Liberation Theology 1

Liberation Theology 1

 People's God

 Theology is founded upon kerugma the theoretical and systematic studies of the truth of the Gospels. This is followed by Exegetical the study of various interpretations of the scriptures. The truth is different in different interpretations. Christianity is unique in that its message involves an apocalyptic destruction of the world, which symbolized in the crucifixion and death of the body. This becomes necessary for the eschatological study of the resurrection and the end of time. The message is a totally new world will replace this current world. When this message becomes secular it is the philosophy behind a socialist revolution.

 Marxism and Left Anarchism began in Christian countries and they carried a non-theological version of this idea. In other traditions death is not a new beginning in radical different environment, but part of the cycle of life. The transmigration of souls is reincarnation. This followed the cycles of nature in temperate climates. There is death in the winter and the rebirth in the spring. Reincarnation is like recycling. Eschatological is the replacement of a radically different existence. Buddhism was founded in Northern India near Nepal not in the tropics. Hinduism began with the Indo-European tribes entering India from the north. Taoism began in the temperate parts of China. Many American Indian Tribes also believed in reincarnation.

 The Dine` or Navajo claim that upon death our body returns to the earth to re-nourish all future generations. Our, also, soul returns to the sky to re-nourish all future generations. Socialism wants nothing other than a new world to replace the old.

 Jew vs. Jew, after the destruction of the temple, only the Pharisee and Christian Jew remained, of the main competing factions of Judaism. The Pharisee is the Rabbinical Judaism and as God chosen they are the keeper of the law. Like most tribal people, who are all God's chosen, they must remain separated from the other.

 The Pre-Pualing Christians were rural based, whose main goals were to build communities of resistance to oppression. The Christians rejected armed struggle. This led the Romans to exterminate Zealots. The Christians rejected the withdrawing from the Roman world like the Essen; the Roman hunted them down and killed them all. The church in Palestine was rural based and very much in the Jewish tradition.

 Paul re-established a modified version of the law less rigorous. This version of Christianity was still Jewish but designed for urban Rome, and also separated the chosen from the non-chosen. The Rabbis criticism of the Christians was similar to their criticism of the Samaritans. Both were weak in following of the law therefore unclean. The Christians criticism of the Pharisees was they were legalistic and too intellectual.

 The other major difference was that to the Christian the Eschatological was central to their theology. This includes the replacement of this evil world with a holy world. To the Rabbinical Jew the next life remains unknown, and we are to focus on living the law and how to be the best person we can in this life. God will take care of us after we die. Both can lead to a secular movement of Socialism, yet the revolutionary socialist share more in common with the Christian.

 In Latin America Christianity and Marxism (with a healthy dash of left anarchism) can be easily synthesized. Even though many Marxist and Anarchist reject God, their tradition was an outgrowth of Eschatological Christianity. To both Marxist and Liberation Christian their focus is on the poor. To the radical Christian God loves the poor more than the rich, because the poor are more in need of God’s love. Marxism tries to become the voice of the poor. To the Anarchist and Marxist is our duty to struggle for political and economic equality. To the radical Christian poverty is an abomination to God. The cause of poverty is wealth, therefore to become overly wealthy is sin.

 Friend and Comrade

 Liberation Theology is Emancipation Worthy of a permanent Cultural Revolution and a continuous creation of democracy. With the continual struggle against anything that limits the full artistic, aesthetic and creative potential of life. This demands both political and economic equality. Only through economic emancipation can political freedom be achieved. This popular revolution to change from a capitalist mode of production to socialism must be based upon a moral and spiritual communism. To orient our struggle toward a society in which communities of fully developed individuals can live freely, humanly, without encumbrance, voluntarily and compassionately. The family of respect is political agent. The church is but only one voice in this struggle of the world’s poor for their full humanity. The church can only offer through it worships the necessary political voice of the poor in the world wide social struggle against social injustice. Justice is at its core a demand for political and economic equality. (Gutierrez Gustavo A Theology of Liberation, Introduction to the Revised Additio, 1988n, Marynoll, New York)

 Liberation is more than a conclusive outgrowth of freedom. Liberation is a lived experience of people coming together for justice. Equity and liberation are the shared efforts to abolish socially unjust relations. To the humanist to be human means to live in communities of equals in which each individual within that community has full support to live life to its full potential. To the theologian God is love in history of liberation. To both freedom and justice is founded upon a humanitarian equality. Oppression or marginalization of any group or individual is unacceptable to the spirit of liberation. (Gutierrez: Marynoll, New York)

 This takes on a global perspective, to support any and all marginalized groups anywhere in the world. Theology and faith are incompatible with economic exploitation, political oppression or cultural marginalization anywhere and any time. A popular front of socialists, democrats, humanists, Jews, Christians and any one who agrees with the utopian hope of liberation.

