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Introduction: The Politics of Liberation Theology
| Article
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14634 |
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Section : |
MODERN THOUGHT
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| Issue
Date : |
5 / 1988 |
495 Words |
| Author
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Richard L. Rubenstein
Richard L. Rubenstein is the Robert O. Lawton Distinguished
Professor of Religion at Florida State University and
president of the Washington Institute for Values in Public
Policy. He is the coauthor (with John K. Roth) of Approaches
to Auschwitz: The Holocaust and its Legacy |
Intellectual and theological movements are not likely to attract a large audience unless they express a widely held concern. Liberation theology expresses such a concern. Liberation theologians have pointed to the fact that the modernization process has had at least as many losers as winners in Latin America. They have also argued that non-collectivist strategies of development have yet to overcome the mass poverty and radical social divisions which, they assert, have increasingly afflicted Latin America since the end of World War II.
These articles offer a broad spectrum of opinion concerning the movement, some critical, others skeptical, and still others favorable. They were first presented last October at a conference convened by the Washington Institute for Values in Public Policy and will appear this summer in a book. The Politics of Liberation Theology, edited by John K. Roth and myself and published by the Washington Institute Press.
We are persuaded that there is much in Latin America that stands in need of correction. We are, however, not persuaded that a Marxist-radical Christian alliance could yield a genuine improvement for Latin America's poor. We are certain that it would not be in the interests of the United States for such an alliance to gain ascendancy, and are critical toward liberation theology's commitment to socialism and its tendency to blame Latin American underdevelopment on the policies of North American corporations and the United States government.
In spite of the range of viewpoints offered at the conference, there was general agreement concerning the political importance of liberation theology. All of the writers share the conviction that liberation theology is important because it offers a religiously legitimated program of radical economic and social reconstruction for the Third World, especially Latin America. The writers recognize that religiously legitimated values have the power to define political and social objectives as well as to confer authority on political movements and institutions which promise to attain those objectives. This is especially true of Latin American liberation theologians who pursue their vocations in a region in which the Roman Catholic Church has long enjoyed something close to a cognitive monopoly in religious affairs.
I would like to stress that none of the contributors presumed to evaluate the adequacy of liberation theology as an expression of Christian thought. That issue can only be dealt with by committed Christians authorized to speak and teach on behalf of
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