LIBERATION THEOLOGY IN A CARIBBEAN PERSPECTIVE 

NOEL ERSKINE

DECOLONIZING THEOLOGY 

One of the functions of Liberation Theology in seeking to engage in God-talk from a Third World Perspective, is to decolonize the the theology which the Europeans imposed on people from the Third World and also in the U.S.A.  By decolonize, I mean stripping theology (God-talk) from those colonial elements that maintain non-white people in a position of economic, political, and social subservience. 

Noel Erskine is important for relating liberation theology to the Caribbean context.A native of Jamaica, Erskine is much more sensitive to racism than are his Latin American counterparts. Noel Leo Erskine was a member of the faculty of Candler School of Theology at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia (Ferm, op. cit., p. 127).

In his book, Decolonizing Theology: A Caribbean Perspective, he develops the theme that, just as the Caribbean has been wrongly interpreted from a First World Perspective, so too would it be incorrectly analyzed "through Latin American lenses (Maryknoll, Orbis Books, 198, p. 118). 

Erskine traces the unique history of the colonization of Jamaica, which involved the importation of Africa as slaves, and points out how the black experience of slavery in Jamaica differs from slavery in the context of North America (Ferm, op. cit. p. 51).  

For Erskine, the "decolonizing" of theology must recognize a powerful racial component that goes beyond socio-economic factors and class distinctions. Liberation from economic oppression is only part of the task. Integral freedom must be the goal of liberation (Ibid.).  

We find in Noel Erskine the same thing that we find in James Cone (the Father of African-American Liberation Theology) in the United States.  Both Cone and Erskine focus on liberation on something that needs to include race as much as the issues of gender, and social class.  

While Father Gustavo Gutierrrez, the Father of Latin American Liberation Theology focuses on "God's preferential option for the poor," Noel Erskine would focus on "God's preferential option for black people."  Neither Cone nor Erskine would imply that God favors black people because they are black, but rather because they are oppressed by the white power structure in the Caribbean and. in the U.S.A. 

Like Cone, Erskine would believes that if theology (God-talk) is done independently of the situation of oppression of black people, then  it is both demonic and irrelevant. Theological abstractions and speculation do not mean anything to people who are in economic, political, and social bondage.  

This particular Afro-Puerto Rican theologian (Yours truly) resonates with Erskine.  In order for theology to speak to colonized groups, it must raise the question "How can we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?"  Theology has to address their colonial bondage and poverty, otherwise, it is empty talk and rhetorical sensationalism.  

In the Name of the Creator, and of the Liberator, and of the Sustainer. Amen.  

Dr. Juan A. Carmona 

Past Visiting Professor of Latin American Theology 

Tainan Theological College/Seminary, Tainan, Taiwan 

                       LIBERATION THEOLOGY 

                       MARXISM AND CHRISTIAN THOUGHT 

                       OTTO MADURO 

Otto Maduro was an avowed Christian Marxist who admitted that Marx's social analysis must be radically reinterpreted for the Latin American context.  A native of Venezuela, he taught philosophy at the University of the Andes in Merida, Venezuela (Ferm, op. cit., p. 127).  

In his book, "Religion and Social Conflicts," he provides a critical social analysis of religion, arguing that the social function of a religion will vary according to the needs of a particular society (Maryknoll, Orbis Books, 1982).  

Heretofore, most sociology of religion emanating from Latin America has been done from a European perspective, thus suffering the same fate as European theology.  Maduro argues that there is no such thing as "the social function of religion in general;" Latin American social theorists in each country must develop a "Latin American praxis of the socialist self-liberation of the oppressed (Ibid., p. 32). 

Maduro belongs to the large group of Latin American liberation theologians-Juan Segundo, Jose Miguez Bonino,  Hugo Assmann, Gustavo Gutierrez, Jose Miranda-willing to incorporate Marxist insights, but only in a greatly modified form (Ferm, op. cit. p. 51). 

