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On Premature Reports of the Death of Liberation Theology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

Daniel H. Levine
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Type
Review Essay
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 57 , Issue 1 , Winter 1995 , pp. 105 - 131
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1995

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References

1. I discuss these reverses and disappointments in “Religious Change, Empowerment, and Power: Reflections on Latin American Experience,” in Organized Religion in the Political Transformation of Latin America, ed. Satya Patnay (forthcoming), and also in “Bridging the Gap Between Empowerment and Power in Latin America,” in Transnational Religion, the State, and Global Civil Society, ed Suzanne Rodolph and James Piscatori (forthcoming), co-authored with David Stoll.

2. There is also a generational problem. Thus far no “second wave” has emerged to replace liberation theology's founding generation. The emergence and coherence of this generation of writers and activists are amply documented in Smith, Christian, The Emergence of Liberation Theology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993).Google Scholar

3. Cf. Levine and Stoll, “Bridging,” and for documentation of extensive efforts to rethink key dimensions of liberation theology,Romero, Catalina and Munoz, Ismael, eds., Liberation y desarrollo en America Latina: Perspectivas (Lima: CEP, 1993)Google Scholar.

4. Typically base communities or CEBs, from the Spanish or Portuguese words for base ecclesial communities. For detailed accounts of CEBs, see the contributions in Levine, Daniel H., ed., Religion and Political Conflict in Latin America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1986)Google Scholar and also Levine, , Popular Voices in Latin American Catholicism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5. On p. 79, the author mentions a survey he carried out but provides no details.

6. For detailed expositions of this view see Scott, James, Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985)Google Scholar and also his Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990).Google Scholar

7. Austin, Diane, “Born again… and again, and again: Comunitas and social change among Jamaican Pentecostalists,” Journal of Anthropological Research 37:3 (Fall 1981): 242–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

8. Padre Cicero was a priest in Northeastern Brazil around whom a large political and religious movement arose. See Cava, Ralph Delia, Miracle in Joaseiro (New York: Columbia University Press, 1970)Google Scholar and Slater, Candace, Trail of Miracles (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985).Google Scholar

9. I review some of this literature in my “How Not to Understand Liberation Theology, Nicaragua, or Both,” Journal of Inter American Studies and World Affairs 32:3 (Fall 1990): 229–45CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and “Considering Liberation Theology as Utopia, Review of Politics 52: 4 (1990):. 603–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

10. Cf. Levine, “Considering.”

11. Shortly after these killings, El Salvador's attorney general wrote to the Pope suggesting that many blamed the popular church for the problems of the country (Berryman, p. 97).

12. Cf. David Stoll's account of an emerging ‘“theology of survival” among Indian communities hard hit by repression in Guatemala. Stoll comments that it is hard for intellectuals to appreciate the appeal of such views. Apart from “wanting to show solidarity with the victims of human rights violations, many of us have found the sociological frame of reference adopted by liberation theology compatible with our own. Certainly it is easier for secular intellectuals to identify with liberation theology than with fundamentalism. But the theology of liberation may fit the religious experience of Ixils less than a theology of survival” (Stoll, , Between Two Armies. In the Ixil Towns of Guatemala [Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994]. p. 194)Google Scholar

13. Cf. Pearce, Jenny, The Promised Land Peasant Rebellion in Chalatenango, El Salvador (London: Latin America Bureau, 1986).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

14. Cf. Ammerman, Nancy, “Telling Congregational Stories,” Review of Religious Research 35: 4 (06 1994): (289–301).CrossRefGoogle Scholar Ammerman suggests that when considered from the point of view of everyday practice, the sharp divisions and disjunctures predicted by theories of secularization lose force of conviction.

15. For a complete account, see my “Protestants and Catholics in Latin America: A Family Portrait” in Fundamentalisms Comprehended, ed. Marty, M. and Appleby, R. S. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995).Google Scholar

16. Edward Cleary states, “In effect, Pentecostalism and reform Catholicism offer bridges for the socio economic and political changes taking place in the country. Both offer symbolic systems by which to live a life adapted to changed conditions” (Cleary, , “Evangelicals and Competition in Guatemala,” in Conflict and Competition. The Latin American Church in the 1990s, ed. Cleary, Edward and Stewart-gambino, Hannah (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1992), p. 185.Google Scholar

17. Berryman cites this experience: “A young woman who was involved in a base community went to a charismatic mass, witnessed speaking in tongues, and responded to the invitation to step forward for healing. She had an ecstatic experience and felt herself healed. Later she told a progressive priest that she had felt at ease and asked whether she had experienced God. He told her he thought it was 90 percent psychological, but admitted to me that the ‘charismatic movement gets to psychological factors that we in the liberation line don't reach.' Among the positive aspects of the charismatic renewal he mentioned were participation, personal renewal, and a festive sense of life. Liberation-oriented pastoral work was deficient in prayer; participants pray in connection with their efforts to work for change, but such prayer lacks the intensity found in these other church movements” (p. 216).

18. For an insightful account, see Drogus, Carol, “Reconstructing the Feminine: Women in Sao Paulo's CEBs,” Archives de Sciences Sociales des Religions 72 (07-09 1990): 63–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

19. On these and related issues, see Marzal, Manuel, Los Caminos religiosos de los Inmigrantes a la Gran Lima. El Caso de El Agustino (Lima: Pontificia Universidad Catolica, Fondo Editorial, 1988).Google Scholar Marzal comments, for example, that “pentecostals have mounted a campaign centered on health that draws on elements of collective psychology, such as the faith of people who humbly approach God looking for health in extreme situations, the charismatic force of pastors who in God's name order devils to leave the body of the afflicted, whose illness is charged with ethical meaning, the solidarity of the prayerful community that appeals to heaven on behalf of their sick brother with great emotion at moments when some brothers speak in tongues, which affirms that the community is in the presence of the Holy Spirit. This overall approach to health finds its maximum expression in the spectacular cures that come in the public campaigns of international evangelists such as Jimmy Swaggart or Gigi Avila” (p. 412).

20. I take this to be a central argument of Martin's, DavidTongues of Fire. The Explosion of Protestantism in Latin America. (London: Basil Blackwell, 1990).Google Scholar

21. Parallels are noted with base communities, above all with respect to the role each takes in building community, and beginning the slow process of accumulating social capital that—with time and luck—can establish the bases for a new and truly independent civil society.

22. A recent translation of the best selling French La Revanche De Dieu Chrétiens, juifs, et musulmans à la reconquête du monde (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1991).Google Scholar

23. Not long ago I attended a meeting in Lima, Peru, called by the Instituto Bartolomé de las Casas, a founding center of liberation theology. This gathering was intended to evaluate the experiences of the past few decades and chart a course for the future. One conclusion was that “for twenty years we've talked about popular groups and made the popular subject central to all our theories, but we've never really let popular groups speak for themselves” (see Daniel Levine, “Peru: El Derecho a pensar en situación de fin del mundo,” SIC [Caracas], No. 548, September-October 1992. For a full account of this meeting, see Catalina Romero and Ismael Munoz, eds., Liberatión y Desarrollo).

24. Excessive focus on Central America has done a disservice in this regard, by tying the validity of the liberatonist project too closely to the fortunes of political groups and movements, and exaggerating the extent of the popular involvement and support they enjoyed. Here, as elsewhere, liberationists were a minority.