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Welcome to Part 3 of the Cheap Religion Series. This week we will discuss the birth of Liberation Theology. If you have missed parts one and two, they are linked in their respective number.

2 Factors to Set Us Up

After World War 2, the theological center of Christianity shifted away from Germany to the United States. Two primary factors caused this, and the lives of the major German theologians who lived through the war repeated this. 

Christian Evangelical Sucess in America

The first factor was discussed in Part 1. With the bringing of Christianity as a “national religion,”  a lot of money was available for already strong schools to become world-renowned and for lesser-known schools to become strong by attracting top talent from a devastated Europe. This factor, alongside the Nazi regime, moved many pre-eminent German Theologians from their posts at the German theological centers of learning to the American centers of Harvard, Yale, University of Chicago, and Union Theological Seminary.

Nazi support from German Christians

The second factor was, of course, the Nazi regime. The Nazis were empowered initially and funded by the German Christian Movement, which itself was a part of the German Evangelical Church. The conservative German Christian Movement aligned itself more with Nazi ideals by attempting to include the Aryan clause in church doctrine or law. I recommend reading these translations of the Nuremberg Laws to get an idea of what they were going after. While the Aryan paragraph or clause was widely accepted across Germany’s different faith traditions (Catholic and Protestant), the Confessing Church opposed them. 

It is important to note here that Nazism could not have risen without the support of the Church. The German Church was complicit in the killing of millions of Jews, just as the American churches are complicit in the lynchings that still proceed today, like the George Floyd case. So when the Church gets behind a political party vehemently, people of different races and creeds than White Christianity have recent and distant history to know life is going to get very hard by those who claim to follow the one who died for all, Jew and Greek, Slave and Free, Male and Female.

Paul Tillich

Knowing this sets us up for a particular figure, Paul Tillich. Tillich was German-born and immigrated to America in 1933. Paul Tillich’s most famous work might be his book written for the more common reader – “The Courage to Be.” Yet, his life exemplifies what shifted the theological landscape to America. Fleeing the Nazis and well-trained in the many different modes of German theological thought, he found a home here in a land that had founders who sought to protect it from a religious rise he had just experienced in Germany.

What exploded his popularity, and others like Karl Barth and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, was their history of opposing the Nazis. These theologians would spend their lives attempting to understand how the Church (both Protestant and Catholic) could endorse the deaths of millions of Jews. Then, they would spend their lives giving theological backing to attempt to never have it happen again. These theologians eventually became a new branch of theology – Liberation Theology. 

The Courage to Be

This branch of theology which we will explore next week and it will not surreptitiously align with the three topics brought up last week found much of its original theological backing in Tillich’s “The Courage to Be” and the “Exodus” Story from the Bible. Here is a short summary of the Tillich’s work but the book itself is less than 200 pages and you should read it for yourself.

“The Courage to Be” by Paul Tillich explores the concept of courage as the affirmation of one’s existence in the face of life’s anxieties and uncertainties. The book delves into three primary types of existential anxiety: the fear of fate and death, the fear of guilt and condemnation, and the fear of meaninglessness.

Tillich argues that the courage to be is the ability to affirm one’s own being despite these anxieties. This courage stems from accepting oneself as part of a greater reality and finding meaning through personal faith and connection to the divine. He discusses the role of religion, particularly Christianity, in providing the framework for this courage, emphasizing that ultimate courage is found in the acceptance of God’s unconditional grace.

Liberation Theology

Liberation theology has three major sub-branches: Black Theology, Feminist Theology, and Latino Theology, along with many others that are valid but less well-known in America. Think of it like the Major and Minor Prophets in the Bible—the only difference is the size of the corpus. By definition, these theologies were trying to be liberated from something. So, they often make the most sense when they stand in opposition to something. So, when you read them from the White Male perspective that I would, they don’t come off as readily apparent. Yet, when you slow down to empathize with the group that is oppressed (hence needing liberation), then not only can you feel the pain within the oppressed, but the pain caused by your hand in oppressing. The response is often not so different from Moses when he sees the Egyptians abusing the Israelites.

Black Theology

The oldest might be Black Theology. It was perhaps best developed by Theologian James Cone, but it was popularized by Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Two works stand out. I have already mentioned “Letters from a Birmingham Jail,” but this time, I mention James Cone’s “The Cross and the Lynching Tree.” In it, he masterfully compares my extended family to the Romans who crucified Jesus. We lynch Jesus with every black body that fails to receive justice. 

It should be obvious then that the Civil Rights Movement, which fought for Black Americans’ right to vote, should be a leading cause of liberation. When Black Americans (many of whom have roots in this country as deep as mine) finally have a voice, they can stand up to their oppressors without waiting for another Moses to lead an Exodus. There is no point in waiting for another Moses when Christ has already come. To quote King Jr., “Justice delayed is justice denied.” 

Again, my family of White Christians denies justice to those we lynch today, even if it isn’t nailing them to a tree. The difference is minimal when you consider how constrained Black Americans are economically in the United States. And that is without consideration of laws that allow certain advertisements and laws that permit over-policing and harsher punishments for simply being Black in America. My family, who signed the Declaration and Constitution, which held that people had unalienable rights, were the very people James Cone and Black Theology needed liberating from because we had written a bad check.

