Class: Liberation Christology

Gandhi, King, Mother Teresa, the nameless saints--they are
all irritants, challenging the careful, comfortable ways we have organized
our lives. Yet we love them. Why do we love them? It is only partly
because of who they are. They give flesh to what they believe and thereby
awaken a spirit deep within us. By their words and deeds they call forth
that part of us that yearns to give life, to love mercy and to do justice.
By living their lives the way they do they reach for what is deepest and
best in each of us--pulling, organizing, putting our love for justice to
work in practical ways that serve the poor.
- Reverend Chris Hartmire

Liberation theologians in Latin America have attempted to use their modern day contextual understanding of Jesus’ significance to develop a church of the poor standing in solidarity with the marginalized and oppressed peoples of the world. This liberation theology comes from a third world context where poverty and violence causes millions to suffer. How can Jesus’ life and significance be understood in the context of a wealthy first world nation? How can a liberation Christology be articulated in the United States? How does this articulation influence our interpretations of Jesus Christ’s life and message? The writings of Volker Kuster, Rosemary Radford Ruether, Josè Ignacio Gonzales-Faus, William Herzog, and Raymond Schwager offer insights into how one might articulate a liberation Christology in the United States today.
Kip Tiernan, a long-time hunger activist in Boston, offers some reflections regarding a North American liberation theology. She writes, “What is needed is a North American Theology of Liberation—a renewed consciousness around the social needs of poor people. A Theology of Liberation for North America would consist of radicalizing the privileged, however, and this would not be easy.” She argues that the United States is increasingly a “third world” country because of the growing gap between rich and poor and violence. Liberation Christology in a United States context requires a preferential option for the marginalized and oppressed in this country and an acknowledgement and reconciliation of the poverty and frustration caused by this country’s wealth and military and economic foreign policy. We must come to understand the context and significance of following Jesus’ liberating praxis in the United States today.

The Significance of Culture and Context

The context of interpretation is central to any understanding of the Christian faith. The cultural, social, political, and economic environment in a certain time and place plays a very important role in determining the significance behind certain actions, beliefs, and messages. First and foremost Jesus’ life must be understood within its own context. Jesus was human on this earth and lived in a specific sociopolitical context that influences how first world people should interpret his message in following Jesus in our own lives. Volker Kuster, author of The Many Faces of Jesus Christ, argues that the process of enculturation is intrinsic to Christian faith. Culture permeates all faith because faith exists in this world, and each part of this world has its sociopolitical and historical context. This leads us to certain questions about Jesus’ message. What was Jesus’ culture? His context? What is culture today? Context today? So, in seeking to develop a liberation Christology in the United States, we must first understand Jesus’ liberating praxis entailed during his life, work, death, and resurrection and then apply that praxis to our lives in a different environment.
This notion of culture, however, makes it difficult to balance truths of the gospel with the relevant social context. There is one extreme line of thought that holds that the truths of the Christian faith must be completely universal, and thus removed from normalized culture. This is dangerous in that all culture might be lost, and the supposed universal truth might suffer with a variety of perspectives to challenge it and maintain it. There is another extreme line of thought that holds that the adoption of contextual cultural values is necessary because Christianity is enacted locally. The danger in this philosophy is that Christian identity may be lost and being a good Christian may become indistinguishable from being a good citizen. Most liberation theologians would put themselves in the conversionist realm, advocating that there is something distinct and profound about being Christian, but Christians should seek to transform their surrounding sociopolitical environment by participating in it and engaging it. Kuster notes, however, “Just as the kernel of a nut is brought to light when the shell is removed, so too the gospel can be extracted from its cultural covering” (Kuster, 21). Essentially, Christ can be revealed in any culture. The goal in developing a liberation Christology in the United States is to reveal the “kernel” of Jesus’ praxis for today in this country.


The Context of Jesus’ Life

Understanding the significance of Jesus’ life, work, death, and resurrection requires an awareness of Jesus’ life and surroundings. First, the significance of Jesus requires an understanding of his context as a Galilean Jew in the first century. Jesus lived as a human in a specific social environment and that environment must be interpreted. Liberation theologians focus “first on the historical Jesus, specifically on his ‘liberating praxis.’ It is these deeds of Jesus that reveal the meaning of his person and message” (Ruether, 20). These deeds are expressions of complete solidarity with the poor and directly entering into the structural social conflict of his time. Along with his deeds, Jesus’ origins from Galilee are essential to an understanding of the significance of his life and work. “God has emptied himself in the cross of Jesus Christ: ‘He established his centrality by going to the periphery’” (Kuster, 125). At that time, Galilee was the home of a number of social and religious outcasts, people who were generally rejected by the Jews. In terms of interpreting scripture, God’s love is demonstrated by the fact that Jesus became human as an outcast. Jesus worked with the outcasts and thus became an outcast. He was a political subversive who challenged the existing social orders and he was murdered on the cross because of it. As Jesus is abandoned on the cross and killed, he understands what it means to be abandoned and can thus identify with those abandoned by society.
Also, the resurrection of Jesus has implications for a scriptural understanding of a preferential option for the poor. According to the gospel of Mark, the risen Jesus appears in Galilee. In Christ the Liberator, Jon Sobrino writes, “Whatever may have happened geographically and historically, Galilee is the place of the poor and the despised. And there, according to Mark, the risen Christ will be found.” (page 14). First, Jesus’ body and soul are resurrected, symbolic of the call for the resurrection of the “bodies” of the crucified of our world. Second, Jesus appears among the poor and despised of his world, demonstrating a preferential option for the poor. Also, the first to see the risen Christ were women, a group that was and is oppressed by society.

