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IdeologyReligious family

Liberation Theology

Also called: Theology of liberation · Teología de la liberación · Preferential option for the poor

Liberation theology is a Christian movement, strongest in Latin America, that reads faith as a call to side with the poor and change unjust social structures.

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Liberation Theology on 12 axes-100 to +100
ECONOMYSTATESOCIETYWORLDOwnershipMarketsWelfareAuthoritySecurityStructureMoralityReligionTechnologyCultureTradeForeign
Where it stands

Liberation Theology, axis by axis

  1. 01Ownership-60
    PublicPrivate
  2. 02Markets-55
    PlannedFree
  3. 03Welfare-80
    SharedSelf-reliant
  4. 04Authority-50
    DemocraticStrong leader
  5. 05Security-40
    LibertyOrder
  6. 06Structure-35
    LocalCentral
  7. 07Morality+15
    ProgressiveTraditional

    Most Latin American liberation theologians kept the traditional Catholic line on family and sexuality, though later strands became more progressive.

  8. 08Religion+45
    SecularReligious

    Faith is where the movement begins, but it criticized church leaders and worked with secular groups instead of pushing for religious law.

  9. 09Technology+10
    EmbraceCaution
  10. 10Culture-35
    MulticulturalNational identity
  11. 11Trade+30
    GlobalProtected

    Shaped by dependency theory, many supporters opposed reliance on rich countries, which points toward protection of local economies.

  12. 12Foreign policy-60
    CooperationStrength

What is Liberation Theology?

Liberation theology asks what the Gospel means for people who live in hunger and fear. Its answer is that God takes the side of the poor, and that Christians must as well. Salvation, in this reading, covers life on earth as well as the next world. The movement began among Catholic priests, nuns and lay people in Latin America, where land was held by few and military regimes were common. Its thinkers said poverty is not an accident or a personal failure but the result of unjust arrangements. Some used ideas borrowed from Marxism to describe them, and that choice made the movement a source of fierce dispute.

Core beliefs

  • God has a special care for the poor and the outcast.
  • Poverty is often caused by unjust social and economic systems.
  • Faith must lead to action, not only to prayer and charity.
  • Theology should begin from the lives of the oppressed.
  • Ordinary believers can read scripture together and act on it.

History

Reforms of the Second Vatican Council in the early 1960s opened the Catholic Church to social questions. In 1968, at Medellin in Colombia, Latin American bishops spoke of "institutionalized violence" and committed the church to the poor. Gustavo Gutierrez, a Peruvian priest, named the movement in his 1971 book A Theology of Liberation. Leonardo Boff, Jon Sobrino and Bishop Helder Camara became leading voices, and thousands of small Bible-study groups called base communities took root. Repression followed. Archbishop Oscar Romero was shot dead while saying Mass in El Salvador in 1980. In 1989 soldiers killed six Jesuits, among them the scholar Ignacio Ellacuria, along with two women. The Vatican published warnings in 1984 and 1986 against Marxist elements, while also backing care for the poor.

Variants

The Catholic Latin American form came first. Black theology, shaped by James Cone, spoke to racism in the United States. Feminist, Dalit, Palestinian and Korean minjung theologies took up other kinds of oppression. Protestant liberationists also exist. Within the movement, a few accepted armed struggle in extreme cases, but most worked through teaching, literacy and local organizing.

Criticisms

Pope John Paul II and Cardinal Ratzinger, who later became Pope Benedict XVI, said parts of the movement turned salvation into politics and borrowed class struggle, which clashes with Christian teaching. Free-market critics say its economics, especially dependency theory, was wrong, and that trade and growth have lifted more people out of poverty. Some Marxists found it too religious and too mild. Supporters answer that the Vatican attacked a cartoon of their views, and that care for the poor is a very old Christian theme.

In practice

Liberation theology fed literacy drives, peasant unions and land movements in Brazil, Central America and elsewhere, including Brazil's Landless Workers' Movement. In the 1980s several priests held posts in Nicaragua's Sandinista government, which John Paul II publicly opposed. The phrase "option for the poor" moved into official Catholic teaching, and Romero was canonized in 2018. On the 12 axes it scores strongly toward Shared on Welfare, Public on Ownership and Cooperation on Foreign policy, while leaning Religious on Religion.

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Liberation Theology: questions

Is liberation theology left or right?

It is on the left. It calls for action against poverty and for structural change, and some of its thinkers borrowed from socialist analysis, though it began as a religious movement and not a party.

What is the preferential option for the poor?

It is the idea that the church and its members should give priority to the needs of the poor in how they pray, teach and act. It has since become part of mainstream Catholic social teaching.

Liberation theology vs Marxism: are they the same?

No. Some liberation theologians used Marxist tools to study class and poverty, but they kept faith in God and rejected atheism. Church critics and some Marxists both thought the mix was uneasy.

Further reading