Theology of Hope Moves South – Latin American Liberation

Moltmann’s theology of hope inspired theologians and clergy globally. In this blog, I explore the emergence of liberation theology.

In this process, the Crucified God became a bridge that revealed a new face of the cross. Jesus was killed as a political prisoner, challenging the political forces of the day, denouncing injustice and standing with the marginalized. Influenced by a Marxist view of history, these priests found in the cross an archetype for working for social justice. The gospel incarnated into the Latin American context as a message of liberation from inequality and racism.

In a previous blog, I introduced Moltmann’s theology of hope and its historical context. In this blog, I will discuss one of its most well-known offshoots, namely, liberation theology. While liberation theology had other influences and has recently expanded into a wide array of theologies, Moltmann’s influence was crucial in its beginning. Here is how the two are inter-connected.

The picture above encapsulates both what liberation theology is and its connection with Moltmann’s theology of hope. On November 16, 1989, Juan Ramon Moreno, Spanish-Salvadoran priest and Jesuit was murdered by Salvadoran government forces for denouncing human right violations in the country. While the soldiers carried his corpse to a room, his body hit a book in a shelf throwing it to the ground, staining it with his blood. This was Father Moreno’s last prophetic act. The book (pictured above) was a Spanish translation of Moltmann’s work “The Crucified God”, part of Moreno’s library and most certainly an important influence in his thought and work as an activist Jesuit priest.

Solidarity with the Poor

One of the key ideas of “the Crucified God” is that God suffered with Christ on the cross. This idea was controversial because it contradicted the understanding of God’s impassibility. In classical theism, God could not suffer because that would suggest vulnerability from an all-powerful being. Yet, even more scandalous was the implication of this idea. Moltmann’s cruciform theology was calling the church to retreat from identifying with the political power of Western culture and instead, align itself with the oppressed. The argument goes as follows: because Jesus identified with the oppressed in the cross and God suffered with him, Christians are called to identify and suffer with those in the margins.

Moltmann’s theological seed of the Crucified God would blossom into a full-blown theology of solidarity with the poor in Latin American soil. It emerged as Latin American Catholic priests reflected on the plight of the poor they were serving in the late 60’s. As they worked to alleviate poverty, they started looking for the roots that created and sustained structural misery for most in the continent. How could they work not only to feed the poor but also to empower them to feed themselves?

Liberation theologians would take the Crucified God a step further. Their innovation was, following the political tenor of Jesus original historical context, to conclude that God had a preference for the poor. This controversial conclusion would both align liberation practitioners with revolutionary movements and be at odds with right-wing military dictatorships and, at times, the Vatican itself. In short, it became a potent political theology speaking truth to power but also legitimizing violent guerilla movements and oppressive leftist regimes.

Liberation Theology’s Impact

Over fifty years after its initial formulation, liberation theology’s (LT) legacy is mixed. On the positive side, LT became a vital theological dialogue partner that no modern theologian could ignore. While many, both in the Protestant and Catholic side, would reject its main claims, they always felt obliged to respond to its challenge. In seminaries all over the world, the writings of Gutierrez, Sobrino and Boff continue to inspire and spark debate. Their influence has become even more prominent with the installation of an Argentine Pope. Francis, while not a liberation theologian per se, certainly has moved concern with the poor to the center of the church’s attention.

Yet, this wide-spread influence does not compare with the witness of its martyrs. The life and story of Archbishop Oscar Romero in Guatemala, Sister Dorothy Stang in Brazil and Juan Ramon Moreno in El Salvador are holy examples of those who took up the cause of the oppressed with their blood. Their example, faith and resolve shall never be forgotten. They belong to the company of the saints of the church that came before them.

Beyond that, LT never took hold in the overall church practice in Latin America. Apart from the still existing base communities, the theology did not make its way into Catholic masses. Furthermore, it did not cross into the Latin American Protestantism, the fastest-growing Christian movement of the last century. In the Latin American church a saying goes that “Liberation theology opted for the poor but the poor opted for Pentecostalism.”

In many aspects, Pentecostalism is the anti-thesis of LT. It seeks instead to align itself with the rich and focus on heavenly matters as opposed to political change. If anything, Pentecostal Christians have often politically aligned with the reactive political forces, the very ones LT sought to overturn. Ironically, the Christian movement has been split into both defending and criticizing Capitalism in the region. This is an unfortunate development as both LT and Pentecostalism have much to learn from each other.

Reformulating Hope and Liberation

In spite of producing admirable martyrs, the power and promise of liberation theology has not materialized in its native land. Yet, its promise as a hope theology, grounded in solidarity with the poor rings even more relevant now than it did in the last century.

The revolutionary spirit of the 60’s relied on the assumption that the most effective way to change society was through political means. As a result, democracies have sprung up all over the world and freedom has increased. Yet, most of these projects are showing signs of decay as the popular vote starts turning them back to authoritarianism. As democracies fail to solve persistent social-economic problems, people start looking for leaders who promise simple solutions to complex problems. Without diminishing the importance of these social movements, maybe the problem was in its initial assumption. Yet, if politics is not the way, what is it then?

