oppression as institutionalized violence, the neocolonialism of the national oligarchies, and the external neo­colonialism of 'the international monopolies and the international imperialism of money'; a situation calling for 'global, caring, urgent and basically renewing change'. The commitment to radical transformation was unambiguous: 'a thirst for complete emancipation, liberation from every subjection, personal growth and social solidarity' (MacEoin, 1978: 1 ­ 2). The Medellin Statement gave Church eldership endorsement to what the grassroots had been feeling, thinking and doing for years in their parishes. It should not be overlooked either that Paulo Freire's pedagogy was developed from his Christian and Marxist­inspired reflections on problems of functional and political illiteracy in Brazil (Mackie, 1980: 97 ­ 104). Freire saw literacy as both a basic practical skill which in itself empowered people to better understand and act in and upon their society, and as a tool for more explicit political empowerment leading to greater self­understanding and authentication on the part of dominated Southern masses (Freire, 1972). Freire's basic theory of conscientization can be summarised in this aphorism: Give a person a fish and you feed them for a day. Teach them to make a fishing rod and you feed them for a lifetime. But teach them how to read a fishing book and you could turn them into a revolutionary. The Peruvian theologian Gustavo Gutierrez argued that liberation had three reciprocally interpenetrating levels of meaning: In the first place, liberation expresses the aspirations of oppressed peoples and social classes, emphasizing the conflictual aspect of the economic, social, and political process which puts them at odds with wealthy nations and oppressive classes... At a deeper level, liberation can be applied to an understanding of history. Man is seen as assuming conscious responsibility for his own destiny... In this perspective the unfolding of all of man's dimensions is demanded ­ a man who makes himself throughout his life and throughout history. This gradual conquest of true freedom leads to the creation of a new man and a qualitatively different society. This vision provides, therefore, a better understanding of what in fact is at stake in our times. [Over against the concept of development]... the word liberation allows for another approach leading to the Biblical sources which inspire the presence and action of man in history (Gutierrez , 1973: 36 ­ 37). What the Bible as read by liberation theologians understands as sin is almost identical to what a critical theorist would understand as domination (e.g., Oelmüller, 1974; Davis, 1980: 104 ­ 132; Miranda, 1974).To be sure, there is a linkage between domination and evil especially when domination is understood to involve distorted social relationships in which some people eliminate, exploit, control, or manipulate others. Theologically, sin has vertical and horizontal components. The vertical component involves the individual1s relationship with God, and in this sense, sin relates to the ways in which that relationship is distorted. The horizontal dimension relates to how people interact with each other under God. Sin denotes distorted relationships between God and the individual, and between individuals, the distortions indicated by reference to the ideal relationship between the individual and God, the individual and other people, as revealed by Jesus. Distortions in the vertical relationship contribute dialectically to distortions in the horizontal relationship and both are described theologically as sin (Macquarrie, 1966: 59 ­ 64; 238 ­ 245; 446 ­ 452). This is by no means to argue that domination directly correlates with a complete biblical understanding of sin, but it is to suggest that there are important correlations between domination, the distortion of human potentials and relations in society, and aspects of a biblical understanding of sin in social relations. In political, economic, and social terms, José Miranda in Marx and the Bible rigorously exegetes scripture from Genesis 4111 to Matthew 2531 ­ 46 and concludes that God is obsessed with the doing of justice, eternally concerned for the poor and oppressed, and utterly opposed to the unjust and the oppressors (Miranda, 1974: 77 ­ 108). To do injustice, in the view of liberation theologians like Gutierrez, is to do sin. ... in the liberation approach sin is not considered as an individual, private, or merely interior reality ­ asserted just enough to necessitate a Îspiritual1 redemption which does not challenge the order in which we live. Sin is regarded as a social, historical fact, the absence of brotherhood and love in relationships among men, the breach of friendship with God and with other men, and, therefore, an interior, personal fracture... Sin is evident in oppressive structures, in the exploitation of man by man, in the domination and slavery of peoples, races, and social classes. Sin appears, therefore, as the fundamental alienation, the root of a situation of injustice and exploitation (Gutierrez, 1973: 175). Notice that Gutierrez does not write about Îsins1, as if there were a hierarchy of Îsins1. Sin is domination, injustice, and oppression, a radical repudiation of humanity's right relationship with itself, and with God. This theology is also addressed to so­called developed societies, as indicated by the summary of the Medellin Statement quoted earlier. Further, according to José Miranda, whose conception of liberation theology is in part pitched against a wholly utopian, 'other­worldly' eschatology as well as an exegetical corrective to conservative, largely Western, criticisms of liberation theology's engagement with Marxism, If the West calls Marx utopian, it must first give up its pretence and call the Gospel utopian. And let the forces be separated by drawing the line where it really is; let us not continue to defend the West under the values of the eternal values of Christian culture. The Gospel is war to the death against [the] motive of acquisition without which Western civilization collapses. There is nothing in strict exegesis which authorizes us to postpone its elimination to another world or another life. The ridiculing of hope which is made by qualifying it as Îutopian1 constitutes, in the first place, ignorance of reality and history and, in the second place, a mordic defense of the status quo, ideological in the strongest sense of the world (Miranda, 1974: 255).