Death certificate for liberation theology premature says WCC leader

By Stephen Brown

Forty years after liberation theology first gained widespread attention the movement remains an inspiration for people who want to create a more just world, despite critics who assert it is outdated, says Brazilian Lutheran theologian Walter Altmann.

The test for its relevance is, "whether the basic insights and aspirations of liberation theology continue to be alive", Altmann, the moderator of the Geneva-based World Council of Churches, told Ecumenical News International in an interview.

And he wrote on the Web site of the WCC this week that most of those who derided liberation theology, "did so because they understood it to be an apology of bygone Soviet-style socialism. It seems, though, that this death certificate has been issued prematurely."

When he addressed the WCC's main governing body, its central committee, in August, Altmann noted how liberation theology emerged in Latin America in the 1960s, as a movement stressing that Christianity should be experienced from the perspective of the poor.

"Pastoral concerns demanded new theological reflections," Altmann reminded the WCC gathering. "Poverty presented a huge challenge to the Christian conscience and the churches' witness."

These concerns found a wider audience in November 1969 at a consultation organized near Geneva by a WCC-Vatican body, the Joint Committee on Society, Development and Peace.

There Gustavo Gutiérrez, a Peruvian Roman Catholic theologian, presented his "Notes on a Theology of Liberation", widely seen as a founding document for the movement.

"Latin America," said Gutiérrez in that paper, "will not emerge from its present situation unless there is a profound change, a social revolution which radically changes the conditions of life there." Only a rupture with an unjust social order to which the Church is linked, he stated, "will make the Latin American people believe in the message of love, of which the Church is a bearer".

A similar appeal was made at the consultation by Rubem Alves, a Protestant theologian from Brazil.

In the years that followed, the movement proved influential not only in Latin America but in other parts of the world. Altmann himself in his 1982 book, "Luther and Liberation", drew parallels between the teachings of Martin Luther and liberation theology.

The WCC together with people influenced by liberation theology played a "decisive role" in overcoming the military dictatorships of Latin America in the 1980s, Altmann noted in his ENI interview.

Still, the movement also faced criticism for the Marxist concepts used by some proponents, and with the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe, it was suggested that liberation theology had become irrelevant.

"The greatest challenge is that the fall of the Berlin Wall was then understood by many as the triumph of capitalism, and that we would be entering the best world possible," said Altmann.
"It has become quite evident in the meantime that this is not the case," he asserted, pointing the global financial crisis of recent months.

"At the same time, we also have to say while liberation theology did use the terms of socialism as a possible model for society, it never was intended to equate this to the existing system in the former Soviet Union or the German Democratic Republic," said the Brazilian theologian, who since 2002 has been president of the Evangelical Church of the Lutheran Confession in Brazil.

"It always intended to be a system that would give priority to the poor people, the people who suffer injustice, to given them a space to be politically active," Altmann noted. "This, of course in a different time, is still a goal that we have to pursue."

In the meantime, liberation theology, said Altmann, has incorporated issues such as racism, indigenous peoples' rights, gender inequalities, and the question of ecology.

At the same time, several Latin American presidents - Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva in Brazil, Evo Morales in Bolivia, Rafael Correa in Ecuador, Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua and Fernando Lugo in Paraguay - have all been inspired by the movement, says the WCC moderator.

Altmann pointed also to the World Social Forum, a global gathering intended to promote an alternative to exploitative globalisation, as being influenced by liberation theology.

"Now that the global financial crisis has come into play, stemming from affluent countries, there is a greater perception that what has been continually stressed by those coming out of liberation theology was not without foundation."

Source: Ecumenical News International