For the church in any country to retreat from politics is nothing short of heresy. Christianity is political or it is not Christianity.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu

Being a self appointed exponent of Liberation Theology is a tricky business. For starters, many people have never heard of a ‘theology of liberation??’. Those that have invariably hold strong opinions about it and question its validity, its relevance for ‘First World Christians’ and its violent Marxist roots (hang with me here; yes this is theology I'm talking about!). However, what unsettles me most about Liberation Theology is none of the above, but rather its implicit call for Christians to act on their faith to challenge the sinful structures of our world, rather than to glory in the spiritual justice of the next. My difficulty rests in my inadequacy to extol and respond to it fully in my own life.

Theology in this country, and indeed, in most ‘First World’ countries, is largely a middle class pursuit. This is mainly due to Church having been ‘established’ for so long, and thus, in many respects having been seen as the ‘tool’ of the Establishment. Theology then, which I take to be the articulation and self-definition of God in the world, has subsequently represented middle-class values and language and has largely alienated itself from people at the grass roots level. As a sometime theologian myself, I feel so frustrated and inadequately prepared when I meet people in disparate situations who clearly are interested in the realms of the religious, yet feel absolutely no affinity with any form of Christianity.

So, what of Liberation Theology?! Well, in a sense, the formulation of a theology of Liberation was a direct attempt to put the creation of theology back in the hands of ordinary people. It has its roots in the oppressive regimes of Latin America where the Church was seen by its clergy to be passively supporting the status quo where it should have been defending the interests of the poor and marginalised. Theologians, such as Gustavo Guttierez, reformulated the role of the Church in oppressive and "unchristian" contexts in the aftermath of Vatican II, which reaffirmed the Church’s commitment to alleviating poverty and oppression. Guttierez regarded theology that was created in the ivory towers of European and North American Universities and Seminaries as being of no relevance to the oppressed Brazilian peasant. Instead the Liberation Theologian would place emphasis on other areas of the Bible and would relate the situation of the peasant to the Exodus story, to Isaiah 6: 1–2, Matthew 25: 31–46 and to Luke 4: 16–20. These passages speak of the involvement of God in the world and of our responsibility to proclaim His justice in the world — essentially “to set at liberty those who are oppressed” (Luke 4:18). The oppressed person is thus educated theologically and socially in the knowledge that God does not, in fact, desire him always to be poor and disenfranchised all his life as society tells him but that in truth, He desires the poor man to know self-respect through being made in the image of God and through being in covenant with God, as part of His holy people.

Spirituality, and justification by faith, are both valuable and necessary for both rich and poor alike, but if we are passive participants in a society that creates and perpetuates the sin of poverty then we are standing in the way of the full expression of the Gospel. According to the Liberation Theologians’ reading of the Biblical text, God’s attitude to his people’s needs is one of a positive bias — he has a “preferential option for the poor”, thus Christians, and the Church, being incarnate in Christ, have to try to assert that incarnation in society, “on Earth as it is in Heaven” and proclaim that salvation has a social and political dimension as well as a spiritual one.

Making Liberation Theology relevant for our situation here in Europe is, again, difficult. The context in which Liberation Theology grew up is inherently different from our own. We have freedom of the press, the vote, free education and there is little of what we might call ‘oppression’ in our society to relate to the Biblical Exodus. Moreover, our society is different in that in Latin America religion is largely the preserve of the poor, whereas in Britain ‘grass roots religion’ among the ‘working classes’ has all but disappeared. What we do have in Britain is a sense of social exclusion, a sense that although everyone is entitled to freedoms and privileges, our society still marginalises people into dependance, political apathy and social classification. We have a common belief that we are a very charitable nation, but in applying ‘Liberation ethics’ to the British situation, it can be seen that pure charity and goodwill does nothing but treat the symptoms of social disease, avoiding and thus perpetuating the root cause of the problem — an unfair social and economic order.

What is central to a theology of liberation in all parts of the world is its call for individuals to relate the Bible to their specific situation. Questions such as “who or what influences me most in my daily life?” and “Who do I influence with my daily actions?” are essential for finding and relating ourselves to others at a local or international level and bringing our faith to bear on our actions. Advocating a liberating theology does involve a change in lifestyle and it does involve and change in society. It does not involve taking on Marxist or violent tendencies — one does not have to be a Marxist to see that the level of Third World debt is both grossly unfair and unjustifiable in a Christian society. Essentially, Liberation Theology is an exercise in finding relevance for the Bible in today's diverse and complicated society. It is a Biblically-based theology and it is person-based theology and to that end I believe it will have a major part to play in bringing Christianity forward into the new millennium.