Latin American Liberation Theology the Creation, Development, Contemporary Situation of an On-Going Movement

chapter 5 Latin American Liberation Theology The Creation, Development, Contemporary Situation of an On-Going Movement

João Chaves

Introduction

Latin American Liberation Theology is still alive! Although many of its detrac- tors insist that the movement is no longer active, a close observation of the Latin American theological scene suggests otherwise. Jung Mo Sung’s recent interview for the Brazilian evangelical magazine Cristianismo Hoje—one of the most important evangelical magazines of Brazil—illustrates the continu- ity of the movement. In addition, Rubem Alves’s 2011 release party for the new edition of his 1968 book—which was held in a Pentecostal mega-church— suggests that liberationist convictions still appeal to a variety of Christian expressions in Latin America. The continuous publication of works that were either directly influenced by or explicitly claim affiliation with liberationist thinking also point to the contemporary vitality of what may be considered one of the most creative ways of theologising in recent times. Nevertheless, Latin American Liberation Theology has changed and because it was never a monolithic phenomenon, both its heterogeneity and its development must be accounted for. There was never one liberation theology in Latin America, only different manifestations of a common ethos. A responsible overview of the movement, therefore, needs to deal with both its historical development and heterogeneity so that Latin American Liberation Theology is not reduced to a few superseded concepts developed in the early stages of the movement. In this chapter I will provide a primarily historical and analytical rather than theological account of liberation theology precisely because predominantly conceptual approaches to Latin American Liberation Theology are in greater danger of reducing liberationist thinking to one of its context-conditioned expressions. I will progress in a few steps. First, I will deal with the contextual concerns that find in Latin American Liberation Theology a grammar. Liberationists claim that theological works are articulations which attempt to provide a language that makes sense of certain modus vivendi and, as such, theologies are invariably contextual. In this section, therefore, I will mention the major convictions that culminated in the creation of Latin American Liberation Theology as an identifiable theological method. Second, I will deal

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2015 | doi 10.1163/9789004291027_007 114 Chaves with the historical developments of the movement from the 1960s to the 1980s. Between the 1960s and 1980s Latin American Liberation Theology was not only founded but it also developed conceptually. I will then move to what is some- times considered the period of crisis for Latin American Liberation Theology: the 1990s. In this third section, I will deal with the developments of the movement from the 1990s until contemporary times.

The Beginnings of Latin American Liberation Theology

Liberation theologies came upon the theological scene in the 1960s when Western theology in general was characterised by a strong focus on divine tran- scendence. Liberationists challenged such focus and wanted to develop theologies that, unlike those being developed by Anglo-European theologians in general, responded to the many oppressive experiences that branded the lives of those whose social location was far from the comfort of academic ivory- towers. Liberationists perceived that the highly speculative theologies developed in Western countries—done mostly by white males—and imposed onto other groups as normative did not properly address the plight of those in the margins of society. Latin American Liberation Theology, unlike other forms of liberation theology, was developed in the only continent that is both Christian and poor. Latin American Liberation Theology came into being in the second half of the 1960s. Then, a historical context of hope, optimism, and struggle for social change stimulated the simultaneous elaboration of liberation theologies in different parts of the world and by peoples facing different sorts of oppression (Witvliet 1987: 3). The late Yale University historian Sydney Ahlstrom argued that the rise of a ‘technocratic society’ during the 1960s, which was marked by massive urbanisation, had a worldwide impact. According to Ahlstrom, as technological and demographic developments led to both an urban and a radi- cal crisis, historic religious convictions and loyalties were being challenged (Ahlstrom 1970: 1–9). The aggiornamento of Vatican II, with its significant endorsement of more progressive thought among Roman Catholics, combined with the possibility of conceiving a world without hunger brought by the technological advances of the 1960s, played an important part in the development of the Latin American liberationist approach—which addressed what Latin American theologians considered to be the greatest evil in their context— namely, poverty (Witvliet 1987: 24). The post-war Catholic Action movement, Karl Marx’s social analysis, political theologians such as Jürgen Moltmann and Johannes Metz, and even the Cuban Revolution are also part of the complex heritage of Latin American Liberation Theology.