Review of A World Come of Age: An Intellectual History of Liberation Theology

“Under Crushing Opposition, Love Requires Revolutionary Action”
Father Camilo Torres

Having recently read Padre Guatalupe’s autobiography, my interest was piqued in learning more about the particulars of liberation theology. This curiosity was amplified as I am now attending a Catholic University with a Bolivarian mission in Medellin – the location of conference of bishops in 1968 that would result in the drafting of a number of significant statements that would justify numerous Catholic initiative of a liberationist theme throughout Latin America. As such, I was happy to learn of the recent publication of A World Come of Age: An Intellectual History of Liberation Theology by Lillian Calles Barger. This book, along with conversations with my fellow students and a group of seminarians that I’ve befriended, have greatly helped me to comprehend the Catholic culture in which I now live.

Barger divides her book into four sections: Origins elaborates the social, political and economic factors which lead to the conditions within ecumenical circles that caused people to elaborate novel interpretations of Christian religious doctrines. Reconstructions provides an intellectual history of the philosophical currents that fed into the new method of Biblical exegesis. Elaborations provides deeper analysis of the particularities of the various liberation theology strands and provides a historical accounting of the interactions between those propounding such doctrines and the communities from which they emerged. Reverberations illustrates that while Liberation Theology as an intellectual current within the Christianity may have seen its adherents decline in numbers, nevertheless a variety of the novel perspectives that it sought to disseminate about how to interpret the world have been adopted within various religious and social justice movements. Liberation Theology, it can be rightly said, still speaks to a social, political and environmental concerns that have emerged as a result of various changed that have profoundly impacted the human world.

For those writing within this strain, the true theological task is “orthopraxis” which is “an encounter with the world, rather than tradition or revelation…” Instead of engaging just with a text disconnected from the concerns of the here and now, promising only salvation in the afterlife, Liberation Theology is concerned with bringing the divine order to earth. In Barges’ words: “Fundamentally, the idea of liberation was of a communal process rather than based on the individual, for only in solidarity with others was freedom possible. Awakening the political potential of solidarity among oppressed people called for the advocacy of the committed placing themselves at the nexus of prophetic denunciation and revolutionary change.” Biblical and sociological analysis identified the oppressed with the campesinos of Latin America – fighting the inheritors of colonial titles; with the African-American’s in the United States – fighting the descendants of slave-holders; with women across the world – still under the yoke of a sexist, misogynistic patriarchy.

The variances in how the church is viewed; what the goal of liberation is; and how to get there; how this changes given different world-historical shifts and more by different social groups – blacks, whites, Latins, men and women – is masterfully handled by Barger. By delving into the biographical details about the authors of those in this new cannon, historicizing and then unpacking the arguments in their writing one can almost feel as if a part of the intellectual debates that were motivating their religious/academic work. Barger provides a veritable lexicon for concepts that evolve due to new technological and social changes and how despite the fact that Protestants in North America and the Catholics in South America came from very distinct intellectual and historical backgrounds, they still came to similar conclusions about what it means to be a True Christian in a sinful world.

This is especially well done in the chapter entitled Vitalism of Religion. Here Barger depicts how a number of Enlightenment related arguments were related to religion, and later how the prophetic writings of Marx were adapted to a modern understanding of the bible.Towards this end a virtual pantheon of social theorists are described – from Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Ludwig Fuererbach, G.W.F. Hegel, Jose Mariategui, Georges Sorel, W.E.B. Du Bois, William James, and more – and their evidence within various key Liberation Theology texts are describe. Starting with their respective views related to religion, she shows how they are pieced together to form a unique Christian Socialist identity. More than just this, Barges shows their impact in the brief blossoming of a number of schools and political movements. From this and analysis in subsequent sections we see how “Marxist thought provided Latin American liberationists with a significant framework for analyzing inequality and responding to the charges against religion. The goal of social justice based on a structural understanding of society, rather than individual choice, appeared congruent with the prophetic tradition and served as an opening for Marxist-Christian dialogue throughout the twentieth century” (108).

Barges intellectual history also tells the often tragic stories of those that sought to operationalize this conception of Christian solidarity. In the section entitled A Salvic Social Order, chapter we learn the story of Richard Shaull – a missionary like Padre Guadalupe that came to help and then became so disillusioned with the church that he started advocating revolution. Him, like Padre Guadalupe and others such as the now sainted Oscar Romero, often met tragic ends due to the incredibly politically polarized atmosphere of the Cold War. During this time addressing the sins of empire and the sufferings of people was seen as subversive, giving shelter to the enemy of Soviet Power. With the Social Gospel viewed as an ideology aligned with the interests of a predatory foreign power, it’s little wonder that those with a more personalistic view of salvation – the traditional religious establishment – were wary of those that sought to “recover Eden” through a scientific socio-economic practice wedded with a theology of collective, social liberation. The point of division for those who sought to create Utopia versus those that were conservative and sought to maintain relations as is was their understanding of what the implications and duties connected to humanity Original Sin.

As Barger brings the book to a close she shows how that while there were clergy-members in the field involved with pastoral work with a Liberation Theologist orientation, a main failing of the movement was its inability to produce and thus enact specific policy applications. The 1970 conference in Detroit that included black, Latin American and women leaders is depicted in almost tragic proportion. After highlighting how this became a moment for qualitatively altering the level of collaboration and cooperation that this transnational group of religious community organizers, activists and intellectuals – they are shown instead engage in what was, essentially, and intellectual pissing contest. Rather than building a collective platform by which their struggles could synergize their efforts for liberation, they instead devolved to arguing over who faced institutional repression worse and broke.

For all of its political aspirations, the Liberation Theology movement never formed the same sort of sustainable political institutions that those within the Christian Democratic tradition were able to. This is so because of the numerous inherent limits within Liberation Theology as an eclectic philosophy.

The thinkers associated with it may have been able to inspire debate, but nothing much stuck beyond that – proposing no singular national or international program for change that could be acted up with effectiveness, founding no institution and establishing no school. Thus while Liberation Theologians never attained the key features of a recognized movement, the sensibility related to the core tenants it put forward as necessary to positively change the world continues to inspire multiple social movements and political initiatives throughout the world.