Following Jesus in a United States Context

In attempting to understand Jesus’ significance today, we must interpret the context of our social world today. As Jesus lived as a human in a specific context, we too live in our own context in the world. It is possible to practice liberation today. William Herzog, author of Jesus, Justice, and the Reign of God, writes, “We are not faced with a new story altogether, but with a new moment in the same story” (Herzog, 65). In order to understand better how to follow Christ and take down from the cross the crucified of our world today, understanding Christ in our own context is important. Reverend Hartmire passionately describes several people who have attempted to hold on to the memory of Jesus’ resurrection in their own lives. Gandhi, King, Mother Theresa and others found their own way to follow Christ while living in a certain context. “The cross and the resurrection are contextual to a particular historical community. These are breakthrough experiences which found our people, that mediate hope in the midst of adversity for us. But this does not mean that these are the only ways that this may happen, or that other people may not continue parallel struggles on different grounds” (Ruether, 43). Though the contexts and time periods are different, there are ways to engage in liberating praxis in the United States today.
The three essential aspects of Jesus’ liberating praxis are a preferential option for the poor and outcast, solidarity with the marginalized, and an entrance in the structural social conflict of one’s time. “Following Christ basically means to follow his kind of way of life in the concrete contexts of the social conflicts of one’s time” (Ruether, 21). It is important to identify outcast, marginalized, and oppressed of contemporary United States society in order to understand the significance of Jesus’ message today. These outcast, marginalized, and oppressed people include women, people of color, the homeless, people who identify as GLBT, the economically poor, the sick, the mentally disabled, and immigrants. Marginalization takes on almost infinite forms, but people who embody some of these characteristics suffer from widespread discrimination in obvious and subtle ways. These marginalized people are part of a structurally unjust system that is sinful. People are inherently sinful not necessarily because of the original sin of Adam and Eve, but rather because people are born into a situation of conflict with sinful structures. “For liberation theologians sin means not only alienation from God and personal brokenness in life, but also the structural evils of war, racism, sexism, and economic exploitation which allow some people to dehumanize others” (Ruether, 19). Unfortunately, war, racism, sexism, and economic exploitation exist in the United States, both internally within our own borders and externally in our foreign military and economic policies.
Spanish theologian Josè Ignacio Gonzalez-Faus identifies three aspects of following Jesus’ message today in the first world by addressing the structural injustices. First, Gonzalez-Faus acknowledges that Jesus reveals the evil that lies beneath the accepted social norms. In the United States today, this could be manifested through creating systems of education and awareness in our communities about systemic injustices that marginalize our brothers and sisters. Second, Gonzalez-Faus acknowledges that this revelation of injustice is part of the tension that comes with the proclamation of the kingdom. Revealing the debilitating effects of poverty, racism, corporate greed, and other social practices that are anti-fraternity, will be combated by those in power because of its inherent challenge to existing structural norms. Third, Gonzalez-Faus acknowledges that this tension lead to Jesus being judged, outcast, and opposed. So, present-day prophets entering into the social conflicts of our time in support of justice will be opposed by many.
Martin Luther King, Jr., for example, followed Jesus in his own mid-20th century United States context. He called for justice and rallied millions to reveal existing evils, condemn these evils as wrong, and promote human equality by standing with the marginalized. Then, King was assassinated by someone standing in opposition to his calls for justice. Ruether writes, “Lay catechists, nuns, even some bishops join the ranks of the imprisoned, the tortured, the assassinated. It is from this reality that Latin American Christians speak to Christians of the First World, of Europe and the United States, about what it means to hear and preach the good news of God’s preferential option for the poor” (Ruether, 26). As Kip Tiernan notes, it will take the radicalizing of the privileged in the United States to address issues of systemic injustice that keeps society further away from the kingdom of God.
On a more individual level, a liberating praxis involves personal identification with the poor and marginalized. The United States today has structural barriers in place that hinder the development of the human community. One goal of a liberating praxis should be to break down these barriers and build relationships. “Jesus was well received by the common people, villagers, peasants, rural artisans, and the more destitute as well” (Herzog, 59). An example of at least a semblance of the breakdown of social barriers between the privileged and the poor in my personal experience is the time I have spent at Haley House, a soup kitchen in downtown Boston. At Haley House the line between kitchen and dining area is blurred, so often patrons work in the kitchen and help clean up after meals and volunteers and staff eat breakfast and chat with all members of the community. Human connection and identification with the poor and outcast of society is important to understanding the call of Jesus in our current sociopolitical and cultural situation.



Conclusion

Jesus entered into the suffering of the marginalized and oppressed people of his time by standing in solidarity with them and entering into existing social conflicts. We must not only understand Jesus’ message, we must enact it in our own context in the United States today. In his work, Jesus the Liberator, liberation theologian Jon Sobrino poses this thought: “Jesus asked us to follow him and we ended up worshipping him.” It is our call now to follow Jesus in our own communities. “In our present world, when we see a society where a few rich families own almost all the land, where they suppress all protest with guns and tanks, where they manipulate religion and education to justify this exploitation, there we are far from the kingdom. But when we see the vast majority rising up against these evils, overthrowing the police state, beginning to create a new society where the hungry are fed, and the poor are able to participate in the decisions that govern their lives, there the kingdom has come ‘close’” (Ruether, 22). The central tenet of liberation is not theology, but liberation. When doing theology in the United States, we must situate ourselves in the reality of oppression, practicing a theology that is a reflection of a liberating praxis.