Liberation Theology as an Analytical Reflection on Praxis, and Where Theology and Humankind Embrace
One among the most important Christian theological developments within the past 100 years is liberation theology. The doctrine's advocates regard it as a novel means to 'do theology', rather than a subfield of theology. The method aims to view the universe with regard to being involved with disadvantaged and subjugated individuals. It also endeavors to discover, within the Bible, analytical instruments as well as the energizing force to bring about drastic change to that universe (Anderson 1979, 4). The direct sources may be traced back to the 60s' developments in Latin America's Roman Catholicism, together with blatant social and economic disparities and widespread local feelings of bias.

This dissertation will look at the above objectives by reviewing the following points: The paper's foremost section will study theology's contextual character and liberation theology's introduction in response to actual history,…...

Race is there, it's a constant. You're tired of hearing about it? Imagine living with it as a constant." Jon Stewart concludes his deft analysis of the Ferguson shooting and its implications for race relations in America. Addressed to a primarily white, liberal audience, Stewart's comments raise poignant questions. One of those questions is raised by racialized police shootings like the one in Ferguson. As Seitz puts it, "different rules apply" to whites and blacks in America. "hite people just aren't as likely to get shot by police," notes Seitz. Stewart had described the disheveled white guy getting past security guards, with the sharp-dressed black man ahead of him getting stopped. This scenario plays itself out regularly, often with terrible and fatal implications. The Zimmerman case also illustrates how race matters, and unless America faces its dark racist core, it will continue to witness social problems.
James Cone's black liberation theology…...

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Works Cited

Cone, James. "A Conversation with James Cone." Retrieved online:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1X5sZ6Q4Fw 

Seitz, Matt. "Different Rules Apply." Retrieved online:  http://www.rogerebert.com/mzs/what-white-privilege-really-means-an-anecdote 

Stewart, Jon. "Race/Off." Retrieved online:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_98ojjIZDI

Analysis of A Theology of Liberation: History, Politics, and Salvation Summary
The first part of the book by Gutierrez addresses the issue of what is meant by liberation (1). It begins with a discussion of theological reflection, and the assumption underlying this concept is that it arises spontaneously in the believer. Gutierrez then goes on to explain that the world has changed and is thus in need of a new perspective of theology. Social and cultural changes are used to rationalize the development and application of liberation theology (13). No discussion, however, is given of social and cultural changes throughout all human history or why these did not necessitate the need for liberation theology in the past. The book does show clearly the approach is rooted in Vatican II (6, 24, 31, 40, 65, 76, 79). It explains that the Church is now pivoting towards underdeveloped nations—like Latin America—which is where Gutierrez…...

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Bibliography

Gutiérrez, Gustavo. A Theology of Liberation: History, Politics, and Salvation. Rev. ed.Marynoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1988.

O'Hare, Joseph A. "Book Review: A Theology of Liberation: History, Politics and Salvation." (1973): 489-491.

Rogers, Jack B. "Book Review: A Theology of Liberation: History, Politics and Salvation." (1976): 249-252.

Name NameProfessorClassDate:Article Review: Liberation of Theology by John Luis SegundoQ1. The main purpose of this article is to argue for a different vision of Catholic theology, one which emphasizes liberating the oppressed versus traditional, doctrinal, textual hermeneutics. Segundo returns to the Jesus of the Bible and stresses Jesus commitment to the poor. He also argues for what he calls a hermeneutic circle, or hermeneutics which facilitates liberation, rather than subsuming liberation to traditional analysis of Biblical wording: Both methodology and content of theological analysis must be subjected to rigorous review (Segundo 5).Q2. The key question Segundo is addressing is how to ensure that Biblical teachings retain a consistency and relevance to believers today, including continuing changes in our present-day reality, both individual and societal (Segundo 8). The question and its answer is clearly stated, which Segundo sees as the central question of all theological inquiry, to be relevant to people…...

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Works CitedSegundo, Juan Luis. 1976. The Liberation of Theology. Translated by John Drury. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books.

The seeking of salvation is an admission of ignorance while authority-based communication is an assertion of knowledge. The two are incompatible.
Instead, communication has to be understanding-based. All communication should recognize the suffering of the human beings and have the aim of discovering the nature of that suffering, to understand that suffering. Christians have heard it in the Prayer of Saint Francis, which reads: "..grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console; to be understood, as to understand..."

Even secular thinkers understand this concept, as demonstrated by popular Personal Development guru Stephen Covey's principle of "Seek First to Understand, Then Be Understood."