 Those neglected by history are now writing history of their own, which is history of the planet. This anticipates the poor becoming central players in this revolution. Because poverty is death, you cannot be free if you are poor. The poor by necessity will lead the struggle for peace and justice. The requirement that the poor free themselves liberates not only the slave but also the master.

 Liberation is a daily struggle for freedom and democracy, the requires the elimination of hunger, poverty and powerlessness of everyone on earth. The poorest and most powerless are the first and not the last in this struggle.

 The objective truth is science is never neutral and religion can never be above politics. To the radical humanist science must be democratized and to the radical theologian religion must be put into the hands of the poor and the powerless. It will be the poor themselves who democratically will find new radical and revolutionary solutions to their dehumanizing social conditions.

 Poverty is always evil. Spiritual poverty and economic poverty is inseparable. Insurmountable as it may seem both wealth and poverty are part of the same disease and are treated by the same cure. There is no wealth without poverty. Without one there cannot be the other. The master not only enslaves the slaves, but he enslaves himself. The slave by gaining freedom frees herself and her master. The revolutionary both Christian and atheist agree on that much. Any democratic revolution must not only is led by the poor but have at it very foundation the preferential disposition for the poor. (Gutierrez: Marynoll, New York)

 Material poverty makes life an intense suffering. The economies of the poor mean they even lack the minimum needed for a human life to be worthy of the name humanity. Poverty means death. Poverty is the death of the mind, the body and the soul. Individuals, classes, nations, and all of humanity are diminished by poverty. A single hungry child diminishes the humanity of us all. Poverty is the under-riding political issue of the day. Wealth feeds on poverty. Wealth is the carrion-eating scavenger, which feeds on the entrails of the destitute.

 Without a revolutionary commitment no Christian or secular humanist can be devoted to her revered convictions. The poor, the powerless, the weak and the abused diminish the humanity of everyone, and the planet as a community. The hungry, the poor, the oppressed, the neglected, and the forgotten deserve favored focus not because they are more worthy or more moral but they are more in need. The Christian says God’s love goes first where it is most needed through the actions of the faithful. The atheist active concern starts with the poor, because as the old labor slogan “an injury to one is an injury to all” is the beginning of any true social awareness. This is not the missionary work of the privileged that feel for the less fortunate. This requires as Cabral says we the educated must be capable of “committing suicide as a class. This is the minimum requirement for the development of a revolutionary consciousness, to be restored to life in the condition of a revolutionary worker completely identified with the deepest aspirations of the people to which he belongs. The alternatives—to betray the revolution or to commit suicide as a class—constitutes the dilemma of the petty bourgeoisie in the general framework of the national liberation struggle.” (Cabral, Amilcar, The Weapon of Theory, in Unity and Struggle, Monthly Review Press, New York, 1979, p. 136.)

 All radicals must learn to dialogue openly as equals. The educated the uneducated, the poor the non-poor must learn the origins of poverty and about human suffering. All people must be able to become in charge of their own dignity. The poor and powerless of the world united to reassert social justice and equality is the groundwork of liberation. Protest becomes necessary to empower the powerless, because democracy is learned through struggle.

 Democratic communist commune or Christian base community, it is the lived experiences of the people that becomes the functional center of the struggle for liberation.

 To abolish the status quo, is a precondition to establish justice. This is a political and economic requirement for liberation. To abolish the status quo, necessitates solidarity of all members of the exploited social classes. Liberation in the poor countries disables the oppressive social order of the rich. Liberation of the rich countries requires that the poor nations gain democratic control over their own economies.

 The dominant and elite groups have always used religion as a toll to legitimate their own power and wealth. To the official religion of the elite, liberation theology is both subversive and radical. In point of fact the dominant groups are right. Being radical in the face of such human suffering, is the only acceptable position in the eyes of God. To the secular radical such a statement proves the Christian and the Marxist are of one mind.

 Being Radical is a way of life, a deeply fulfilling way of life. The radical life embraces our humanity. For the Christian the radical drinks deeply from the well of God. The Marxist if a true Revolutionary moves within the patterns of their humanity and nature. Through a deep commitment to the Revolution, life belongs to those who live it. Philosophy, Religion, and Politics are born in action and it must belong to the poor. The religion or politics of the poor must meet directly their material, intellectual and spiritual needs. In a community of equals no one is left out. We throw no one away, all people can work together to build a just society.

 Socialism and democracy, is the bedrock of all truth in either Christianity or Secular Humanism. Imperialism and Capitalism are founded upon sin. Sin is whatever divides the self from the other. Liberation demands ending exploitation and oppression. Liberation affirming life is worth living. Liberation life is a communion with others. The truly good life is fighting everyday for the emancipation of the poor. Primacy of the poor is freedom for all.

