Liberation Theology owes much of success
to its allies among American clergy. Unable to withstand contemporary currents
of power, these liberal religious leaders are swept up in the race to trade
theology for Marxist ideology.
Throughout the
1960s, the major topic dominating the theological scene was secularization of
the Gospel. Paul van Buren, author of The Secular Meaning of the Gospel,
declared that the modern Christian must be a secular person with a secular
understanding of existence. In other words, the world should dictate the content
of the Christian message. With a secular savior, a secular mission, and a
secular future, it was a short step to the “God-is-dead” theology of the later
1960s.
Then with a
troublesome God out of the way, it was time to usher in Marx. So-called
“theologians of hope,” like Jurgen Moltmann, called for a new understanding of
the Kingdom of God where the future is shaped by the actions of men rather than
the sovereignty of God.
Theologians from
Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish ranks have embraced Liberation Theology as the
answer for a secular society. While they vary in the degree to which they
espouse Marxist ideology or in the religious terminology they employ, all
liberation theologians share one common ground: They abandon some or all of
their traditional, orthodox teaching. Perhaps most frightening, many young
theologians are never exposed to any substantive theology in which God and the
Scriptures still reign as absolute.
The Secular City of
Cox
Professor Harvey Cox
deserves special mention for his notable contribution to the Liberation Theology
Hall of Shame. One of its most influential Protestant advocates of liberation,
this Harvard Divinity School professor has authored several bestsellers
including The Secular City.
Cox remolds theology
to fit the collectivist goals of Marxism. For Cox, Christian theology is at work
in historical events, particularly communist-controlled national liberation
movements. Crusading for a Christian-communist dialogue, Cox wrote in 1966:
"Nothing more exacerbates the global confrontation between East and West than
the rhetoric that bills it as a duel to the death between God and atheism... A
dialogue between Christianity and Marxism is now possible. Both are fascinated
with the future and what it means for man’s freedom, maturation, and
responsibility."
In an essay for
Marxism and Christianity, edited by Communist Party theoretician Herbert
Aptheker, Cox asked, "Will Christians, who have preached the virtue of
humility for centuries, be able to accept correction from Marxists?"
Cox has participated
in pro-communist causes related to the Vietnam War, violent student protests,
and “national liberation” struggles in Central America.
Protestant
Liberationists
Joining Cox in
pro-communist activism during the Vietnam War were other leftist Protestants
including Presbyterian minister and Yale University Chaplain William S. Coffin.
Coffin did not hesitate to endorse a much broader leftist platform in 1967, when
he signed the call for a National Conference on New Politics, a united
third-party movement largely controlled by the Communist Party. It is worth
noting that Coffin studied at New York’s Union Theological Seminary, a bastion
of embryonic Liberation Theology thinking.
Black American James
H. Cone carried on the liberationist cause at Union Theological Seminary as the
Charles H. Briggs Professor of Systematic Theology. Long influenced by
identified communist Harry F. Ward, Cone’s devotion to the Ward tradition is
clear in his books, including A Black Theology of Liberation and
Speaking the Truth: Ecumenism, Liberation and Black Theology.
These works reveal
Cone’s concept of a racial theology - a “black power” gospel.
Cone says that
concepts essential to Marxism are “connected with the Christian idea of
obedience and are identical with the horizontal implementation of the vertical
dimension of faith.” He then quotes Jesus Christ to argue his point. This
anti-Christian , Marxist, racist polemic was published by William B. Eerdmans of
Grand Rapids (1986), a major source of Christian publications.
Charles H. Bayer,
senior minister of the First Christian Church in St. Joseph, Missouri, is
another leading purveyor of Liberation Theology. In his book, A Guide to
Liberation Theology for Middle Class Congregations, Bayer admits the
connection between Liberation Theology and Marxism.
Bayer’s chapters
reek with Soviet versions of how communists came to power in places such as Cuba
and Nicaragua. He argues that the Red Chinese depotism that has murdered an
estimated 60 million Chinese since 1949 “has not only held out hope, but has
significantly improved life for those who had been oppressed.”
