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Church and Theology in Latin America
By David S. Cunningham

As long ago as 1959, Enrique Dussel recognized the necessity of writing the history of Latin America "from the underside"-that is, from the perspective of the poor. While North American theologians were occupied by personal existential crises over the "death of God" and while new insights into the philosophy of history were no more than a gleam in the eye of Michel Foucault, theologians in Latin America were already taking what later came to be known as the postmodern turn. Convinced that the standard methods of historiography were insufficient to the task at hand, Dussel and others set out to rewrite the writing of history.

The challenges posed by such a goal turned out to be more daunting than anyone had imagined. Not only was the task of assembling the resources formidable (Dussel's scholarly Historia general de la Iglesia en América Latina runs to eleven volumes), in addition, the methodological problems inherent in writing history "from the underside" had not yet become fully evident. But by 1992, Dussel was willing to declare, in the introduction to a one-volume history of the Latin American church, that some progress had been made toward the goal of writing "the history of the church from the poor, for the poor and-the ideal to which we are still aspiring-by the poor themselves."¹ And while this ideal has certainly not yet been fully achieved, Latin American thinkers have become fully aware of the interested nature of the writing of history.

Dussel's book is the sort that prompts further reflection on the Latin American context-not simply because it sees history-writing as a politi-

David S. Cunningham is Assistant Professor of Theology at the University of Saint Thomas in Saint Paul, Minnesota and the author of Faithful Persuasion: In Aid of a Rhetoric of Christian Theology (1991).

¹ The Church in Latin America, 1492-1992, vol. I of A History of the Church in the Third World, edited by Enrique Dussel (Maryknoll, NY Orbis Books; Tunbridge Wells, England: Burns and Oates, 1992), p. 2. Hereafter cited as Dussel.

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cal act but also because it forgoes the opportunity to construct a merely self-congratulatory history. The story told here is certainly not a story of triumph. Indeed, it is largely a story of failure, of dreams left unfulfilled, of plans subverted and obstructed. And while the book's contributors retain some hope for the future of the Latin American church, their assessment of liberation theology is mixed. In this sense, their work stands in contrast with that of U.S. theologians, who have sometimes adopted the tenets of liberation theology without question.

LIBERATION DISTORTED INTO "HUMAN RIGHTS"

In the United States, liberation theology has achieved a high degree of Intellectual respectability, certainly ranking alongside feminist and African American theology as among the most influential contemporary movements. It is a perspective and a literature of which no well-educated theological student can afford to remain ignorant. Indeed, like feminist and African American theologies, liberation theology is no longer simply an ancillary region of discourse, a sort of afterthought to a "mainstream" course of theological study. Instead, the works of liberation theologians now form an integral part of the canon of theological literature. For

"Yet, while liberation theology has achieved nearly canonical status in the United States, it clearly has not been as successful closer to home … [having] been so violently opposed by vested interests."

example, anyone seeking to explore contemporary accounts of the doctrine of the trinity should certainly be familiar with Leonardo Boff's Trinity and Society. ² Similarly, Clodovis Boffs monumental Theology and Praxis ³ is one of the most important recent works on theological method, and Jon Sobrino's forthcoming two-volume christology ⁴ is certain to become a standard in that field as well. Moreover, the recent publication of a complete systematic liberation theology, comprising chapters by many of the most accomplished Latin American theologians, has been compared to Rahner's Sacramentum Mundi in its scale and scope .⁵

Yet, while liberation theology has achieved nearly canonical status in the United States, it has not been as successful closer to home. It has been so violently opposed by vested interests, both within the church and

² Leonardo Boff, Trinity and Society (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1988).
³ Clodovis Boff, Theology and Praxis: Epistemological Foundations (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1987).
⁴ Volume one has been published: Jon Sobrino, S.J., Jesus the Liberator: An Historical-Theological Reading of Jesus of Nazareth (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1993).
⁵ Mysterium Liberationis: Fundamental Concepts of Liberation Theology edited by Ignacio Ellacuria, S.J. and Jon Sobrino, SJ (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1993).

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outside it, that its flame has nearly been extinguished. This intense opposition is motivated by some of the same forces that perpetuate the economic and political subjugation of Latin America.