 I would argue that it is precisely because some of these Latin American theologians incorporate Marxist insights into their theology, that many people believe that Liberation Theology is nothing more than Marxism in disguise.  Unfortunately, many of them do not even know what Marxism is because they have not taken the time to engage in the literature in the field.  Their view of Marxism is based on what they have heard in the barber shop or in the market-place.  Their view of Marxism tends to be emotionally-based and driven, They tend to rely on rhetorical and sensationalist journalism. 

Subsequently, I would also argue that the view that many people of Liberation Theology is based on barber shop talk and market place rumors.  They are not familiar with, nor have any interest in, being familiar with what Liberation Theology is really all about.  They have not read a single book by any author of Liberation Theology.  They base their view of Liberation Theology on what others have said, which is usually defamatory propaganda.  

The question that I would raise relative to Maduro's theological orientation is whether theology (God-talk) should be based on divine revelation or sociological analysis.  Should we base ourselves on "what God has said," or should we base ourselves on how social scientists approach religion and theology from a secular standpoint?  

As a Christian theologian, I continue to believe that theology should be a "revealed religion," i.e. a set of beliefs based on God's self-disclosure in history through the prophets, through the traditions, through the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments,  and in "these last days," through God's Son, Jesus Christ.  As a theologian who has a global perspective, I also believe that God's self-disclosure has been experienced by people outside of the Judeo-Christian-Islamic traditions.  I do not believe for one single moment that any religious community or tradition has a monopoly on God's self-disclosure.  God is sovereign and reveals God-self that way that God wants to be revealed to humankind.  

Relative to Maduro's and other theologians of liberation utilizing sociological approaches to the fields of religion and theology, I would say that the social sciences are a way to decipher God's self-disclosure as filtered through human experience and knowledge.  Too often, believers, especially in the Judeo-Christian tradition tend to treat divine revelation as if the the text were "written in Heaven and thrown down to Earth," and bypassing culture and the human social condition.  God's self-disclosure is filtered through culture, language, and the understanding of the humanities, as well as the natural and the social sciences.  

Some may object to utilizing Marxist analysis to decipher divine revelation because of the supposed hostility between Marxism and religion.   I would argue that Marxism is not anti-religion per se, but rather than it is against privileged religion, i.e the role of religion that gives people a certain status in society, and that relegates others to secondary status so that the only thing they have is hope for a "hereafter" type reign of God.  

Marxist analysis is useful, though like every other branch of human knowledge, has its limitations. Maduro was absolutely correct when he stated that it must be radically interpreted in the Latin American context.  And so it goes with religion and theology.  How people engage in God-talk in the Latin American context must be affirmed, honored, respected and taken into consideration.

In the Name of the Creator, and of the Liberator, and of the Sustainer. Amen. 

Dr. Juan A. Carmona 

Past Visiting Professor of Theology 

Tainan Theological College/Seminary, Tainan, Taiwan 

               

       

                     LATIN AMERICAN LIBERATION THEOLOGY 

                     THE INCLUSION OF SEXISM AS A FORM OF OPPRESSION 

                      ELSA TAMEZ 

Elsa Tamez is another liberation theologian intent on developing a biblical hermeneutic that focuses on the Latin American oppressed. She served as a professor of biblical studies at the Seminario Biblico Latinoamericano en San Jose, Costa Rica (Ferm, op. cit. p. 127).

She saw the biblical drama as a continuing struggle on the part of the poor against the rich and comfortable-a theme that she does not find in European and North American forms of biblical theology (Ibid, p. 50).  

Tamez is one of the very few Latin American liberation theologians  who made extensive use of the writings of Jose Miranda. She is one of the very few who point to sexism as a major form of oppression.  She used the biblical story of Hagar as an example of a woman who suffered oppression for three reasons: class, race, and sex.  In a modern exposition of the Magnificat (Luke 1: 46-55), she ends by addressing God:

You have created us black, brown, yellow, white and red; male and female. We praise you because, in the midst of oppression, trials, tribulations, pain and injustice-caused by sinful human beings-you reign as our Sustainer.  As in the resurrection of Jesus Christ, you have shown us that suffering is not the end but that you are the supreme and final liberator ("Biblical Hermeneutics in the Theologies of Liberation," in Virginia Fabella and Sergio Torres, eds., Irruption of the Third World Theology: Challenge to Theology (Maryknoll, Orbis Books, 1983, p. 186).

