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Liberation Theology and the Partners in Health approach

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In lecture today (Dec 3), I very briefly talked about how ideas from Liberation Theology influenced Paul Farmer & co.   As I was raised Roman Catholic in New Hampshire and in the greater Boston area, I’ve always found that Liberation Theology was one of the things I could stomach in a Church that otherwise grabs too many headlines for its pedophile priests.  So I’d like that students know about this, particularly if they’re Catholic.  So here’s some comprehensive info clipped from a BBC site:

“Love for the poor must be preferential, but not exclusive. Ecclesia in America, 1999

Liberation theology was a radical movement that grew up in South America as a response to the poverty and the ill-treatment of ordinary people. The movement was caricatured in the phrase “If Jesus Christ were on Earth today, he would be a Marxist revolutionary”, but it’s more accurately encapsulated in this paragraph from Leonardo and Clodovis Boff:

“Q: How are we to be Christians in a world of destitution and injustice?    A: There can be only one answer: we can be followers of Jesus and true Christians only by making common cause with the poor and working out the gospel of liberation. Leonardo & Clodovis Boff

Liberation theology said the church should derive its legitimacy and theology by growing out of the poor. The Bible should be read and experienced from the perspective of the poor.

The church should be a movement for those who were denied their rights and plunged into such poverty that they were deprived of their full status as human beings. The poor should take the example of Jesus and use it to bring about a just society.

Most controversially, the Liberationists said the church should act to bring about social change, and should ally itself with the working class to do so. Some radical priests became involved in politics and trades unions, others even aligned themselves with violent revolutionary movements.   A common way in which priests and nuns showed their solidarity with the poor was to move from religious houses into poverty stricken areas to share the living conditions of their flock.

Read more of this summary (including how John Paul II wasn’t to fond of the movement) at the BBC site on liberation theology.


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