 The secular socialist and the liberation Christian use different languages but say the same thing. The political radicalization is a commitment to completely transcending the timid to cease the reticent acceptance of injustice and to necessarily transform the very substance of an unjust society.

 The great majority of the earth lives in and with the profound alienation of despair and poverty. This condition is morally abhorrent to anyone with a conscience. The moral senses of the upright are deeply offended. The Christian would claim that poverty and powerlessness is morally loathsome to God. To the atheist this condition would be a bottomless transgression to our common humanity. Radical and revolutionary are the only political positions acceptable in the face of economic and political injustice. (Gutierrez: Marynoll, New York)

 The struggle for equality is born in an earnest recognition of social justice. This requires we become an active subject conscious of the wise connection of all the forces that demand an end to repression. Poverty, exploitation, and oppression unite to maintain wealth, power, privilege and property. This is immoral. It must come to an end. The poor can and must unite for the transformation of these fiercely villainous institutions. This transformation can only happen through the affective political action of the poor themselves. The economy must be wrenched from the hands of the elite and placed in the hands of the poor and the powerless. The economy conditions our life chances and therefore limits our human activity. If critical freedom is to win through history, it is the poor who must become the authors of the new economy. Because the vast majority of the earth’s population have been excluded from political power, the task will be difficult. As the poor demand control over the economy they must wrest political power away from the small minority that up to now have maintained a monopoly of control over the social life of this world. (Gutierrez: Marynoll, New York)

 Liberation Theology is Emancipation Worthy of permanent Cultural Revolution and a continuous creation of democracy. With the continual struggle against anything that limits the full artistic, aesthetic and creative potential of life. This demands both political and economic equality. Only through economic emancipation can political freedom be achieved. This popular revolution to change from a capitalist mode of production to socialism based upon a moral and spiritual communism. To orient our struggle toward a society in which communities of fully developed individuals can live freely, humanly, without encumbrance, voluntarily and compassionately. The family of respect is political agent. The church is but only one voice in this struggle of the world’s poor for their full humanity. The church can only offer through it worships the necessary political voice of the poor in the world wide social struggle against social injustice. Justice is at its core a demand for political and economic equality. (Gutierrez Gustavo A Theology of Liberation, Introduction to the Revised Additio, 1988n, Marynoll, New York)

 Liberation is more than a conclusive outgrowth of freedom. Liberation is a lived experience of people coming together for justice. Equity and liberation are the shared efforts to abolish socially unjust relations. To the humanist to be human means to live in communities of equals in which each individual within that community has full support to live life to its full potential. To the theologian God is love in the history of liberation. To both freedom and justice is founded upon a humanitarian equality. Oppression or marginalization of any group or individual is unacceptable to the spirit of liberation. (Gutierrez: Marynoll, New York)

 This takes on a global perspective, to support any and all marginalized groups anywhere in the world. Theology and faith are incompatible with economic exploitation, political oppression or cultural marginalization anywhere and any time. A popular front of socialists, democrats, humanists, Jews, Christians and any one who agrees with the utopian hope of liberation.

 Those neglected by history are now writing history of their own, which is history of the planet. This anticipates the poor becoming central players in this revolution. Because poverty is death, you cannot be free if you are poor. The poor by necessity will lead the struggle for peace and justice. The requirement that the poor free themselves liberates not only the slave but also the master.

 Liberation is a daily struggle for freedom and democracy, the requires the elimination of hunger, poverty and powerlessness of everyone on earth. The poorest and most powerless are the first and not the last in this struggle.

 The objective truth is science is never neutral and religion can never be above politics. To the humanist science must be democratized and to the theologian religion must be put into the hands of the poor and the powerless. It will be the poor themselves who democratically will find new radical and revolutionary solutions to their dehumanizing social conditions.

 To abolish the status quo, is a precondition to establish justice. This is a political and economic requirement for liberation. To abolish the status quo, necessitates solidarity of all members of the exploited social classes. Liberation in the poor countries disables the oppressive social order of the rich. Liberation of the rich countries requires that the poor nations gain democratic control over their own economies.

 Procurate et Dispenare

 Ownership is a social responsibility based upon the ability to care for these resources and to distribute them fairly to insure that they are used to benefit the community as a whole. This type of ownership is not private ownership, but a public stewardship. The use rights carry with it a love of the land that will preserve and conserve the resources, and aid in the natural evolution of the land in a way that benefits the ecosystem of which it is apart. This would include, but not exclusively, the human community, which is an interactive part of every terrestrial ecosystem on the planet.

 The land predates the owner, and the owner is historically but a flash in the night. The owner being short lived is but one small part of the land. The land and human community is the ecosystem that owns the owner. This is the responsibility to use the land in a way benefits community and the earth. The human community is but a small part of the ecosystem upon which the future generations depend. Wise use of the land must be to benefit all in a sustainable way. Use rights represent the democratic rights of all people.