As my previous blog title suggests, what if the time has come to re-formulate a theology of hope within a technological context? What if the promise of eschatological hope will not materialize through political action but technological creativity? What if the most consequential force for liberating the oppressed is not policy but social technologies? This is what I want to explore in the next part.

A Theology of Hope in a Technological Age – Introduction

 

This blogs starts a series on re-visiting a theology of hope in a technological age. For full transparency, I write this as my reflection on the topic progresses. I do this on purpose, in the hope that this reflection is not limited to an isolated individual’s musings but instead can open the way for a dialogue with others. Theology is done best when done in community. In an age of instant global communication, the possibilities for dialogue widen and allow for an in-time collaboration that was simply not possible before. Hence, I invite the reader to enter this not as a passive receiver of information but instead an active participant in this conversation. Feel free to post comments or email me directly through the contact form in the site.

In this first blog, I want to discuss the emergence of a theology of hope in the middle of the last century looking at its most prominent proponent -German theologian Jurgen Moltmann. His seminal work Theologie der Hoffnung [Theology of Hope] in the mid 1960’s would initiate a revolution in academic theology that reverberated through decades to come. Here is how it started.

The Emergence of a Theology of Hope

Each theology engages a particular set of questions which are considered to be crucial to the context of the theologian. To do theology is precisely that: to observe the world and listen to its most perennial questions. Then, in prayerful mediation, under the guidance of the Spirit and in dialogue with their community, to seek out answers emerging from the Christian tradition and practices.

Jurgen Moltmann’s theology emerges from the Post-war experience as the world was taking stock of the horrific atrocities executed by the European powers. One of the questions his world was asking was how could there be a good God in a world where Auchwitz happens? Even seventy years later, this question rings in Western ears challenging the European Christendom projects of the previous centuries. If Christian societies were capable of such cruelty and destruction, what is even the point of upholding the Christian religion as the foundation of our political structures? Furthermore, is Christianity even relevant for individuals in a post-war age or does it belong to the history books? The crisis cast both existential (personal) as corporate (political) doubts on an European Christian identity.

A Passionate/Suffering God

A temptation, then and now, is to relegate religious expression to a privatized individualistic piety. That is, all that matters is me, Jesus and my salvation. As long as my passport to heaven is stamped, I don’t need to engage with worldly affairs. The world is confusing enough and meaningless, let me endure its reality in the weeks and escape to heavenly dreams on the weekend.

Moltmann resists this temptation by taking seriously the suffering in the world. If Christianity is to have a voice in the public square (and in our lives), it must actively engage with the questions people and societies are asking. If our faith inadequately addresses the crisis of our time, then it is no longer useful or pertinent to our time.

He starts by reframing the problem. In one of his shortest books, Open Church, Moltmann sees apathy as the biggest curse of our age:

[Our] one-sided orientation towards accomplishment and success make us melancholic and insensitive. We become incapable of love and incapable of sorrow. We no longer have tears, and we smile only because we are supposed to keep on smiling…We become apathetic, still alive but surely and slowly dying inwardly. (pg 23)

Theology of hope starts and ends with a passionate God. It is important here to recover the original meaning of the word passion. It is not just about energy and zeal but also about suffering. The best example is the Passion of Christ, where we see both an unyielding zeal as well as the resulting suffering Christ goes through. A passionate God means one that is moved by the world suffering, cries with them but also moves to action to answer the cries of humanity.

The End is the Beginning

If every theology has a starting point, theology of hope begins with the end. This is what theologians call an eschatological approach. Eschatology is the study of the last things which has come to mean many different things. Recently, because of evangelical pop culture, eschatology has sadly become synonymous with exhaustive speculation about the end of the world. That is not what Moltmann means by it.

Instead, he is following New Testament scholarship in recovering the centrality of the eschatological hope in the Early church. That is, the fact that the apostles and early Christians believed in an actual installation of God’s kingdom on earth. They believed it to be an imminent event. The point of it was not the destruction of the world but the future vindication of God’s people in view of their present political oppression. Hence, the gospel message, in the First and still in the Twenty-First century, has political implications.

By doing so, Moltmann is joining a chorus of theologians, scholars and some clergy in bringing eschatology from the supernatural realm to the natural world. With time and heavy influence from Greek philosophy, eschatology became focused on the after-life. Instead, they want to correct this notion so that Christians can focus more on the here and now.

Hence, this recovery the eschatological character of early Christianity should translate into present action. While grounded in God’s action, it raises the question of how to live today in a way the reflects that future reality. In short, how do we bring the future liberation of God’s people into the present?

Inspired on Moltmann’s writing, the early 70’s would see the emergence of a Latin American, Catholic version later known as liberation theology. If eschatology is about a political reality, then what would that look like in the context of Latin American poor? This is the topic of part 2.