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Whatever happened to liberation theology?
Christian Century, Oct 20, 1999 by Nancy E. Bedford
A critical theology today has a responsibility to bring up again and again in the public sphere the fact that it is in the public interest (and that includes the interest of the non-poor) to work against poverty and social injustice and for a state capable of limiting the ravages of unleashed market forces. Some concrete topics that need to be addressed are the inequities of taxation; the need to invest in public education, health and transportation; and creative cooperation between nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and the state. Sociological studies show that people are highly skeptical about professional politicians and all three branches of government. But that does not mean that political topics can be forgotten by theology.
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One ray of hope today is the networking between NGOs and base-type communities of faith to address particular problems. These alliances can sometimes become structurally significant. This can be observed in the struggle to defend public school salaries, in forms of nonmonetary trading of goods and services, in incipient micro-banks oriented especially toward financing projects designed and carried out by women, or in protests against corruption in the public sphere. Such efforts represent the sort of sociopolitical praxis that can realistically shed light on theological reflection for those who work with the heritage of liberation theology.
When I mention base-type communities of faith I am referring to congregations in which reading and interpreting the Bible and developing all the gifts of the Spirit given to the community are central. One of the things theology must do in this context is nudge and equip church members to find creative ways to well up in joy and generosity even out of extreme poverty, as the Macedonian churches once did, rather than looking only inward.
This kind of group is, however, by no means the only sort of church group in Latin America today. Much more spectacular are the new religious movements (within Christianity and without) which attract many thousands of participants. Scores of neo-Pentecostal groups meet in refurbished cinemas and offer entertainment and a kind of mass consolation that is attractive to many. The slogan of one of these groups is significant: "Pare de sufrir," that is, "Stop suffering!" The term "nco-Pentecostals" refers to communities of faith that don't belong to classical Pentecostalism and share only some of its characteristics. As sociologist of religion Hilario Wynarzeyk explains, the sociological profile of these churches includes leadership by charismatic pastors and a system of practices that stresses divine healing, personal prosperity, spiritual warfare, ecstatic trances accompanied by speaking in tongues, laughing and fainting and liberation from evil spirits. Pentecostal theologian Norberto Saracco prefers to regard these groups as "post-Pentecostal." While Latin American adherents of classical forms of Protestantism tend to cringe at the catalog of practices common to such groups, it should be added that a pneumatology of power, such as displayed in neo-Pentecostal religiosity, often serves as a concrete answer to those who in ordinary life feel powerless, offering them a sense of dignity.
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