In understanding-based communication, disagreements would no longer express judgment and authority, but trust and compassion. Trust that the other person has your best interests at heart and compassion for the other person who shares your suffering. Although doctrine and theology will inevitably present itself…...

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References

Majesty and Meekness: A Comparative Study of Contrast and Harmony in the Concept of God, Craman.

Understanding Buddhism, Jacobson.

Buddhism and the Contemorary World, Jacobson

Beyond Ideology: Religion and the Future of Western Civilization, Smart

To combat subjectivity, he called for interpretation to be subject to church authority, which was the voice of reason. Reardon (1981) echoes this interpretation: "Hooker sets out to refute the puritan contention that in religion holy scripture affords the sole and absolute authority and rule" (p. 280). Hooker shows that the narrow principle of sola scriptura "disregards the larger context of the divine law in creation within which even the scriptural revelation must be placed if we are to understand its proper scope and purpose" (Reardon, 1981, p. 280). Not far from the Reformers, they upheld the idea that the directly inspired written word contains supernatural revelation. There is perhaps less emphasis on preaching and proclamation in the Anglicans than in the Reformers.
hat is the status of the creeds and traditions? In Anglicanism, the Nicene, the Athanasius, and the Apostle's creeds are stressed as true because they are taken…...

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Works Cited

Aland, K. (Ed.). (2004). Martin Luther's 95 theses. Saint Louis: Concordia Publishing House.

Avis, P. (2007). The identity of Anglicanism: essentials of Anglican ecclesiology. London and New York: T & T. Clark.

Bayer, Oswald. (2008). Martin Luther's theology: a contemporary interpretation (Trans T.H. Trapp). Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans.

Beckwith, R.T. (1988). "Anglicanism." In New dictionary of theology (S. B. Ferguson & D.F. Wright, Eds.), pp. 21-23. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.

God's taking sides can be pushed to saying that the rich cannot be saved, or that God does not love everyone.
The Holy Spirit and iberation Theology

As Boff and Boff ( 1987) state: "Every true theology springs from a spirituality -- that is, from a true meeting with God in history. iberation theology was born when faith confronted the injustice done to the poor."

In this sense the Spirit is essentially perceived in terms of the interconnection between humanity and God. Put less blatantly, the Holy Spirit is the conduit of the absolute or divine to the domain of human existential experience. This view of the Spirit resonates with the focus on experiential suffering in the world. In other words, the Holy Spirit is not abstract but is rather perceived as a spiritual source of intervention in the world, which coincides with the focus of liberation theology.

The issue of the role…...

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Leonardo Boff, and Clodovis Boff, Introducing Liberation Theology /, trans. Paul Burns [book online] (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1987, accessed 4 May 2012), 91; available from Questia,   Internet.http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=102085764 ;

Leonardo Boff, and Clodovis Boff, Introducing Liberation Theology /, trans. Paul Burns [book online] (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1987, accessed 4 May 2012), 91; available from Questia,

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Moreover, Malachi Martin describes the theology as "a freeing from political oppression, economic want, and misery here on earth. More specifically still…a freeing from political domination by the capitalism of the United States."

Furthermore, though it grew out of the unrest in Latin America "with its political domination by strong-arm leaders and monopolistic oligarchies," viewed by members of the Church as a direct result of American capitalism, the events in Latin America were preceded by a much more basic historical development -- the "rights of man" extrapolated from the French Revolution and re-coined as the "rights of the working man."

The spread of Marxist doctrine in the early twentieth century saw its incorporation into Catholic theology by several prominent professors right up to the time of the Second Vatican Council, upon which Ada Maria Isasi-Diaz certainly based her theology, and pursued her concept of "evangelical poverty": union with the poor as a…...

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Bibliography

Barla, J.B. Christian Theological Understanding of Other Religions. Rome: Universita

Gregoriana, 1999.

Fowler, M. Zen Buddhism: Beliefs and Practices. UK: Sussex Academic Press, 2005.

Isasi-Diaz, Ada Maria. La Lucha Continues: Mujerista Theology. NY: Orbis Books,

" It caused missionaries to deal with peoples of other cultures and even Christian traditions -- including the Orthodox -- as inferior. God's mission was understood to have depended upon human efforts, and this is why we came to hold unrealistic universalistic assumptions. Christians became so optimistic that they believed to be able to correct all the ills of the world." (Vassiliadis, 2010)
Missiology has been undergoing changes in recent years and after much serious consideration Christians in the ecumenical era "are not only questioning all the above assumptions of the Enlightenment; they have also started developing a more profound theology of mission. One can count the following significant transitions:

(a) From the missio christianorum to the missio ecclesiae;

(b) the recognition later that subject of mission is not even the Church, either as an institution or through its members, but God, thus moving further from the missio ecclesiae to the missio Dei,…...

