A Theology of Liberation by Gustavo Gutierrez

[legolastn]

Given that it is an underpinning text of texts that have heavily informed my own beliefs I can't believe it has taken me this long to read through this book, but there you have it. I've now corrected that oversight. As the author is coming from a position of relative Catholic orthodoxy (relative being key here since the ideas are quite radical)

Comments

[bdouville]

Thanks for sharing this. I browsed through A Theology of Liberation three years ago (when I was writing a chapter of my dissertation which entailed some knowledge of liberation theology), and my overall impression was "I didn't expect it to sound so orthodox." From doing a surface-level read, it could have been a papal encyclical. But as I read these passages, it seems that the orthodox language belies the radical content.

There would have been a theology of liberation even without this book; Latin American liberation theology (both ideas and practice) pre-dates this particular volume. What it did was to provide a systematic foundation and justification for a spirituality of political liberation. (This is kind of ironic, consider the passage above in which he basically says that theology should precede action rather than provide a religious justification for action.)

When I read what he has to say about secularization, I sense that he was probably influenced by Harvey Cox's The Secular City (1965), or by other secular

[legolastn]

I should preface this by saying that I did not do a "careful, thorough, thoughtful read of Gutierrez from cover-to-cover." :) Thoughtful, perhaps, but there were boring bits (probably those very orthodox arguments you mention) I just skimmed over. My purpose in reading wasn't to understand every nuance of his argumentation but rather just to give me a better sense of what had inspired later works and to look for particular nuggets of wisdom I found interesting/inspiring/challenging

[bdouville]

Most United Church seminaries are full of agnostic Christians debating the finer points of theology. :)

[legolastn]

Haha, perhaps! They don't call us Unitarians Considering Christ for nothing.