New Movements in Theology

Overview

Recall questions on Gutiérrez's liberation theology and the preferential option for the poor, structural sin, McFague's feminist models of God, Cone's black theology, Evangelicalism and Pentecostalism, migration and the prosperity gospel.

What you need to know

Answer each one before you reveal it.

Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

1. 1

   What conditions produced Liberation theology?

   Model answer

   Extreme inequality, landlessness and repression in Latin America in the 1960s and 1970s, often under military governments; analyses arguing that poverty there was produced by the global economic order rather than by backwardness; and a Church historically allied with landowners and now containing clergy living among the poor. The reforming impulse of the Second Vatican Council and the Latin American bishops' meeting at Medellín in 1968 gave the movement ecclesial standing.

2. 2

   Explain what G Gutiérrez means by theology as reflection on praxis.

   Model answer

   That theology is not a set of timeless truths worked out first and then applied, but a second step which reflects critically on the committed action of Christians alongside the poor in the light of God's word. Practice comes first; understanding follows and corrects it. This reverses the usual academic order and makes the standpoint of the theologian part of the method, which is exactly what its critics find objectionable.

3. 3

   Explain the preferential option for the poor.

   Model answer

   The claim that God is not neutral between the powerful and the destitute, and that the Church must therefore take the side of the poor, seeing the world from their position and working for their liberation. Gutiérrez grounds it in the Exodus, the prophets' attacks on those who rob the poor, and Jesus' announcement of good news to the poor. It does not mean God loves others less; it means that where people are being crushed, love is partisan.

4. 4

   How does Gutiérrez broaden the meaning of salvation?

   Model answer

   He treats liberation as a single process with three inseparable levels: freedom from economic and political oppression, humanity taking responsibility for its own destiny in history, and liberation from sin, which brings communion with God and with others. Separating them produces either a purely spiritual religion indifferent to hunger, or a political programme with nothing to say about God. He also insists that grace is gratuitous, and his later writing gives more attention to prayer, martyrdom and the spirituality of the poor.

5. 5

   What is structural sin, and why is the idea important?

   Model answer

   It names the way that injustice is built into economic arrangements, laws and customs, so that ordinary people cause harm simply by participating in them, and no single individual need be malicious for great damage to be done. Liberation theologians argue that a purely individual account of sin lets such arrangements escape judgment. The idea has since been widely adopted, including in official Catholic social teaching, and applied beyond poverty to racism and environmental damage.

6. 6

   What criticisms has Liberation theology faced?

   Model answer

   Rome's doctrinal office warned in the 1980s that borrowing Marxist class analysis imports an atheist framework, reduces sin to social structures, risks endorsing violence, and turns the gospel into a political programme with salvation reduced to earthly liberation. Others argued that base communities marginalised the sacraments and the hierarchy. Defenders replied that Marxism was used as a diagnostic tool rather than a creed, and that many of its practitioners were killed precisely for their pastoral work.

Other ways to work this

The same content, four other ways.

What is inside Levo

Six ways to work the same material.