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bosch, David Jacobus (1991) Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission, American Society of Missiology Series; No. 16. Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1991.

Gelder, Craig Van (2007) the Missional Church in Context: Helping Congregations Develop Contextual Ministry. Volume 1 of Missional Church Series. Missional Church Network Series. Wm B. Eerdmans Publishing 2007.

Guder, Darrell L. (2000) the Continuing Conversion of the Church. Grand Rapids, NI: Eerdmans, 2000.

Hesselgrave, David J> (2007) Will We Correct the Edinburgh Error? Future Mission in Historical Perspective. Southwestern Journal of Theology.Vol. 49 No. 2 Spring 2007.

Theological position of Dwight N. Hopkins
The biblical presentation of human existence and its origin and our own experience of human life in this world are to accept the fact that Adam and Eve were real persons and they are the descents of all human beings. The biblical representation is not limited to the Genesis but it represents a broader perspective which is related to the God's creation. The biblical representation reveals the God's presence in this world in the form of light and playing a unique role and dignity for mankind. This is what we all experience in our daily lives. All human desire for God and need Him, depends on Him to fulfill their wishes and forgiveness of their sins. Thus all the aspect of human creation and their living is governed and known by God (Collins, 2010).

The essay on theological position of Dwight N. Hopkins will illustrate the…...

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References

Barth, K.(1959) Dogmatics in Outline

Collins, J. (2010) Adam and Eve as Historical People, and Why It Matters. Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith. Volume 62, Number 3, September 2010.

Cone, J.(1990) A Black Liberation Theology, Philidelphia, J.B. Lipencott

Fairbanks, S. (2010). The Dynamics of Faith and Revelation. Theology: Faith, Beliefs,

Sacred orld of Slaves
Based upon the reading of Sacred orld of Slaves explain 3 ways in which slaves used artistic expression (music, dance, narratives) to cope with being enslaved and move them in a direction of Liberation.

From slavery times, far more records about black spirituals have survived than for secular music, and the most common religious themes always involved freedom, an escape from bondage and Moses leading the children of Israel out of Egypt. Black slaves may have had the evangelical Protestant religion of their masters imposed on them for purposes on control, but they also appropriated it and made this religion their own -- and the black church was one of the very few institutions that they did control before recent times. In essence, black theology was always a version of liberation theology, compared to emphasis that white evangelicals placed on individual sin and personal salvation, and this is…...

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WORKS CITED

Charnas, Dan. "White America Discovers Rhythm and Blues."

Levine, Lawrence W. Black Culture and Black Consciousness: Afro-American Thought from Slavery to Freedom. Oxford, 2007.

Catholic Church in Mexico underscored both its conquest and its independence. Organizationally, the church prior to the liberation theology of the 20th century has always been more cogent than the Mexican government. The church has traditionally been amalgamated with conservative interests that include the military and wealthier landowners. The institution of tithing and the role of the church as a colonizer through its missions helped to make the church the most powerful pre-revolutionary institution in Mexico. Additionally, at a time before the existence of broad-based commercial lending, the church not only acted as the principal lender in the colony and early republic, but served as the nexus for all public activity in many smaller communities. However, the influence of the church was severely limited under liberalism. Although the iaz government returned to the Catholic church some of its former glory, the 1916 Constitution ultimately spelled an end to the…...

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Despite this relatively recent accommodation, the Church has not remained quiet on the issue of poverty. Historically, as the government failed to care for the people, the Church assumed greater responsibility and became more vocal in complaining about the government's shortcomings. Today the Church, which once strove mainly to preserve its own authority, has emerged as an outspoken opponent of the government. Yet aggressive Church actions were evident early in the century, both in opposition to the anti-clerical language of the 1917 constitution and in the violent Cristero rebellion of the 1920s. From 1926 to 1929 Mexico faced strong resistance by Catholics who opposed the anticlerical component of the Constitution of 1917 that regulated the affairs of the Catholic Church. After the emergence of liberation theology among Latin American Catholic priests in the 1970s, Mexican clerics became vocal in their condemnation of oppressive government policies. In 1991 clerical officials leveled a broad range of charges against the government including torture, abuse of prisoners, political persecution, corruption, and electoral fraud. These charges were repeated by Pope John Paul II in his 1999 visit when he called for an end to "violence, terrorism, and drug trafficking." The Church has been critical of the government by supporting the rebellion in the southern state of Chiapas. Tension between church and state emerged again as recently as 1994 when the government attempted to blame the Chiapas uprising on the language and actions of various clerics.

