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The Political Significance of Latin-American Liberation
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11192 |
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Section : |
MODERN THOUGHT
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| Issue
Date : |
3 / 1986 |
5,399 Words |
| Author
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Richard L. Rubenstein
Richard L. Rubenstein is the Robert O. Lawton Distinguished
Professor of Religion at Florida State University and
president of the Washington Institute for Values in Public
Policy. He is the coauthor (with John K. Roth) of Approaches
to Auschwitz: The Holocaust and its Legacy |
The 1973 appearance of the English translation of A Theology of Liberation by Gustavo Gutierrez introduced North America to perhaps the most influential theological voice to emerge from Latin America in recent decades. This book and the writings of other Latin American liberation theologians marked a radical departure in both the motive for writing and the content and method of theology. Unlike traditional theologies, including the North American "radical theology" of the 1960s. Latin American liberation theology has a practical political objective, the revolutionary transformation of Latin American society, by force, if necessary. Although liberation theology takes issue with the atheism of Marxism, it shares many of Marxism's political objectives. On almost all political and social issues, liberation theologians are far morel likely to side with the Marxists than with those who regard capitalism, inspite of its problems, as offering humanity a freer and more hopeful future.
The genuinely radical character of the new theology can best be understood by a comparison of its methods and motives with those of traditional Euro-American theology in the modern period. In a very important sense, skepticism and doubt have been the parents of modern theology. The theologian has normally regarded his vocation to be the defense of his religious tradition against the skepticism of the unbelievers and the temptation to unbelief with the believer. Thus, a principal function of theology has been dissoance-reducation. Theology seeks to foster dissonance-reduction when significant items of information regarded as credible by the believer are perceived to be inconsistent with established religious beliefs, values, and collectively sanctioned modes of
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