LIBERATION THEOLOGY

Third world liberation theologies arose mainly in the sixties; with the appellation ‘liberation’ were a phenomenon of this period. Various contextual theologies have emerged in different parts of the world today, leading to a profound enrichment of Christian theology. Liberation theology and Dalit theology are two of the contextual theologies that have emerged. In this paper attempts will be made on the elucidation of Liberation theology and different type of liberation theologies.

1. Liberation Theology:

By the dawn of the 20^th century the wheel of history of humankind turned towards the liberation movement. Consequent upon this Christian theology also leaned towards liberation, and theologians began to recognize the importance of liberation theologies for the fuller realization of the kingdom of God. Thus, from 1960s liberation theologies start emerging from Latin America and spreading through different parts of the world taking different names according to the contexts and situation of the countries such as Black theology in North America, Minjung theology in Korea, Dalit theology in India, Tribal theology among the tribals of India.

Liberation theology as the name suggested it emerges out of the struggle against oppressions and discrimination. Liberation theology is an attempt to discern the action of God in history and to collaborate with it by transforming the world. Here, theology is not an intellectual pastime, but a praxis oriented program. It starts with the experience of poverty, misery, oppression and injustice and a new awareness that such human situations can be changed by the analysis and exposure of their root causes and consequently their elimination.[1]

One of the best examples of contextual theology, which has a great impact in the world today, is Liberation Theology. Begun in the ecclesial environment of Latin America towards the end of the 1960s, it received its decisive impulse in the Assembly of the Latin American Episcopal Conference at Medellin in 1968. Liberation theology is a theological reflection born out of the experience of shared efforts to abolish the current unjust situation and to build a better society, free and more human. In a situation of oppression, exploitation and massive poverty brought about by western capitalist imperialism, theologians like Gustavo Gutierrez and Leonardo Boff began to grapple with the problem of presenting God as a loving father to the non person. Liberation has socio-economic roots. It arose out of the realization of the increasing economic dependence and under development of the Latin American people. Liberation theologians advocate the use of a socio-political and socio-analytical mediation of doing theology and the re-reading of the Bible to free it of the ideological baggage built into its interpretation over the centuries by the dominant class. Out of this new consciousness, liberation theology was born.[2] Liberation theology is a theological movement that has attempted to unite theology with the social and economic concerns of the poor and oppressed people. The movement, however, is even broader in scope, including blacks’ black theology, feminist theology and other theologies such as Dalit Theology, Minjung Theology etc. Liberation Theology has its own goals and they are given as below[3]:

a) It is designed to help unmask the political and economic ideologies that pretend there is no alternative to the global capitalist system.

b) It seeks to challenge the conscience of Christian community by restating that the gospel it lives by is good news to the poor and brokenhearted.

c) It motivates a struggle for dispossessed people to participate more in the wealth and democratic processes of a nation.

d) It reminds the church that its structures are intended to serve the pastoral and evangelistic work of God’s Kingdom of justice, peace and reconciliation.

When we speaks of Liberation theologies, it includes theologies such as; Minjung theology, Dalit theology, Black theology, feminist theology, Tribal theology, etc. Under the liberation theologies, Dalit theology stands in a different way. In order to situate the relevance of Dalit theology, it is important that ones look at other liberation theologies.

1.1 Latin American Liberation theology:

Latin American liberation theology is a theology against the dominion western theology. The Latin American people asked “where is the God of righteousness in a world of injustice? In the language of Gustavo Gutierrez, “the starting point of liberation theology is commitment to the poor, ‘the non-person’”.[4] Liberation Theology in Latin America was a theological and religious movement that revolutionized the role of the church by advocating its alignment with the oppressed in society. First articulated in the late 1960s by Roman Catholic clergy in Latin America, liberation theology developed from the interaction of theologically educated elite with socially engaged lay communities. The movement soon spread throughout Latin America, the Caribbean, and to other parts of the world, with adaptations by non-Catholic denominations as well as some non-Christian religions. One of the most vigorous theologies of the 20th century, liberation theology is noted for its association with a groundswell of grassroots activism that sought to change the oppressive economic, social, and political structures in the developing nations of Latin America. A Marxist tool of analysis is used to make this theology and the liberation that it seeks, primarily is economic liberation.[5]
 