As Dussel himself argues, the colonization of Latin America is not just an event from the past; it is an ongoing reality. ⁶ Although the Latin American people have often sought to throw off the weight of imperialism, it keeps returning in a slightly altered form. The struggles for national emancipation, for example, often resulted in the regression to a condition of neo-colonial dependency. The church, too, maintained an ongoing complicity with oppression, whatever the political regime (liberal, populist, nationalist, or dictatorial). Even revolutionary movements, which sought to obliterate the stigma of colonization, have been very successfully co-opted.

In fact, the Cuban and Nicaraguan revolutions provide excellent examples of the continuing colonization of Latin America. ⁷ In both cases, a combination of miscommunication, corruption, and sheer stubborn perversity thwarted the goal of liberation. In the case of Cuba, the graft and corruption within church institutions had made them so unpopular that they were necessarily seen as antagonistic to the revolution. Church and state became so virulent in their mutual denunciations that their estrange-

"Where it once hoped to provide a new social structure and to operate in the vanguard of popular revolution, the church has been reduced to working for mere 'rights. ' "

ment was soon complete; neither could recognize the degree to which they shared common goals. In Nicaragua, the situation was different. Many of those most active in the revolution were also active in the church, so a natural bridge between the two was already in place. But anti-revolutionary activity was so well supported by forces outside the country (originating chiefly in the United States) that, even though many elements in church and state united in support of the revolution, they could not keep the ecclesiastical and political opposition permanently at bay.

As another example of the continuing colonization of Latin America, consider the church's capitulation to the rhetoric of "human rights." While any defense of humane living conditions should certainly be applauded, the church's use of rights language has become little more than a "last stand" within a hostile secular environment. Where it once hoped to provide a new social structure and to operate in the vanguard of popular revolution, the church has been reduced to working for mere

⁶ Enrique Dussel, "General Introduction," in Dussel, pp. 1-20.

⁷Clearly documented by Raúl Gómez Treto and Angel Arnaiz Quintana, "Christianity and Revolution," in Dussel, pp. 419-434.

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rights." As José Comblin argues,

The Medellin Church saw its plans and hopes for a Church of the poor frustrated by the military governments. Liberation was reduced to the most urgent task, the struggle for human rights. This struggle, however, while occupying the space of the struggle for liberation, was unable to produce a genuine liberation. ⁸

Why must the church appeal to a notion so thoroughly secular as "human rights?" Is it so soiled by past involvement in oppression that it has lost its prophetic vocabulary for calling the world to repentance? Or perhaps this language is simply further testimony to the ways the church's practice has been distorted by the continuing colonization of Latin America.

To read Dussel's history of the Latin American church is to be overwhelmed by a tremendous crescendo of voices, crying out and asking the world to listen. The contributors to this volume bear witness to the church's ongoing complicity with the powers of this world, and emphasize that, while grass-roots efforts to reverse this trend may have gained the attention of the world media, they have not made more than a small dent in an armor hardened by 500 years of oppression.

THE RIFT BETWEEN THEORY AND PRACTICE

So, North American readers are faced with a rather strange circumstance. In Latin America, where the theoretical claims of liberation theology have met such stiff opposition, thousands of base communities continue to offer a practical alternative to participation in secular society. Conversely, in the United States, liberation theology has become a natural part of the theoretical landscape for theologians and intellectuals. Yet here, its practical effects seem to have been minimal. Christians have shown little interest in communal alternatives to the secular mainstream. I want to explore two factors that have contributed to this tension between theory and practice.

First, liberation theology often construes the relationship between the sacred and the secular in such a way that the political order is seen as separate and autonomous from the church. The church's role is primarily to influence the (larger) political order by whatever means possible. ⁹ Not surprisingly, then, the degree of opposition that liberation theology generates is proportional to its potential effect on the political order. It is most widely tolerated in cultures in which theological theory has little effect on political praxis (hence the fascination it has evoked in the United States ^1O). At the other end of the spectrum, where the church has

⁸ José Comblin, "The Church and Defence of Human Rights," in Dussel, p. 436,
⁹ See William T. Cavanaugh, "The Ecclesiologies of Medellin and the Lessons of the Base Communities," Cross Currents 44/1 (Spring 1994), pp. 67-84.
¹⁰ Here, the most serious opposition it encounters is produced by right-wing think tanks like the American Enterprise Institute, an organization that employs writers not so much to generate intellectual opposition in the academy as to foment opposition to perceived threats to the hegemony of capitalism. For a thorough analysis, see Arthur F. McGovern, S.J., Liberation Theology and Its Critics: Toward an Assessment (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1989).

