Towards A New Liberation Theology

Brown explains and illuminates liberation theology for North American readers who may have no previous knowledge of this recent dynamic Christian movement. Growing out of the experience of oppressed people in Latin America, liberation theology lends a transforming power to both the study of the Bible and the Christian duty to work for justice for all God's people.

"I do not think there are any issues on the theological and human scene more important than the ones liberation theologians are raising," says Robert McAfee Brown. In this book Brown explores how we can respond to liberation theology without condescension, arrogance, or co-optation. He surveys in detail the kind of challenges to North American Christians issued by South American theologians. He then calls upon the church to work to make itself what it ought to be and to take sides politically in support of human rights.

Liberation theology is widely referred to in discussions of politics and religion but not always adequately understood. This Companion offers an introduction to the history and characteristics of liberation theology in its various forms in different parts of the world. Authors from four continents examine the emergence and character of liberation theology in Latin America; black theology; Asian theology; and the new situation arising from the end of the apartheid regime in South Africa. The major Christian Church's attitude to liberation theology, and the extent of the movement's indebtedness to Marxism, are examined; and a political theologian writing from another perspective of Christian theology offers an evaluation. Through a sequence of eleven chapters readers are given a comprehensive description and evaluation of the different facets of this important theological and social movement. There is also an Introduction relating liberation theology to the history of theology, and a Select Bibliography.

The Future of Liberation Theology envisions a radical new direction for Latin American liberation theology. One of a new generation of Latin American theologians, Ivan Petrella shows that despite the current dominance of 'end of history' ideology, liberation theologians need not abandon their belief that the theological rereading of Christianity must be linked to the development of 'historical projects' - models of political and economic organization that would replace an unjust status quo. In the absence of historical projects, liberation theology currently finds itself unable to move beyond merely talking about liberation toward actually enacting it in society. Providing a bold new interpretation of the current state and potential future of liberation theology, Ivan Petrella brings together original research on the movement, with developments in political theory, critical legal theory and political economy to reconstruct liberation theology's understanding of theology, democracy and capitalism. The result is the recovery of historical projects, thus allowing liberation theologians to once again place the reality of liberation, and not just the promise, at the forefront of their task.

This book brings together prominent voices from the global North and South to present brief analyses of liberation theology's future. It includes leaders in the field along with the newest voices. Each of these pieces was presented in the American Academy of Religion in the first five years of the Liberation Theologies Consultation.

Liberation Theology is the first serious acknowledgment by a white theologian of the challenge of Black Theology. It invites American theology to reconsider radically its foundations and to reorder its priorities.At a time when theology is often presented piecemeal, Frederick Herzog undertakes to ground Liberation Theology in the originating events of the Christian faith as a whole - in this instance, in the life, death, and resurrection of Christ as given in the Fourth Gospel. The systematic readings in the Gospel which he makes and from which emerge the principles of Liberation Theology are the heart of this book. Throughout, the author asks: How do we understand Christ as Liberator? The answer to this question, he maintains, determines whether or not we are still able to contemplate the Word as power and action.Written with contemporary directness and free of vague abstractions, the book casts theology into a new form to meet today's needs. The method of this new theology is confrontation, not correlation; its goal is liberation, not reformation; and it strives for a new space of freedom among people captive to the dehumanizing structures of modern theology.

Freedom is a fundamental Christian theological category, as much a challenge to construct a new way of seeing oneself and others as it is an announcement of what Christ has already done for us in his death and resurrection. Liberation theology is, most simply, the effort to spell out what such freedom means for Christians in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. This book has as its principle premise the conviction that if we are to construct a North American liberation theology we must begin listening to and understanding Latin American theology not so much as a model to be slavishly followed but as a challenge to our own cultural, political, and even religious assumptions. The focus thus is not so much on the theoretical meaning of Christian freedom but on its practice, and more exactly its praxis, that is to say the dialectic between theory and practice. After focusing on the creation and development of liberating theological methods and sources and, above all, the revitalization and renewal of structures that will contribute to the development of a liberated and liberating church, Fr. Hennelly ends with an analysis of the most recent and the most important vatican document on liberation theology, The Instruction of Christian Freedom and Liberation, which he sees as an acknowledgement by the universal church that the theme of liberation is central to the meaning of Christian theology.