So we find in Tamez's work that Liberation Theology does not only focus on social class issues, but also on issues of gender and race.  Women and non-Caucasian people are included among those who are dehumanized and oppressed because of their social condition.  

So we find, then, that Liberation Theology covers the wider gamut of human suffering.  It not only seeks to talk about the suffering, but to also to  talk to and  have ties of solidarity with the suffering.  

Theology is "God-talk."  It is not an exercise in semantics, or in abstract philosophical speculation. It is a discourse about God.  And this discourse does not take place aside from the human experience of suffering. Instead, it raise the question that the Israelites raised when they were in captivity in Babylon, i.e. "How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?" 

Liberation Theology seeks to engage in a discourse about God in the context of human relations and experiences.  It brings the message of God to the people in all kinds of bondage, i.e. "I have heard the cry of my people."

In the Name of the Creator, and of the Liberator, and of the Sustainer. Amen. 

Rev. Dr. Juan A. Carmona 

Reformed Church in America 

Past Visiting Professor of Theology 

Tainan Theological College/Seminary, Tainan, Taiwan 

        LATIN AMERICAN LIBERATION THEOLOGY 

        A LATIN-AMERICAN BIBLICAL HERMENEUTIC 

        JOSE SEVERINO CROATTO 

One of the things that is necessary for any theology which is not Euro-Centric, is to have a clearly-defined biblical hermeneutic (interpretation of the Scriptural revelation).  The hermeneutic has to emerge from the existential reality of the people engaged in it, and not from the people who have imposed, through colonization, their own hermeneutic as if it were "universally valid in all times and in all places."  

In general, in spite of the variations that exist in Latin American Liberation Theology, the common thread among these theologians is that  oppression and suffering serve  as the starting point for biblical interpretation and theological reflection.  In other words, rather than utilize the Bible to shed light on the human conditions of oppression and suffering, Liberation Theology begins with the human condition as a lens through which to examine and understand the biblical message.  

One of the Latin American theologians who believes that a genuine biblical hermeneutic should emerge from the oppressed community and not the oppressing community is Jose Severino Croatto.  Croatto was the first Catholic to teach at the Instituto Superior Evangelico de Estudios Teologicos in Buenos Aires, Argentina (Ferm, op. cit. p. 126).

He insists that there can be no definitive biblical hermeneutic (or closed Christology), because the different historical accumalations of meaning require ever renewed interpretation. He is adamant on this point:

The theology of the Third World has burst upon the scene with a hermeneutic challenge.  Like the theology that is arising in the world of the poor,  all theologies of liberation (socio-political, religious, women's, black and so on) mean to decipher a liberating God's new manifestations in situations of injustice and alienation.  For, in the suffering of the poor, we are assisting at a new God-event.  The poor are raising their consciousness and fighting for liberation.  It is they, first and foremost, who "recognize" God and who pronounce the first "word"-the first interpretation-of the God event ("Biblical Hermeneutics in the Theologies of Liberation," in Virginia Fabella and Sergio Torres, eds, Irruption of the Third World: Challenge to Theology (Maryknoll, Orbis Books, 1983, p. 163). " 

Croatto also dwells on the unending struggle Yahweh and "oppressing gods," and asserts that, in a real sense the theme of the entire Bible is "the battle of the gods ("The Gods of Oppression," in Pablo Richard et. al, the Idols of Death and the God of Life, p. 27)." 

He is also one of a growing cadre of liberation. theologians intent on developing an authentic Christology for Latin America.  Like Leonardo Boff, he portrays Jesus as "the one who reveals human values," the one who seeks out the oppressed, the one who knows firsthand what it means to be marginalized and denounced by oppressors (Ferm, op. cit. p. 50).

