This essay is a reflection on a series of articles that were prepared for a week-long conference "Theology in the Americas: 1975," which was held in Detroit, Michigan in August 1975. As Gregory Baum, who was a Professor of Theology at St. Michael's College in Toronto, Canada at that time, tells us, it brought together Christians from North and South America to study theology by taking as their starting point their respective historical experiences. Baum informs us that that the first idea of the conference , entertained by Chilean priest Sergio Torres and a group of friends, was to invite the well-known representatives of Liberation Theology and bring them into conversation with theologians of the U.S.A. and Canada. The U.S.A. theologians would include African-American, feminists, and Native-American scholars. The purpose of this conference was to establish a contextualized North American theology, which would no longer be engaged in exclusive discourse with European theology, but rather be a contextual theology which would include contributions from Latin-America, the African-American community in the U.S.A., feminist theological scholarship, Native-American theology, and contributions from the so-called Third World.
The majority of these articles, essays, and reflections will be found in the book "Theology in the Americas," edited by John Eagleson and Sergio Torres, and published by Orbis Books in 1976. This coming August will mark the forty years since the conference was held. The purpose of this reflection is not to "get stuck in the past," relative to what happened or what was said forty years ago, but rather to for us ask ourselves where we are now since then, and also to ponder on the significance and relevance (if any) of that conference for the time that we are living in. We must ask ourselves if things have changed since then, or are we still living in and with the same realities that theology sought to address forty years ago.
One of the contributors to this book Robert McAffee Brown, at that time Professor of Ecumenics and World Christianity at Union Theological Seminary in New York, gives us a short historical narrative of how the book came to be. He says, "The book unfolds its own story. It is enough to bear in mind the following: Over the past few years there has been growing up in the Third World, and particularly in Latin America, a movement called Liberation Theology-an attempt to look at the world in terms of involvement with the underprivileged and oppressed, and to find within the Christian Gospel both the analytic tools and the energizing power to work for radical change in the world. The 'analytic tools' have also, and often initially involved sociological and economic analysis, frequently along Marxist lines, and the biblical and ecclesiastical resources have involved a critical stance toward institutional religion's long alliance with the status quo. Thanks to theologians of liberation, a rereading of Christian history and Christian documents has become possible, in terms of what they contribute to a new understanding of God as one who sides with the oppressed and works with them for their own liberation. (Mc Affee Brown in Eagleson and Torres, pp. ix-x)."
He adds, "The Detroit conference, papers for which comprise the bulk of the present volume, was an attempt to gather a group of Latin Americans who have been thinking, acting, and suffering to meet with a group of North Americans, to discuss the possible impact of and influence of the Latin American experience on the North American experience. As the text indicates, the original intent was for a small group of North American professional theologians to meet with their Latin American counterparts. When it was discovered early in the preparations that this was exclusive and even elitist, the North American net was considerably widened, so that although the Latin-Americans present (about twenty-five) tended to be persons with extensive theological training and experience, the North Americans (about 175) finally represented a tremendous breadth as well as depth---laypersons, social workers, parish priests and ministers, blue collar workers, and many people from minority groups. One result of this was that the conference quickly gravitated into special interest groups---North Americans, African-Americans, Chicanos, Native Americans, Appalachians, women, Asian-American, and even (in a caucus that became self-conscious only on the last day) white males. Much of the volatile nature of the conference came from the fact that the various groups discovered that they had different agendas, and that the agendas often remained antithetical rather than yielding to easy synthesis. That itself was a discovery worth all the pain (Mc Affee Brown in Eagleson and Torres, p. x)."
In preparation for reflection on further articles and essays in this book, and also on the basis of the quotes from Mc Affee Brown, I pose the following questions for your consideration:
1. In your opinion, what does the theological climate look like today as compared to forty years ago?
2. Is theology as you know it, functioning at the service of the Church and its mission in the world, or is theology, a self-serving discussion among a group of people who really do not give a damn about the misery and suffering going on in our communities, and in the world as a whole?
3. How does theology today, as you know it, compare to the modern-day mindset of "Name it and claim it" theology, and also to the Prosperity Gospel of as reflected by people such as Creflo Dollar, T.D. Jakes, and Joel Osteen? Is their version of the Gospel in your understanding, resonant with the Power of Positive Thinking (Norman Vincent Peale, Robert Schuller), and the Prosperity Gospel (Creflo Dollar, T.D. Jakes, and Joel Olsteen), and with that general malaise of "Name it and claim it?"
4. Do we need another Detroit-like gathering to see if theology is or isn't addressing the social and global issues that need to be addressed today?
Please join us in this discussion and contribute your comments. They are very important for this discourse. I look forward to your input.
Grace and peace,
Dr. Juan A. Ayala-Carmona
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