Theology is Everywhere 2.5 - The Gospel of Liberation 1. Galatians – the Gospel of Liberation 5 1 For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery. 13 For you were called to freedom, brothers and sisters;[c] only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence,[d] but through love become slaves to one another. 14 For the whole law is summed up in a single commandment, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” 2. God’s Preferential Option for the Poor This referred especially to a trend throughout biblical texts, where there is a demonstrable preference given to powerless individuals who live on the margins of society. citing Matthew 25, “Whatever you did for the least of these, you did for me.” 3. Gustavo Gutierrez ~ A Theology of Liberation “But the poor person does not exist as an inescapable fact of destiny. His or her existence is not politically neutral, and it is not ethically innocent. The poor are a by-product of the system in which we live and for which we are responsible. They are marginalized by our social and cultural world. They are the oppressed, exploited proletariat, robbed of the fruit of their labor and despoiled of their humanity. Hence the poverty of the poor is not a call to generous relief action, but a demand that we go and build a different social order.” 4. The Universality of God’s Preference 5. De-centralized Christianity 6. Viewing Scripture from the Vantage point of the Poor 7. Enacting God’s Justice - Some liberation theologians base their social action upon the Bible scriptures describing the mission of Jesus Christ, as bringing a sword (social unrest). 8. Orthodoxy and Orthopraxis 9. Praxis - God is disclosed in the historical "praxis" of liberation 10. The Church as God’s Revelation in History - History is the scene of the revelation God makes of the mystery of his person. His word reaches us in the measure of our involvement in the evolution of history. 11. Base Communities 12. Official Response to Liberation Theology – “heresy” 13. Black Liberation Theology 14. The Confession of 1977 of the Presbyterian-Reformed Church of Cuba: “evangelization” means the installation of “a fraternal and solidary community which, including all alike, achieves love as its supreme law” 15. Liberation Christology - 1. God in Christ enters into utmost solidarity with the poor. 16. 2. The sin that keeps people in bondage and the salvation that frees them have both personal and political dimensions. 17. 3. When Christology is done self-consciously in a situation of oppression, it becomes imperative and urgent to distinguish faith from dehumanizing ideologies. 18. 4. Christology is inseparably linked to Christian Praxis

Argentinian Methodist - Míguez Bonino’s theology is missionary, not because mission is the focus of his theology but rather because it is its locus. That is, his theology takes as its point of departure the ethical and missionary question: ‘what should I as a Christian or we as a Church do?’ or more specifically: ‘what should I as a Christian or we as a Church do in this context?’ He does not aim to achieve intellectual understanding of reality, but rather effectiveness in changing reality. This provides the framework for the whole of Míguez Bonino’s theology. “The unity that is created among Christians and non-Christians engaged in a common task in the world. . . . There - in the struggle for human rights, for social transformation, for political participation - Christians of different confessions participate with women and men of different ideologies, without claiming any special privilege, without hiding or watering down their own Christian convictions, and discover both their common humanity and their Christian identity as an unexpected gift. When the Church engages herself in this mission, she finds unity in her struggle for liberation and that unity strengthens and deepens her commitment to freedom. Such unity and such liberation, we claim, the Church can find today when she identifies with her Lord by committing herself to and participating with the poor in their own struggle for a new day for the whole of humankind.”

2 Dr. Michael Hegeman