1.2 Other Liberation Theologies:

1.2.1 Black Theology:

Black Theology as one of the Liberation Theologies refers to a theological movement that emerged among N. American black people during the second half of 1960s and it began to make an impact in S. African during the early part of the 1970s.[6] Its origin lies in the response of Black church leaders to the civil right movement of the 1960s initiated by Martin Luther King, Jr. and especially to black power. Its link with black power is affirmed by James H. Cone, the foremost advocate of Black Theology. While black power focused on the political, social and economic condition of black people, Black Theology puts black identity in a theological context, showing that black power is not only consistent with the Gospel of Jesus Christ, but that it is the Gospel of Jesus Christ.[7]
 

Black Theology emerged as a result of the liberation struggle of the people of African origin in the United States of America. Black theology strives to fight racial discrimination and the biblical justification for it. It further tries to make the black population aware that salvation and liberation brought by Christ ought also to include the ending of discrimination and lead to the integral betterment of the blacks.[8] Black Theology reacts and protests against the scandalizing injustice of racism, white elitism, and black exclusion. The central theological claim of Black Theology is that God of Exodus, Prophets and Jesus can be known only in the struggle of the poor liberation.[9] It also seeks to plumb the black condition in the black community in the light of God’s salvation in Jesus Christ, so that the black community can see the Gospel is a commensurate with the black achievement of black humanity. It is the affirmation of black humanity that emancipates black people from white racism.”[10]

1.2.2 Minjung Theology:

Minjung Theology is a Korean theology of liberation developed in the 1970s.Minjung is a Korean word for the people, the politically oppressed, economically exploited, culturally marginalized, the poor and the powerless. Minjung may be translated as ‘the mass of the people’ or just ‘the people’. Minjung means a specific people. Minjung Theology is a Korean Theology. It is the accumulation and articulation of theological reflections on the political experiences of Christian students, laborers, professors, farmers, writers and intellectuals as well as theologians in Korea in the 1970s. It is a theology of the oppressed in the Korean political situation, a theological response to the oppressors, and it is the response of the oppressed to the Korean church and its mission. It was born in the struggles of the Korean Minjung for basic human rights and democratization and against the oppressive process of economic development and militarization. Minjung theologians mention their thoughts that Jesus was a Minjung and a friend of Minjung. Furthermore, the Jesus event of the cross and resurrection was a collective event of Minjung in their struggles for liberation. The ministry movement seeks to overcome and liberate the deep-seated ‘han’ of the people.[11] Minjung theologians have taken up the issues of peace, justice, and the reconciliation of a divided Korea as pertinent. Minjung theology has been challenged by the plight of the Minjung, who are faced with sudden unemployment, deprivation, and a new economic exploitation as a result of globalization. Major proponents of Minjung Theology in 1970s were Suh Nam Dong, Ahn Byung Mu, Kim Yong Bock, Hyun Young Hak, Suh Kwang Suh etc.[12]

1.2.3 Tribal Theology:

Tribal are regarded as distinct from the main line national society in many nations of the world. They claim their indigenous status in many modern nations today. They understood the world in terms of relationship. Nature, human beings and the spirit are dependent on each other as organism. Land, forest, water and air are God-given with no ruler, or national government having propriety ownership of them. Love, truth, and justice are ordained by God are administered in society through customary laws, more interestingly, for tribals space is more important than time, land is life and without land life is not possible.[13] Tribals today are among the communities suffering most in the world and continually face the question of survival. Tribal theology sprang out from such situation as western and Indian Brahmanic theology failed to address their needs and failed to recognize their conditions of life. Therefore, tribal theology is a liberative in its concerns, nature and its methodologies.

