What is Liberation Theology?

This ethical movement for social struggle emerged in Latin America from Catholicism.

Liberation Theology emerged in the 1960's as an ethical option for people in poverty in Latin America. as an ethical option for people living in poverty in Latin America. Broadly speaking, it interprets biblical teachings with the intention of supporting the vindication of the sectors most unprotected by political and economic institutions.

Its development was one of the antecedents for the emergence of several social movements and even theoretical models that reformulated not only the Church, but also some of the most important practices, mainly in Latin American communities.

From European Theology to Liberation Theology

Theology, which comes from the Latin theos (God) and logos (reasoning), is the reflection and philosophical study of the knowledge, attributes and facts related to God..

It is a very complex field of study with many centuries of history, whose development has had different nuances according to the place from which it has started. For this reason, offering a definition of Liberation Theory implies approaching its history and context.

Theology in Latin America

The most remote origins of theology in the Latin American region are to be found in the Spanish conquest, a time when a model of social order had been established based on a Christianity that was quite indifferent to the injustices caused by colonization and slavery.

In this context, priests were attentive and sensitive to the clergy's own complicity in the reproduction of social inequalities, as well as to the lack of access that the clergy had to the social order.and the poorest people's limited access to the Church itself. They laid the first foundations for questioning the practices of the church and of a colonial Catholicism, which subsequently and in the European context continued to develop.

With the Latin American independence movements, the Church entered into a deep crisis. The community was divided between those who supported, or even fought for independence, and those who did not; a process that was not entirely consummated after the Latin American struggles, and has continued to develop in different facets over time.

Theology and social struggles

In the twentieth century, a good part of Latin American Catholicism began to recognize several of the social problems that the region was going through, so that a sector of the Church began to create alliances with social movements and struggles in favor of the most unprotected.

In the 1960s, in the face of the political and economic crises that worsened in Latin America, as well as the transformations of the Catholic Church in these areas, society and an important sector of Catholicism became intertwined.

Thus, in the following decade, this sector positioned itself as one of the main promoters for the transformation of different social problems that were generating a lot of poverty. They began to question the premise that God and the Church could reach everywhere, regardless of social status and economic condition.

Among other things, they questioned the concentration of Catholicism in large cities, as well as various church practices that made its representatives similar to the political and economic representatives who divided societies into rich and poor. Again there were those who realized that the Church was participating as an ally of social inequalities..

The Rise of Liberation Theology

Especially in Brazil, a good part of the Church began to question social conditions in an important way, and even the political class itself began to call social injustice "the great sin".

From this, local strategies for the development of the countryside began to be generated, which were useful at least in the beginning, and which above all influenced the radicalization of the middle class, which began to support the working class in an important way. In this context appeared, for example, the adult literacy movement of Paulo Freire and his pedagogy of the oppressed.

Some time later, and with different nuances, Liberation Theology spread to Cuba, then Venezuela, Guatemala, Peru and other countries in the region.The U.S. government even launched an "Alliance for Progress", which promised aid for social development (although it also deployed police forces to contain the guerrillas). With this, a part of the Church was united with Democratic parties in the implementation of social aid.

In short, social revolutions were beginning to have to do with theological reflections, which further aggravated the crisis of the traditional Church. An important sector of the Church was not so much in politics as in direct social action, in community development projects. This was Liberation Theology.

From social action to political action and other limitations

Liberation Theology also encountered some limits, precisely because it recognized that poverty is a structural problem that requires political action at the most basic level.

From then on, Liberation Theology had to be directly linked to political, and later economic, commitments. For example, various social-theological movements emerged. Thus, when the Second Vatican Council document was proclaimed, a Church reform initiative that marked the twentieth century, which among other things gave a more active role to the faithful and a more modest role to the Church, Latin American theologians strengthened their critical gaze and focused it on the problems of the region.

In other words, the subject of theology was no longer the individual, but the critical articulation of the theologian with the believing community, especially the communities in poverty.

This is also why it is known as Latin American Liberation Theology, because by focusing on Latin America's own problems it had established an important break with the European matrix. There were even those who called themselves "Bishops of the Third World" or "Movements of Priests for the Third World". They themselves were the ones who used the word "liberation".

Priests were to be committed to the transformation of society, against global structural and institutional violence. Poverty began to be understood as an issue that had to do with God, and its solution as well.

Its further development was extended in different branches and towards reflections in contexts outside Latin America. More recently it has developed in articulation with feminism, Marxist theory and also around the question of the constant victimization of people in vulnerable situations, i.e., the need to recognize people in vulnerable situations, about the need to recognize people in poverty as agents, and not only victims, in the, and not just victims, in social structures.

Bibliographical references:

• Dussel, E. (1997). Liberation theology. Transformations of epistemological assumptions. Theologica Xaveriana, 47: 203-214.
• Sobrino, J. (1988). Theology in a suffering world. Liberation theology as "Intelllectus Amoris". Revista latinoamericana de teología. Retrieved April 26, 2018. Available at http://redicces.org.sv/jspui/bitstream/10972/1270/1/RLT-1988-015-C.pdf
• Berryman, P. (1989). Liberation Theology. The essential facts surrounding the revolutionary movement in Latin America and elsewhere. Retrieved April 25, 2018. Available at http://www.mercaba.org/SANLUIS/Teologia/Berryman.Teolog%C3%ADa%20de%20la%20Liberación.pdf
• Lois, J. (1986). Liberation Theology. Opción por los pobres. Iepala: Madrid