The General Board of
Global Ministries of the United Methodist Church (GBGM) has been a particularly
ardent supporter of Liberation Theology. Bishop Roy I. Sano, President of GBGM,
called it “blasphemous” for a United Methodist not to support Liberation
Theology. He declared in 1984 that it is “profanity” in theology thinking when
God’s salvation is seen only in acts of “reconciliation,” the forgiveness of
sins, and rebirth in Christ.
Catholic Liberation
Centers
Meanwhile,
Liberation Theology is providing the Vatican with one of its greatest challenges
ever. The undisputed proponents of Catholic Liberation Theology propaganda and
activism in the United States are the Maryknoll, Paulist, and Jesuit orders.
Maryknoll, New York,
is the international center of the Maryknoll Fathers and Sisters, many of whom
have given their lives aiding communist terrorists in Central and Latin America.
In the United
States, Maryknoll militancy is manifested in their media productions, including
films glorifying the Sandinista regime in Nicaragua, and books published by
Maryknoll’s Orbis Books.
The older Paulist
Order and its Paulist Press echo the liberation message in such leading titles
as: Lea Anne Hunter’s and Magdalen Sienkiewicz’s Learning Clubs for the
Poor, Gregory Pierce’s Activism That Makes Sense: Congregations and
Community Organizations, and John Coleman’s An American Strategic
Theology.
Most students of
Liberation Theology are familiar with the Jesuits, primarily because Gustavo
Gutierrez, father of modern Catholic liberationism, comes from that order.
The works of other
Jesuit advocates widely read in the United States include Juan Luis Segundo’s
five-volume A Theology for Artisans of a New Humanity and Arthur F.
McGovern’s Marxism: an American Perspective.
McGovern, a Jesuit
professor at the University of Detroit, contends that much diversity exists
among liberation advocates in regard to their commitment to Marxism. He does
not, however, deny that they derive their insights from overtly Marxist
critiques of society.
Catholic Liberation
Theology has posed such a significant threat to U.S. policy at home and abroad
that the Reagan White House launched a campaign in 1984 to educate U.S. Catholic
bishops against Marxist ideology. That campaign helped conservative critics of
the U.S. Catholic Conference disseminate their message to the hierarchy.
Jewish
Liberationism
The roots of
Liberation Theology among Jews go back to the period of the French Revolution.
In his book, To Eliminate the Opiate, Rabbi Marvin Antelman has traced a
number of movements that became active in European Jewish communities toward the
end of the 18th century.
These included Jacob
Frank and the Frankists and Moses Mendelssohn of the Haskala, the German
assimilationist movement, from whom Abraham Geiger and much of the modern
movement of Reform Judaism derived their heretical ideas.
This background
explains why Liberation Theology is popular among Reform and Conservative Jewish
clergy and congregations rather than Orthodox groups and accounts for the
conflict between legitimate and phony factions of Zionism in Israel.
In the United
States, liberationist rumblings among Jews are represented by the neo-orthodoxy
of Arthur Waskow who points to Old Testament texts as precedents for leftist
causes.
Another liberation
force is the New Jewish Agenda, formed to be a diverse left-wing pressure group
and a strong partisan of the PLO. There is also strong liberationist influence
among Jews active in the feminist movement.
Clear and Present
Danger
These religious
liberationists seek to undercut respect for American values and institutions.
They ignore that America already possesses the best the best working theology of
freedom and equality in the world.
Russell Barta
comments in his article Liberation: U.S.A. Style (America, April 13,
1985) on the endless moralizing of liberation theologians who reduce all human
problems to the context of social sin (i.e., class struggle): “This essentially
negative and ‘prophetic’ angle of vision may be appropriate to the conditions of
Latin America, but when applied to American social reality, it leads to serious
distortions.”
Barta compares the
U.S. liberationists’ view with that of a young man suffering with cancer whose
vision of reality is altered by his condition to the point where he was quoted
in the paper as saying, I look out at the world and all I see is cancer.
Liberation
theologians look at America and see a land of violence and oppression, gross
poverty and neglect, a land whose basic structures and beliefs are morally
questionable. Perhaps it is time they recognized that the cancer is within
themselves.
William H. McIlhany, a graduate
of Washington & Lee University, authored Klandestine, The ACLU on
Trial, and The Tax-Exempt Foundations. He has lectured extensively
across the U.S. and researched the documentary films No Place to Hide and
The Subversion Factor.
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