The tribal who are dehumanized, the displaced, the poorest of the poor, the neglected, the aslundered, the laborers and the landless people call for a radical shift of theological methodology from the traditional Indian Christian theological methodology to a transformative and liberative methodology for theologizing. The tribal context does not permit us to indulge ourselves in the intellectual game of philosophizing. Theologizing in the tribal context has to necessarily aim at theological self-consciousness and understanding for liberation and transformation of tribal society toward full humanity.

1.2.4 Feminist Theology

Feminist theology is a new, critical way of doing theology, which is not imprisoned by traditional disciplinary boundaries, but characterized by multidisciplinary. It is a new way of women doing theology rooted in praxis. For historical and structural reasons it occurs to a great extent outside traditional academic institutions, but pursues a multiplicity of methods and task.

Feminist theology is a critique of androcentrism and misogynism. It is a quest for alternative traditions, which will include women as well as men. And it is also the transformations of symbols. Throughout the history of the Church, Christian theology has been done with the exclusion of women their experience; therefore, the classical Christian theology reflects a negative bias against women in its teachings. Feminist theology thus seeks to analyze the effects of this exclusion of women and negative anthropology about women in the shaping of the understanding of God, nature, sin, grace, Christology, redemption and ecclesiology. Feminist theology seeks to emancipate women from the ideologies and subtle forms of discrimination and oppression that exist in the male dominated, patriarchal society. Feminist theology is an attempt to incorporate women’s experience into theology. It wages war especially on the justification of such discrimination as based on arguments taken from the Bible and Tradition; its main aim is directed to the revision of an image of God that is exclusively or predominantly male.[14]

Feminist theology is born out of the struggle to overcome the oppression and subordination of women, feminist theologies are linked to a powerful vision of equality, justice, liberation and hope, rooted in a faith that knows of redemptive transformation and wholeness of being.[15] Feminist theology is a term encompassing which refers to the religious vision articulated by 3^rd world women and men to describe a new model of society and civilization that is free of systematic injustice and violence due to patriarchal domination. It seeks to affirm new paradigms of social relationships that can fully sustain human dignity and the integrity of creation, as well as eliminate the current patriarchal system of unequal power relationships that subjugate and subjugate the poor, especially women and children around the world. This vision emerges from the struggles of diverse socio-ecclesial movements for justice, for liberation, and for self determination.[16] Based on the lecture of Rosemary R. Reuther, R.L. Hnuni puts forth the meaning of feminist theology in three points:[17]

1. Feminist theology is a critique of androcentrism and misogynism

2. Feminist theology is a quest for alternative traditions which includes women as well as men

3. Feminist theology is the transformation of symbols.

1.2.5 Dalit Theology:

Dalit Liberation Theology, a contextual reflection of the liberation movement arises from the ‘pain-pathos’ of Dalit Christian community.[18] It manifests itself in two complementary ways: the resistance of Dalit to counter the dominant theologies, and creative construction to circulate theme of Dalit’s experience of the Divine One.[19]
 

The Sanskrit word ‘Dalit’ and the Hebrew term ‘Dhalid’ literally means the same and refer to “the poor and the oppressed people”. For centuries in India the Dalit have been referred to as the ‘untouchables’ or ‘panchanamas’ or ‘pariahs’. The Dalit commonly shared and suffered the six- fold oppression, namely, economic deprivation, political minoritization, social marginalization, religious ostrasization, physical segregation and cultural mutilation. Dalit Christian theology serves the interests of the Dalit people because they are an oppressed people. It does this by empowering them for the liberation struggle.

Dalit theology according to Arvind P. Nirmal is a theology about the Dalit, for the liberation of the Dalit and of the Dalit. Therefore, Dalit Christian theology will be a distinct theology as black theology or tribal theology because the Dalit have their own identity, while being open to other oppressed communities; Dalit theology is a reflection of Dalit Christians to overcome their situation of ‘Dalitness’. It is an attempt by Dalit Christians done on behalf of and by the Dalit community at large. Dalit Theology seeks to portray God as a ‘Dalit God’ who identified himself with the Dalit of the Old and the New Testaments. Jesus is seen as one who came to proclaim liberty to the Dalit. The Dalit theology perceives the Indian context as caste context.

