The Poor are Coming to Save Christians

Miguel A. De La Torre, Liberation Theology for Armchair Theologians

Jesus Christ began His ministry by standing up in congregation and proclaiming “good news to the poor,” quoting the prophet Isaiah. So why does Christianity, as an institution, spend comparatively little time and energy on the poor? Beginning mostly in the late 1960s, a growing body of parish priests and ordained pastors began shifting focus off heavenly topics, and onto saving bodies. This focus became known as “liberation theology.”

Iliff theologian Miguel De La Torre, himself a late contributor to liberation theology, offers a thumbnail summary of the movement’s beliefs and history. This isn’t always easy. Liberation theology arose from a specific historical circumstance, the peak of the Cold War, when rich nations used poor nations as chess pieces. Liberation theology sought to emphasize that poor people existed separate from American or Soviet influence, but as human beings with souls.

De La Torre’s overview therefore begins with politics. This will irritate some Christians, who think religion is somehow apolitical. De La Torre can’t survey liberation theology without talking about America’s proxy wars in Latin America, the geographical space where this movement was most public. He sometimes goes entire pages without once mentioning religion, God, or transcendence. I can already imagine the stuffed-shirt responses likely to emerge from this angle.

However, that’s the very message liberation theology conveys. Those invested in this world’s power structures must, of necessity, overlook the poor, the hungry, the dispossessed—those Jesus called “the least of these.” Telling poor indigenous people, driven off their lands by imperial ambition, to “be of good cheer” because they’ll go to heaven when they die, denies those people’s innate humanity. It tells them their struggles only matter on another plane.

Liberation theology, by contrast, doesn’t begin with right belief. It doesn’t tell people to understand esoteric concepts correctly, and everything else will follow. Instead, it starts with people’s real needs, where they live right now. As De La Torre puts it, Jesus doesn’t favor the poor and the oppressed because they’re better or more holy people; Jesus favors the poor and oppressed because they’re poor and oppressed. By extension, we should too.

Miguel A. De La Torre

Liberative theologies begin by assuming religion gives us, not an abstracted goal regarding a disembodied God, but a mission to live in this life. Jesus became embodied and walked among Jews, an occupied people and aliens in their own land, because we’re supposed to do likewise. This means resisting oppressive governments, economies, and racial hierarchies. Christians, this precept holds, are supposed to get dirty with the rest of humanity.

This book’s largest space deals with Latin American liberation theology. This is, after all, where the movement took shape, and the place where it had the largest and most cohesive identity. De La Torre, a Cuban exile and adult convert, discusses the social forces that forced liberation theologians, mostly (but not exclusively) Catholic priests, to reject theology based on “right belief,” and focus instead on how we live this life.

But De La Torre also spends time discussing other theologies from other regions. In North America, Black Liberation theology deals with ways Christians stand in solidarity against White supremacy, while feminist theology stands similarly against patriarchy. And womanist theology (a term I’ve previously misunderstood) overlaps the two, emphasizing that Black women have distinct Christian needs different from either Black men or White women.

Finally, De La Torre addresses liberative “theologies” from other religions. Sufi Islam, for instance, has a long history of opposing kings and potentates, and Gandhi’s liberative politics were informed by his Hindu beliefs, as well as the goulash of other religions he encountered walking India’s streets. Even humanist philosophies have what De La Torre considers “theologies” connecting work among the oppressed with truths that transcend human scale.

Not everyone will appreciate liberation theology. Christians who consider religion to important and pure for grubby old politics have historically disliked this approach; post-Vatican II, the Catholic Church, with its anti-communist commitments, actively silenced liberation theologians. As a Lutheran myself, I anticipate cries of “works righteousness,” my tradition’s leading wail, for a theology which insists that Christians have a responsibility to do, not just to believe.

But De La Torre’s introduction provides persuasive evidence that Christians have a God-given responsibility, not only to have a right heart, but to express that right heart through how we treat those who can do nothing for us. De La Torre not only provides a short (150 pages) introduction to why we should think this way, but also provides an extensive reading list for other sources that go into greater depth. Because if we believe, but don’t act, what do we really believe?