Feminist Theology

Black Theology was pushing back on Nazism and subsequent forms of Christian Nationalism on the grounds of race. Christian feminists like Sallie McFague and Phyllis Trible were pushing back based on gender. Nazism, like many forms of authoritarianism, finds the basis and the argument of the “natural order of things” in the patriarchy. 

Patriarchy means when only men lead. Femarchy means only women lead. Christian feminists want neither. Secular Feminists might argue for a Femarchy, but the Christians disagree with that understanding. Christian Feminists argue for equality among all genders. They demonstrate how God prizes women throughout the Biblical narrative by God.

When someone is demeaning women and citing the natural order of things, we should all be cautious because those are the lines of people who are about to abuse other people. The Christian Feminists taught us about this abuse and showed us how God pushes back on the “natural order of things” throughout the Biblical narrative. Trible’s work, “The Texts of Terror,” exposes how God highlighted and protected women from men who were “doing the natural order of things.” Hagar stands as a particular example as she is both a woman and a slave and is still the first to name God in the Bible. Her relationship with God contrasts with her master, Abram. That type of juxtaposition shows us that from the beginning, God respected women more than men did. Men who wish to follow God might heed how God and Jesus respect women in the Bible.

Patriarchy

The takedown of patriarchy coincides with the Sexual Revelation we discussed last week. If women are shown to be honored throughout the Bible, so might other people of other sexual orientations. The rise of Christian feminism opened the doors not just for female equality on the basis of gender but for all identifying genders to be equal. 

Next week, we will continue how much Feminist Theology changed and altered faith in America and beyond. Even though it pushed the boundaries perhaps the furthest in our understanding of God, race is still the uniting factor for next week’s move. Though Feminism will get the loudest talking points, polls, and data will show that it is race that unites the hate.

Latino Theology

Latino Liberation Theology challenges not race or gender but systems. Latinos were the first successful people to criticize Capitalism from a Christian perspective. Even Latino secular poets and authors like Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Pablo Neruda were working to change the crushing weight of capitalism in Latin America. That crushing weight has now come to America and has won both Joe Biden and Donald Trump presidential elections.

When you read the Liberation Theologians Jon Sobrino and Oscar Romero, you will find pressure against the system set up and run by America to keep the rest of the Western Hemisphere under its influence. The levers of power are not just military, economic, or electoral on a national level. Local plantation harvesters are impacted when American corporations donate to make sure the owner remains in charge. These theologians called us to recognize and remember the poor we harmed in pursuing profit. 

Jon Sobrino

Sobrino’s work, “No Salvation Outside of the Poor,” tied our Christianity to our treatment of the poor. Can Christians ignore the plight of the poor or, worse, create that plight and still call themselves Christian? For Sobrino, the answer hits us in uncomfortable places. Sobrino didn’t tie this to a one-time election or event but to how we all participate and enable systems of oppression. He spends his life like the Hippies – fighting against the “man.” 

Sobrino questions, like his Secular Latino writers, is capitalism worth it? For them, communism or socialism did not provide an out. The Russian people suffered under communism, and Stalin killed more Jews than Hitler ever did. The Nazis were socialists, at least in name, so that was not the path out either. 

The secular Latinos set about writing laments that they were in the best system, capitalism, and still oppressed. For Sobrino and Romero, there was hope in Jesus. They weren’t going to create a new broken Christian nation. They wanted to live an alternate lifestyle that valued the oppressed people and made inroads to relieve the stress of the poor. The goal was to accomplish this instead of perpetuating cycles that kept people poor and would eventually, by their prediction, reach America. (That analysis is a few weeks out, but it will be good.)

Conclusion

What I was hoping you could take away from this is that Biblical interpretation opened up in the 1950s and 1960s and took a turn away from White Homogenous Christianity. This was because, during the War, White Homogenous Christianity became linked to Nazism. Today that is increasingly the case again. It isn’t that White Christianity is necessarily wrong, but it is incomplete without including the voices of people from different races, genders, and creeds. This incompleteness leaves Christianity open to attack and critique when we live against many of the apparent commands of Christ, like caring for the poor and imprisoned.

If White Christianity is incomplete, then we are going to have to open up the tables of Christian power to hear these other voices. In the University systems, that was precisely what was happening as more Christian Theologians and Pastors worked for and with the Civil Rights Movement, the Sexual Revelation, and even sometimes the Hippies. 

Next Week

As you can imagine, Christians (White Men) became nervous about what would happen if they were exposed as racist or for their sexual misconduct. And would they, like Zaccheus, have to return any extra money they had cheated out of people? It was too much for too many to open the doors of the Church to the oppressed unless that oppressed person was White.

At the same time, it wasn’t like the government, who had invested so much in Christianity, wasn’t paying attention. It knew Liberation Theology had a more profound attachment that would turn the Christian majority the government had created against it. They had a dog in the fight over which type of Christianity would emerge. The United States wanted a more nationalistic kind of Christianity to win because it believed it could protect itself from becoming Nazi Germany. And that is the history we are writing today.

Next week, we will see what was done in response to these new theologies of liberation, and the focal point will be the Southern Baptist Church.

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