326 - The Political Theory of Liberation Theology: Toward a Reconvergence of Social Values and Social Science

The Political Theory of Liberation Theology: Toward a Reconvergence of Social Values and Social Science
By John R. Pottenger
Albany, The State University of New York Press, 1989. 264 pp. $44.50.

In this book, Pottenger attempts to identify and evaluate the political and social theory contained in the writings of major Latin American liberation theologians-principally Juan Luis Segundo, Gustavo Gutierrez, and Jose' Comblin. The argument is that liberation theology is "a genuine philosophical movement whose political theory if fully developed has the potential … to speak to the limitations of traditional ethical arguments on political behavior, and to contribute significantly to contemporary debates on epistemology." To make this argument, Pottenger gives a quick summary of Western political thought in vaguely Straussian terms, arguing that while classical and medieval political theory held the individual and community in a creative tension, modern liberal individualism as represented by Machiavelli (sic), Hobbes, and Locke has espoused "radical individualism, hyperpluralism, and agnosticism," abandoning community and moral restraints on the acquisition of wealth, and in the case of Latin America subordinating subsistence rights to the property rights of the wealthy and the

328 - The Political Theory of Liberation Theology: Toward a Reconvergence of Social Values and Social Science

multinational corporations. Liberation theology, therefore, represents an effort to re-establish these moral limits and to engage in a linkage of religion and politics that will overcome the modern separation between fact and value, between social science and morality.

Pottenger analyzes the way that the liberationists make use of social theory in a manner that indicates he approves of their purposes but does not always find their methods satisfactory. Thus, while asserting that the liberation theologians' writings provide a "powerful if limited" radical critique of society, he criticizes their failure to understand the role of the market, their inability to combine economic development and social justice, and their refusal to provide a theory of the just social revolution, if not in detail, at least as to general guidelines. He is critical of the attacks by Cardinals Ratzinger and Lopez Trujillo on the Marxist elements in liberationist thought, but recognizes that a Marxist sociology of religion leaves no place for transcendent truth. Like others, he bemoans the lack of systematic treatment by the liberationists of issues like the relation of reform and revolution, or the nature of the new society that they envision. The book concludes with the suggestion that the liberation theologians should look to critical theory of the Marcuse/ Habermas variety for a social philosophy that can ground their criticisms of the systemic bases of contemporary poverty and injustice. Pottenger's analysis is limited to works translated into English and takes no account of recent developments in liberation theology that give more attention to the importance of grass-roots democracy. The Christian Base Communities, the most important contemporary expression of liberation theology, get a very brief treatment that concludes that "their transformation of society through reform efforts may only be marginal at best." Tell that to "Lula," the Labor Party (PT) candidate for the presidency of Brazil, who came very close to winning in the December 1989 runoff, or to the new woman mayor of Sao Paulo--both products of the Base Community movement.

The reviewer has two quibbles: (1) The biographies of the liberation theologians in the Appendix are about 10 years out of date; and (2) Jesus never asked the Pharisees "whether it is permitted to heal or kill on the Sabbath." In sum, this is a substantial effort to invest liberation theology with much larger theoretical significance than it actually exhibits. For treatments that take a similarly sympathetic but critical point of view but draw on wider sources and are more conscious of differentiation and development over the last twenty years and among the liberationist authors, try the recent studies by Arthur McGovern and by the present reviewer.

Paul E. Sigmund
Princeton University
Princeton, New Jersey