Dalit theology is the cry of the Dalit Christians by which they try to express their faith in the midst of their agonies. Christian Dalits rejected the theology framed in the classical Indian philosophical and religious categories which are the language and perspective of the upper castes by which they wanted to maintain their superiority and to control others. Instead, Dalit Christians began to discover their own history and their ‘little traditions’ and to theologize in their own language and categories. The Christian Dalits began to discover and develop their lacerative meanings in the light of their faith experience. The crucified and Risen Jesus stood at the centre of their faith. It is the Crucified Jesus who gives meaning to their miserable and wretched life; it is the Crucified Jesus who gives them power to both to suffer and to revolt. It is the Risen Jesus who gives them hope in the midst of hopelessness; hope in a new life and for a new world. Suffering and hope is, thus, the texture of Dalit theology.[20]

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[1] Kuncheria Pathil and Dominic Veliath, An Introduction to Theology, (Bangalore: Theological Publications in India, 2003), 217-218.

[2] Matthew George Kariapuram, Tribal Hermeneutics for a Contextual Theology (Shillong: Don Bosco Center for Indigenous Cultures, 1999), 8-9.

[3] Paul Enns, The Moody Handbook of Theology (Chicago: Moody Press, 1989), 595.

[4] H.M. Conn, “Liberation Theology” in the New Dictionary of Theology, Ed. by Sinclair B. Ferguson and David F. Wright, (Leicester: Inter-Varsity Press, 1994), 387.

[5] Harvey Cox, Microsoft ® Encarta ® Reference Library 2005. CD-ROM.

[6] James H. Cone, “Black Theology” A new Dictionary of the Christian Theology, eds., Alan Richardson and John Bowden (London: SCM Press Ltd., 1983), 74.

[7] B. Demarest, “Black Theology” in the New Dictionary of Theology, Ed. by Sinclair B. Ferguson and David F. Wright, (Leicester: Inter-Varsity Press, 1994), 104.

[8] Matthew George Kariapuram, Tribal Hermeneutics… 10.

[9] Joe Aldred, “Black Liberation Theology in Britain” Dictionary of Third World Theologies, eds., Virginia Fabella, et. al . (New York: Orbis Books, 2000), 210.

[10] David L. Smith, A Handbook of Contemporary Theology (Michigan: Baker Book House Co., 2003), 211.

[11] David Kwang-Sun Suh, “Minjung Theology” in The Dictionary of Third World Theology, ed. by Fabella Virginia and R.S. Sugirtharajah, (New York: Orbis Book, 2000), 143.

[12] David Kwang-Sun Suh, “Minjung Theology” …ibid., 143.

[13] Nirmal Meinz, “Tribal Theology” in the Dictionary of Third World Theology, ed. by Virginia Fabella and R.S. Sugirtharajah, (New York: Orbis Book, 2000), 229.

[14] Matthew George Kariapuram, Tribal Hermeneutics… 10.

[15] Ursula King, “Feminist Theologies in contemporary Contexts: A Provisional Assessment” in Is There a Future for feminist Theology, ed. Deborah F. Sawyer and Diane M. Collier (England: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999), 100-101.

[16] Maria Pilar Aquinos, Feminist Theology in the Third World in Dictionary of Third World Theologies ed.Virginia Fabella & R. S. Sugirtharajah( NY: Orbis Book, 2000), 88.

[17] R. L. Hnuni, Feminist Theology: History, Meaning and concern in Transforming Theology for Empowering Women (Jorhat: Women’s Studies ETC,1999), 6.

[18] Sathianathan Clarke, “Dalit Theology” in the Dictionary of Third World Theology, ed. by Virginia Fabella and R.S. Sugirtharajah, (New York: Orbis Book, 2000), 64.

[19] Sathianathan Clarke, “Dalit Theology” … 64.

[20] Kuncheria Pathil and Dominic Veliath, An Introduction toTheology …op cit., 219 - 220