New Garden Community Church

Unitarian Universalist Faith Community

on Chicago's Near West Side

"The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice."    - Rev. Theodore Parker, 1859

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Liberation Theology in a UU Context

by Rev. Jean Darling, (c) 2003

Liberation Theology, that powerful Catholic movement in Latin America of the 1970s and 80s, that left so many theologians, priests, and nuns under attack – and some killed – for allegedly siding with leftist guerillas, has ebbed into near-silence. The conservative Pope has over time replaced bishops who supported the ideas of Liberation Theology with others less vocal.  Some of the harshest conditions have ameliorated;  some of the worst regimes have been replaced.  The times have changed, and the theology has shifted towards a "Theology of Peace," related to an earlier European movement.

Liberation Theology espouses God’s "preferential option for the poor," the idea that though God loves all people, God serves the poor first. Thus people of faith are called to work among the poor to improve their lives, and especially to combat oppression, in preference to helping the rich grapple with far different issues.

The "liberation" consists of three aspects of human freedom: first, freedom from physical oppression including starvation, inhumane working conditions, and armed terror (by the State, or by either Leftist or Rightist militia).  Second is mental liberation, in which one’s mind is freed from faulty thinking and from remaining prey to unconscious emotions. And third is "liberation from sin," or the healing of alienation from one’s fellow humans and from a larger purpose (God).  (These second two aspects of liberation have frequently been overlooked by critics, who have tended to think of Liberation Theology as a purely politicized ("Marxist") religious movement.)

Though Liberation Theology is suffering a partial eclipse, one important legacy remains, and is still found throughout Latin America, in poor and rural neighborhoods. That is the idea of the "base community."

The base community is a discussion and support group based on Biblical reflection, led by catechants – lay people trained in Church teachings. The shortage of priests to serve rural areas over much of Latin America led to frequent use of such people to instruct new Christians. Under the influence of liberation theology and the desperate conditions people were living in, these original gatherings evolved into today’s "base communities," with a larger agenda than simple Christian instruction.

As with Brazilian Paulo Freire’s secular process of  concientizacao, such groups serve not only to help educate people, but also to help them understand their lives in the context of larger societal forces.  In discussions, participants of the base community search the Biblical text for its relevance to their present-day experience, and as their understanding shifts, they begin to take action in the world to better their situation.  It is profoundly empowering for a person to transcend her "place" as a peasant and recognize her worth as a human being, equal to those who have sought to keep her ignorant and afraid.

The work of these groups is known as "praxis," a cycle of study, reflection, and action, in which what one learns in action is also grist for reflection, and where the questions that arise out of the group’s actions lead to further study.

Through such groups – in Guatemala, for example – people gained the courage and strength to travel to the capital to petition for redress of their grievances, sometimes to fight, and to endure years of war and oppression. (See, for example, I, Rigoberta Menchu, her autobiography of her early life in Guatamala.)

How is this Biblically-based, Catholic theological movement based in homogeneous third-world communities relevant to the religiously pluralistic, economically and socially diverse United States? At first glance, its possible relevance to Unitarian Universalism seems even more of a stretch.

Yet Liberation Theology offers much that is appealing to those in the Unitarian Universalist tradition:  its commitment to the alleviation of poverty and oppression;  its process for increasing consciousness and overcoming alienation, both of which are also UU goals. In particular, we too are discovering that transformation takes place in small groups, where people can feel safe and accepted, and where there is an opportunity for reflection on issues vital to us.

Christian base communities rely in their discussions on the religious authority of the Bible – even though the meaning is not always clear, this authority makes the struggle to find answers to modern human problems in the Biblical text more compelling.

The understanding of Liberation Theology that sets it apart from other forms of education is that people’s individual experiences have value and together can inform the whole group. Also, that religious ideas are not meant to cause people to adjust to their unjust situation, but to understand it and begin to change it to better align the world with God’s vision of love, of the "glorious golden city."

For UUs, and others for whom the authority of the Bible no longer carries the weight it does for many Christians, we have to examine where we do place our sense of authority. Is it in our experience? in our gut, our intuition? in the voices of the "wise ones" of the world? in logical thought, reason? in our shared decisions as a religious tradition? Probably each of those plays a role.

What could a UU base community look like? We can discuss several readings from the wisdom traditions focusing on a particular issue that people care about. We can share our responses to the readings, and raise questions about what they mean for the community around us. We can decide on a fact-finding mission, or an action to have a positive effect on the situation. We can arrange a meeting with others affected by the issue, and hear their concerns.

How is any of this different from what UUs usually do for social action? We do not usually spend time reflecting on the spiritual meaning in our time of a story from long ago, or a fairy tale. We do not often look at our actions afterwards and reflect on what they meant for us and for those others who may have been affected by them.

My hope is to create groups with a more reflective process which will allow our actions to be more deeply grounded in our own faith, our deepest values, and will also create the kind of deep commitment to those values and to one another that will enable us to act courageously. Or as James Luther Adams put it, to share a "costing commitment" to our faith.