A recent dispute between two major figures in the movement’s rise, the Brazilian brothers Leonardo and Clodovis Boff, suggests that maybe it is. Certainly, having a significant liberation theologian suddenly turn and unleash a devastating critique of the core assumptions of liberation theology strongly suggests that the movement’s day is drawing to a close; and for the response to be less about answering the arguments in that critique than about impugning it as a power grab suggests that it was never really all that theologically sound to begin with, that it was really more about the politics all the time. It also serves as a useful reminder that those who spend all their time denouncing the errors of others are usually those least able (or willing) to accept correction of their own.HT: Presbyweb
Is liberation theology collapsing under its own weight?
Posted in Religion and theology, Uncategorized.
This is hard to accept as a blanket statement about liberation theologies. Maybe it says something about Marxist-influenced Latin American liberation theology – maybe. I’m not sure it says much at all about all of the other liberation theologies out there, those that draw upon the work of people like the Boff brothers and those that don’t. It’ll also take a lot more than the Boffs fighting to signal, to me at least, any kind of ‘implosion’.
If anything, the ‘implosion’ of liberation theology will come about because of its victory – its (positive, I think, for the most part) influence on theology is seen everywhere. Even theologians who hate it for whatever reason are forced to deal with what it brings to the forefront. Its more likely, to me, that it will implode because it is no longer necessary as a corrective – because it has changed the theological landscape forever, which I think it has already done, and continues to do through its many branches.
Personally, I think we’re a *long* way from not needing it anymore, but I could be wrong.
Perhaps and perhaps. I do think liberation theology has had an important corrective effect–but I also think that in most of its forms, it went too far right from the beginning. I suspect that if it does indeed collapse, that it will leave behind theological forms which it has influenced which will carry on its important emphases but in a more orthodox form. (Ironically, I saw some evidence of this recently in an article about the Rev. Dr. Jeremiah Wright–another preacher, I forget whom, was pointing out how the Rev. Dr. Wright, though still politically radical, is far more orthodox theologically than Dr. James Cone; according to this writer, Dr. Cone rejected traditional Christocentric, Trinitarian theology, where the Rev. Dr. Wright does not.)