Traditionally regarded as a woman's issue, birth control has become a mainstream political issue since the 1970s. After all, through the combined effects of cultural expectations to raise large families and the Catholic Church's ban on birth control, the population grew dramatically. Women who chose not to have children resorted to crude abortions. In 1970, the year Luis Echeverr'a became the first Mexican president to call for a reduction in the nation's population, as many as 32,000 Mexican women died from abortion complications. Although discussions of population control have long been taboo by the Catholic Church, 1972 saw a reversal when Mexican clerics called for reduced family size. Thereafter government support enabled family planning clinics and educational programs to be developed. By 1988 the Mexican annual population growth rate was nearly halved, to 1.8%.

Women in Mexico have been pushing for significant changes within the political and social arenas, and they are slowly gaining access to previously male-dominated spheres. For example, they are now elected as state governors and as representatives in the Chamber of Deputies. Increasingly they are leaving bad marriages in spite of condemnation from the Church and hostility from their own families. Indeed, there is growing liberation from the traditional roles and expectations for women in Mexican society.

Many may call this pragmatism, and by following in the path of Christ, even unknowingly, is to embrace pragmatism is one's life. Sara Miles spent her time among the poorest people on the planet, similar to Christ's instruction that performing acts of kindness to the "least of these my brothers, you did it to me." (Matt. 25:40)
So when she finally decided to enter a Episcopal church and celebrate the Holy Eucharist, it would seem a natural extension of her life experiences. Food had always been an underlying, but important part of her, and there she was sharing the body and blood of Christ. She had always been involved in social justice, albeit in a secular way, and had not embraced the Christian Liberation Theology that was popular at the same time. This could have been caused by her acquired distrust of theological dogmas. However, it seems that the sharing…...

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Works Cited

Good News Bible: The Bible in Today's English Version. New York: American Bible

Society, 1976. Print.

Miles, Sara. Take This Bread: A Radical Conversion. New York: Ballantine, 2007. Print.

Gustavo Gutierrez did just that in Latin America, employing Marxist analysis to interpret the Jesus' teachings in the Gospel. Gutierrez founded Liberation Theology, which is, essentially, the twentieth century take on Violence and the Cross. Christ is viewed less as Redeemer and more as Liberator.
Evans discusses this same interpretation in black theology, which is, essentially, a continuation of Liberation Theology: "In spite of the ravages of their kidnapping and the disorientation that they endured, African slaves retained an outlook on their experience that continually reaffirmed their worth as individuals and as a people…The Jesus whom they encountered as they were exposed to the Bible was a caring and liberating friend who shared their sorrows and burdens" (12). Yet, in black theology, Jesus does not bring grace through suffering that can perfect one's nature and lead one's soul to Heaven (as classical theology insists); in black theology, Jesus is the…...

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Works Cited

Evans, James H. We Have Been Believers: An African-American Systematic Theology.

Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1992. Print.

Migliore, Daniel. Faith Seeking Understanding: an Introduction to Christian Theology.

Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1991. Print.

Liberation Theology

Liberation theology, a movement within the social practices and doctrine of the Catholic Church that began in earnest in Latin America during the 1960s, is a method of interpreting Biblical exhortations and predictions in the modern world in a way that is directly and practically relevant in the day-to-day lives of people and societies throughout the world. The primary concepts of this brand of Catholic theology include viewing God as a liberator of humanity and the need for solidarity in sentiment and action with the poor and downtrodden of the world (Fahlbusch & Bromiley 1997, pp. 259). Simply put, liberation theology posits that God exists as a liberator for all of the people of the world, and that it is the job of the Church and its members to bring about this liberation of the world's population inasmuch as is possible through direct action assisting the poor and through…...

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References

Consistent Life.prg. (2010). Accessed 19 May 2010.  http://www.consistent-life.org/ 

Fahlbusch, E. & Bromiley, G. (1997). The encyclopedia of Christianity, Vol. 3. Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing.

Overberg, K. (2010). "A consistent ethic of life." Accessed 19 May 2010.  http://www.americancatholic.org/Newsletters/CU/ac0798.asp