Cecelia Lynch

Liberationism, its forerunners and aftermath:  Why does it matter today?

 

The 1968 Medellin Conference of Catholic bishops put Liberation Theology on the religious and political map in Latin America, and very soon thereafter, in North America, Europe, Africa, and Asia.  Liberation theology intersected strongly with neo-Marxist dependencia political concepts and reacted against individualist and privatized conceptions of Christian ethics.  Its ethos of solidarity and accompaniment with the poor and marginalized – i.e., the majority – in Latin American societies – represented a strong linkage of both political and economic concerns to the institutionalized church’s teachings on social justice.  Liberationism spread to civil society organizations through base communities and at times, armed resistance movements.  Yet it has also been criticized as being too “top-down” in its origin and practice, ultimately facilitating the large inroads made by charismatic and Pentecostal Christianity in the region. 

 

This presentation draws from work on a book analyzing tensions in Christian ethics on conflict and violence throughout the twentieth century.  I look at the ethics of liberationism vis-à-vis its precedents in Christian theology, its attempt to reach out to poor and marginalized Latin Americans and establish itself in base “civil society” organizations, the ethical tensions it embodied on questions of justice, violence, rights, and participation, and the dominance of rights-based discourses of justice today.  I argue that understanding the possibilities and limitations of liberationism helps to explain the dynamism of religion in Latin American civil society.  More importantly, focusing on the ethical constructs and tensions in religion is important for understanding political trends and possibilities in Latin America and beyond.