Anti-Liberation Theology

8Again the devil took him up into a very high mountain, and shewed him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them, 9And said to him: All these will I give thee, if falling down thou wilt adore me. 10Then Jesus saith to him: Begone, Satan: for it is written, The Lord thy God shalt thou adore, and him only shalt thou serve. 11Then the devil left him; and behold angels came and ministered to him.

Matthew 4: 8-10

Dave Griffey at Daffey Thoughts looks at the Pope as a proponent of Liberation Theology:

Yes, Pope Francis appears to be heavily influenced by, if not a card carrying member of, Liberation Theology. 

Now that’s a term jostled about quite frequently on the Internet.  And I’m not saying it’s the only thing that informs his views.  But in my ministry days, I had the opportunity of meeting with and studying with several who had worked in or served Latin American missions, and I picked up a few things about that particular brand of theology. 

Contrary to popular Catholic belief, Protestants – Evangelicals, too! – had individuals trying to put their own spins on that decidedly Catholic phenomenon of Latin American Liberation Theology.  And this doesn’t count the other use of the term: Liberation Theologies.  Those are theological schools that seize upon the ideal of ‘liberation’ as the defining prism through which to understand the Gospel and then apply it to various demographics: feminist theology, black theology, gay theology and so on and so forth and what have you.  

The template for these applications is always the same: X Group is defined by being oppressed, generally by the historical Christian Faith and Western Civilization.  Therefore, we can rethink almost everything when it comes to how the Christian Faith should be applied and lived out within that group.  After all, we have Christianity as defined by the oppressors (or the winners) and therefore can make certain assumptions about how wrong its historical teachings turned out to be.  After all, ‘history is written by the winners’ is usually a way of saying ‘the history we have is wrong.’ 

So, for instance, regarding Feminist Theology.  Pride, we all learned, comes before a fall.  Pride is one of the mortal sins.  Pride in some circles is the sin, the capstone sin, the sin out of which all sin grows.  But not for the woman embracing Liberation Feminist Theology.  In that framework, Pride is a virtue to be striven for, not rejected.  It’s humility that is the sin. The woman has always been oppressed by the man; forced to be servile and grovel at the man’s feet.  Humility was a tool of oppression and victimization.  Therefore, it’s incumbent upon the woman to rise up, throw off her chains, and embrace pride, pride in herself and her womanhood.  Humility for the woman, it turns out, is the real sin. Pride is the virtue. 

It goes on like that, depending on the group in question.  And this thinking was widely popular in the 90s when I entered ministry and studied in seminary.  Whole books were written expounding on these ideals.  And they all had at their roots the same thinking that defined so much of that Catholic movement known as Latin American Liberation Theology.

At its simplest, LALT is Marxism with a Christian spin.  It takes, to varying degrees, the teachings and ideals of Karl Marx, filtered through a few communist lenses, and applies them as the base coat upon which the various colors of the Christian palette can then be applied.  

The emphasis is on economic and social oppression of the poor and the marginalized.  All of history is the rich and the powerful oppressing the poor and the helpless.  Everything in the Gospels lends itself to this reading.  Jesus is the Messiah of the poor, the outcast, the downtrodden.  Jesus came to bring Good News to the poor.  Jesus calls down curses on the rich, but assures the poor of their everlasting bliss. And on and on.

Because the problems of humanity are best understood through the prism of economic injustice, so are the solutions.  The degree to which various Catholic Liberation theologians emphasise wordly, economic and political solutions for salvation seems to vary. Some come off as almost atheistic, seeming to have little to no patience for any traditional reading of the Gospels that dwells on more than the financial here and now.  Others talk a big talk about heaven, hell (the place where capitalists go), and spiritual salvation, but always through that all important template of economic and social justice.

One minister who loomed large in my day was Ronald J. Sider.  His book Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger didn’t need to be read.  The title spoke for itself.  He was quite the darling among left leaning and progressive professors and theologians I knew. He also was a big proponent of the Liberation Theology movement sweeping much of Christianity in those days.  By today’s standards, he comes off as a radical fundamentalist.  I believe he even opposed laws that would make religious groups support gay marriage and abortion.

But in the 90s, he was as left as you could get.  That is until I read an article some years ago that suggested he had begun to distance himself from the Liberation Theologies he originally embraced.  The article pointed to a lecture he gave in the early 00s.  It didn’t suggest he was abandoning the whole Liberation Theology movement.  But in his lecture he delivered, he pointed out some flaws and problems. 

The biggest was the obsession with economics and sociopolitical movements and solutions as the end all to everything.  Likewise was the tendency for the Gospel of God, spirit and eternity to be lost in the shuffle.  That was what a professor I had who had worked alongside Liberation theologians while he was in South America also noticed. 

He once quipped that Liberation Theology was the best boon Evangelical missionaries had in Latin America. You didn’t need to evangelize.  You opened the door and in they came.  Many had grown tired of the worldly and material focus of their Catholic leaders who only wanted to expound on Karl Marx, rather than Luke or John.  Being less worldly and secular than their European and American counterparts, those South American parishioners were hungry for the spiritual world and still believed strongly in the supernatural element of the Faith.  This element was lacking in a Church that increasingly sounded more material and worldly than the old USSR. 

Go here to read the rest.  In one sense all of Christianity is Liberation Theology in that Christ came to liberate us from the domination of our sins over us.  It is that liberation that cries forth from the pages of the New Testament.  To take this timeless message and put it at the service of a totalitarian ideology is to produce a materialist ideology where our sins reign supreme over us as we ignore them and focus on politics in everything.  CS Lewis put it well:

About the general connection between Christianity and politics, our position is more delicate.

Certainly we do not want men to allow their Christianity to flow over into their political life, for the establishment of anything like a really just society would be a major disaster.

On the other hand, we do want, and want very much, to make men treat Christianity as a means; preferably, of course, as a means to their own advancement, but, failing that, as a means to anything—even to social justice.

The thing to do is to get a man at first to value social justice as a thing which the Enemy [=God] demands, and then work him on to the stage at which he values Christianity because it may produce social justice. For the Enemy will not be used as a convenience. Men or nations who think they can revive the Faith in order to make a good society might just as well think they can use the stairs of Heaven as a short cut to the nearest chemist’s shop. Fortunately it is quite easy to coax humans round this little corner.