The Rector’s Forum group is reading currently Gustavo Gutierrez’s important book entitled A Theology of Liberation. It is important because it summarizes succinctly a theological movement that began in the Roman Catholic Church in Latin America in the 1950’s and continues to influence theology in our world today. Martin Luther King was a well versed liberation theologian. Liberation theology also set its roots in South Africa during apartheid and its demise; Now in Palestine and other parts of the Middle East. The chief premise is this: that salvation first and foremost is the freedom to live dignified lives. Gutierrez alerts us to the fact that a good two thirds of the world live without the basic necessities of life and therefore live in indignity. They for him are the unsaved for whom he coins the term the non person. God’s work in the world through the work of God’s people is to bring the dignity that freedom engenders to all people, all people created in the image of God. This book was written in 1973 and I’m not so sure how much progress has been made over the last quarter century.
This genre of theology of course interprets the gospels as chiefly social, economic and political. The liberation theology movement seeks to bring social and economic balance to our world, a world in which the disparity of rich and poor widens. Therefore as people of faith it is for us to change the structures of our world that disenfranchise two thirds of the world’s population. The hyper-consumption of the northern hemisphere and chiefly the west, and most especially the United States is not creating opportunity for such economic and social balance, rather it is plundering the resources of the two thirds world and exacerbating the problem. Gutierrez speaks of sin in the world as structural, that decisions made that most effect our world, our history, are made by the powerful, those in control of the status quo….governments and increasingly, corporations.
So what is our role as people of faith in the face of such a mammoth and entrenched situation? We must become active participants in history, (Gutierrez refers to history as the temple of God) that is to say that we give our well informed and enlightened voices to the public square….what we buy…what we eat…how we vote….how we live…all of these things matter urgently. We are the ones to help shape history towards its ultimate goal of salvation…Our biblical narratives in both Hebrew Scripture and the New Testament literature proclaim as much. We are here on this earth first and foremost to make dignified persons, called to freedom, of the non persons of our world. It all hinges on decisions. History doesn’t happen by accident…so when it is time to decide….decide.