Like many other liberation theologians, Croatto finds strong parallels between the experiences of the early Christians and those of the oppressed peoples of the Third World (Ibid., p 50). 

If Third World theology is to result in our drinking "from our own wells," then a Christology and a clearly defined hermeneutic must accompany that emerging theology.  The Christology and the biblical hermeneutic must be home grown rather than imported. 

In the Name of the Creator, and of the Liberator, and of the Sustainer. Amen. 

Rev. Dr. Juan A. Carmona 

Past Visiting Professor of Latin American Liberation Theology 

Tainan Theological College/Seminary 

 

LATIN AMERICAN LIBERATION THEOLOGY: A HEALTHY ATHEISM 

One of the many challenges of Christian theology is that of contending with atheism.  Theology, as a branch of religion, engages in the task of not only "proving" the existence of God, but also putting those "proofs" into systematic form. 

The major issue with the theological task relative to this, is that within religion and theology themselves, there are so many different and varying  expressions.  In certain Christian sub- communities, there is a tendency to claim their particular expression of the faith as the "one and only valid" expression.

We find the same phenomenon in Latin American Liberation Theology.  Though the common thread is oppression as the starting point for biblical interpretation and theological reflection, we also find variation within this particular theological modality.  As I have mentioned before, Latin American Liberation Theology is not monolithic by any stretch of the imagination.

One particular Liberation theologian who brings in a unique element is Antonio Perez-Esclarin. Perez-Esclarin was a native of Venezuela.  He taught for several years at a university in Caracas, and later left his academic post to live with the oppressed (Ferm, op. cit., p. 126)

Perez-Esclarin sees the chief contribution of Latin American Liberation Theology in the fresh meaning it gives to the conception of God as liberator (Ibid.).  

With other liberation theologians, he contends that idolatry is worse than atheism.  He explores this theme in his book "Atheism and Liberation (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1978).  

Of the idolatrous God in which oppressors believe, Perez-Esclarin writes:  "It is the God of the white conqueror, the God who expects submission from those who are enslaved...the God of the colonizers who denies humanity and equality to be colonized (Atheism, pp. 57-58)." 

Perez-Esclarin believed that it was better to be an atheist than to believe in that kind of God.  He contends that the true God's incarnation in Jesus gives us a living embodiment of the concrete meaning of liberation. He develops this point in his modern parable of Jesus of Gramoven. In this narrative, he relates the story of Jesus Rodriguez, a resident of the slums of Caracas, through the course of Holy Week.  In the end he is kidnapped as a "communist activist, and disappears from history (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1980). 

So here we are faced with an interesting question.  Is it better to believe in a God who is the construction of people who believe in racial supremacy, or is it better to be an atheist?  Perez-Esclarin is more inclined towards the latter.  

As a Liberation theologian of Afro-Puerto Rican background, I tend to resonate with Perez-Esclarin.  I believe that it is more honest to deny the existence of such a deity than to affirm it.  Idolatrous Gods only exist in the minds of those who construct them and concoct a theology surrounding them.  I believe that an honest atheism clears the way for a belief in God than does belief in an idolatrous God.  

If in connection and resonance with the Scriptures of the Judeo-Christian traditions we affirm that God created humankind in the divine image, then we can avoid the idiosyncrasies and traps of having humans create God in their image.  If in connection and resonance with Latin American Liberation Theology, we affirm that this Creator and creating God has revealed Godself throughout history in a variety of ways, and uniquely through Jesus of Nazareth, and that God has been revealed as being in solidarity with the oppressed and suffering of this world, then we clear the path for humankind to come to faith in a healthy way with that God.  Healthy atheism, more so than idolatry, helps us to encounter the liberating God.

In the Name of the Creator, and of the Liberator, and of the Sustainer.  Amen.  

Rev. Dr. Juan A. Carmona 

Reformed Church in America 

Past Visiting Professor of Latin American Liberation Theology 

Tainan Theological College/Seminary