Introduction here
Introducing Liberation Theology
Part One: There Are Poor
Theology always comes from a place. It is always affected by individual stories and histories that surround it and from which it is formed. It is inextricably linked with language, customs, philosophies, and all the other things that affect daily life. This is neither a good nor a bad thing. It is simply the way things are. We speak about God (theology literally means “God talk”) with the same language we use in everyday life. Therefore, our experience in the world affects our theology. If, in our daily lives, we exist in a quasi-gnostic society and use the language and customs of that society then it follows that our theology will become quasi-gnostic (see the epistle to the Colossians for an example). In the same way, if our daily lives are lived as an oppressed minority under foreign rule then our theology has to take account for that. For example, Jewish religion in the second temple period believed that the God of Israel was the only God and greater than all other powers. This belief was difficult to hold while they were under the rule of Rome who did not pay homage to the God of Israel. The only way this makes sense is to acknowledge that Israel is being punished by God but will later be vindicated.
Liberation Theology too comes from a specific place. It is theology spoken in the only language we have, the language that is colored by daily existence. Therefore, if we are going to understand what Liberation Theology is saying we have to understand the place from which it is being spoken.
The first step to understanding this place is acknowledging that it is an impoverished place. There are poor. Those of us in the rich West are liable to forget this. We, who do not experience or see poverty, often do not understand that our lived experience is not the same as the experience of the rest of the world. But we all believe that theology is not just for us, but it is for everyone. Therefore, if we believe that God is the God of everyone, then our theology has to take into account the experiences of everyone.
Liberation Theology is spoken in the language of an experience of poverty. We must see this poverty if Liberation Theology is to become intelligible to us.
A woman of forty, but who looked at old as seventy, went up to the priest after Mass and said sorrowfully: “Father, I went to communion without going to confession first.” “How come, my daughter?” asked the priest. “Father,” she replied, “I arrived rather late, after you had begun the offertory. For three days I have had only water and nothing to eat; I’m dying of hunger. When I saw you handing out the hosts, whose little pieces of white bread, I went to communion just out of hunger for that little bit of bread.”
One day, in the arid region of northeastern Brazil, one of the most famine-striken parts of the world, I (Clodovis) met a bishop going into his house; he was shaking. “Bishop, what’s the matter?” I asked. He replied that he had just seen a terrible sight: in front of the cathedral was a woman with three small children and a baby clinging to her neck. He saw that they were fainting from hunger. The baby seemed to be dead. He said: “Give the baby some milk, woman!” “I can’t, my lord,” she answered. The bishop went on insisting that she should and she that she could not. Finally, because of his insistence, she opened her blouse. Her breast was bleeding; the baby sucked violently at it. And sucked blood. The mother who had given it life was feeding it, like a pelican, with her own blood, her own life.1
We must hear these stories, see these faces, and feel their pain. We must look upon the face of the poor to understand that it is these faces that are crying out for justice and liberation. The question of whether Liberation Theology can faithfully be done in the first world or in the academy is not at stake here. The point is simply that Liberation Theology, like every theology, comes from a place. It is the reflection upon a lived experience. It will not due to only discuss Liberation Theology on the conceptional level. Because dying of starvation is not a concept. It is an experience.
1Both these stories come from the first chapter of Introducing Liberation Theology by Leonardo Boff and Clodovis Boff (trans. Paul Burns). Maryknoll: Orbis, 1987.
