LIBERATION THEOLOGY'S CRITIQUE OF CAPITALISM: THE ARGUMENT FROM GUSTAVO GUTIÉRREZ

2008 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 3-31
Author(s):  
John R. Pottenger
Keyword(s):  
Author(s):  
Ole Jakob Løland

AbstractThe battle for meaning and influence between Latin American liberations theologians and the Vatican was one of the most significant conflicts in the global Catholic church of the twentieth century. With the election of the Argentinean Jorge Mario Bergoglio as head of the global church in 2013, the question about the legacy of liberation theology was actualized. The canonization of Archbishop Oscar Romero and the pope’s approximation to the public figure of Gustavo Gutiérrez signaled a new approach to the liberation theology movement in the Vatican. This article argues that Pope Francis shares some of the main theological concerns as pontiff with liberation theology. Although the pope remains an outsider to liberation theology, he has in a sense solved the conflict between the Vatican and the Latin American social movement. Through an analysis of ecclesial documents and theological literature, his can be discerned on three levels. First, Pope Francis’ use of certain theological ideas from liberation theology has been made possible and less controversial by post-cold war contexts. Second, Pope Francis has contributed to the solution of this conflict through significant symbolic gestures rather than through a shift of official positions. Third, as Pope Francis, the Argentinian Jorge Mario Bergoglio has appropriated certain elements that are specific to liberation theology without acknowledging his intellectual debt to it.


Author(s):  
Stephan F. De Beer

In the past decade, significant social movements emerged in South Africa, in response to specific urban challenges of injustice or exclusion. This article will interrogate the meaning of such urban social movements for theological education and the church. Departing from a firm conviction that such movements are irruptions of the poor, in the way described by Gustavo Gutierrez and others, and that movements of liberation residing with, or in a commitment to, the poor, should be the locus of our theological reflection, this article suggests that there is much to be gained from the praxis of urban social movements, in disrupting, informing and shaping the praxis of both theological education and the church. I will give special consideration to Ndifuna Ukwazi and the Reclaim the City campaign in Cape Town, the Social Justice Coalition in Cape Town, and Abahlali baseMjondolo based in Durban, considering these as some of the most important and exciting examples of liberatory praxes in South Africa today. I argue that theological education and educators, and a church committed to the Jesus who came ‘to liberate the oppressed’, ignore these irruptions of the Spirit at our own peril.


This overview chapter for the fourth part of the book covers theologies of salvation from the eighteenth to the twenty-first centuries. It covers John Wesley, Friedrich Schleiermacher, Karl Barth, Hans Urs von Balthasar, Karl Rahner, and Gustavo Gutiérrez. In the overview chapter, Ryan Reeves explains that the unique context of this period of time provides an intriguing backdrop for competing theologies of salvation. The dawn and subsequent growth of modernity and the rise in rational, empirical thinking in this period reveal the need for theologians to re-examine both the nature and effects of salvation.


Author(s):  
Niall H. D. Geraghty

In Patricio Guzmán’s Nostalgia de la luz(2010), the relatives of those imprisoned and disappeared in Chile’s Atacama desert search for the bodies of their loved ones. Simultaneously, archaeologists examine traces of the pre-Columbian societies that inhabited the area and astronomers explore the origins of the universe by analyzing light emitted from distant stars. Moving through these diverse regions of the past, the film variously captures anthropological, archaeological, geological, and cosmological durations. In contrast to interpretations which propose that this depiction of temporality allows for healing following Chile’s brutal dictatorship, this chapter employs Henri Bergson’s conception of time, Greg Hainge’s ontology of noise, and Jane Bennett’s conception of enchanted materialism to propose that Guzman’s film transmits awe and terror to the audience in an embodied manner. Reflecting on the religious connotations of Guzmán’s film in the light of the work of León Rozitchner and Gustavo Gutiérrez, the chapter proposes that the film is underpinned by the logic of the felix culpa and becomes an act of communion designed to reactivate past political struggles. This is to say that, at once scientific and theological, Nostalgia de la luz establishes the foundation for an immanent posthuman politics.


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