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the potential to influence politics in a more direct way (for "ample, Nicaragua), liberation theology has been fought tooth and nail and opposed by vested interests, foreign and domestic, ecclesiastical and political.

This would seem to make liberation theology a self-defeating enterprise. In any context in which it is likely to have some political influence, it will provoke the intervention of those most highly motivated to keep it from gaining power. Conversely, it will flourish only where it has few practical effects. Either way, its ultimate impact is minimal. If this analysis is correct, I suspect that many Latin American theologians would lapse into complete despair were it not for the base communities, which seem to have made some progress toward liberation even in the midst of widespread attacks on liberation theology. But, as William Cavanaugh has recently pointed out, the base communities depend upon a very different construal of the relationship between the sacred and the secular.¹¹ They understand themselves as providing a wholly alternative politics-not simply as influencing an external political order, as liberation theology seems to advocate.

A second reason for rift between theory and practice in the theology of liberation concerns the writing of history and is well illustrated by the Dussel volume. The first two sections of the book-a chronological survey and a regional survey--comprise fairly typical historical sketches. As such, they suffer from the same liability that affects most modem historiography: They often have space only briefly to introduce names, dates, places, and stories, leaving the reader to put all the pieces together. Indeed, these chapters provoke some doubt as to whether the authors have succeeded in writing a history from and for the poor. Although the content of the book clearly marks its contributors as standing on the side of liberation, the form and structure of the chapters in the first two parts seem to exemplify church history at its most conventional. The writers still focus on the broad sweep of macrocosmic history in a way that gives the book an almost Hegelian flavor. Political forces, theological dogmas, economic interests, military strategy, the grand march of time-these are still the primary categories of the early chapters of the book. Even when a contributor turns to an otherwise neglected primary source, we typically hear the voice of a relatively powerful figure attempting to represent the sentiments of the poor rather than the actual voices of marginalized persons. (Bartolomé de Las Casas is cited twenty-one times in the index, more often than any other individual, but, although he faced intense opposition, he still spoke as a privileged insider.) If the contributors are to succeed in writing the kind of history they apparently hope to write, they may need to revise the form and structure of history-writing much more radically than they have done here.

What might this mean? The reader catches a glimpse of an alternative vision in the third part of the book, which relinquishes the traditional

¹¹ Cavanaugh, "Ecclesiologies," esp. pp. 74-81.

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formal categories of church history and offers, instead, a more narratively shaped account of political oppression and ecclesiastical malfeasance. Not only does this provide for a much more engaging encounter with the text, it also gives the reader some sense of how history might look "from the underside." It functions this way not because of its content but because the story is told differently than it would be told were it to be narrated exclusively by those who supposedly made it happen.

For example, we are given the victims' perspective on the frequently genocidal "reductions" in the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries, in which the church often aided and abetted governments in their treatment of native peoples (who were often forcibly relocated, enslaved, or massacred). We are then guided through a painful process of "rememory" of the triangle trade, during which European nations grew rich by extracting the mineral deposits of the Latin American continent, mingled with the sweat and blood of African slaves. These chapters illustrate how newly rediscovered ways of narrating the Latin American story may radically reshape the writing of its history.

These two aspects of recent Latin American theology-its view of the sacred and the secular and its approach to history-seem to result in a mixed verdict. Liberation theologians seem too dependent upon a dualis-

"A theological gulf has opened up between liberation theology in the Latin American context and its appropriation in North American and European circles. "

tic vision of church and world-"the two kingdoms"-inherited from their European forebears. Yet often, they also wisely attend to the more organic, biblical vision of the reign of God, which the base communities seek to embody. Similarly, while the more traditional models of history continue to dominate the imagination of many writers, a more narratively shaped approach to history is also beginning to emerge. In both cases, theoretical inadequacies seem to be at least partially mitigated by attention to concrete practice.

However, these mitigating factors seem largely absent from the U.S. appropriation of liberation theology. We have adopted its theory without recognizing that the theory has flaws, and, at the same time, we have failed to adopt the (comparatively more successful) practice of the base communities. Similarly, we have learned to express sympathy for marginalized persons in our writing of history, but we have not always been successful either in providing space for them to speak or in demanding that their voices actually be heard. Consequently, a theological gulf has opened up between liberation theology in the Latin American context and its appropriation in North American and European circles. And this gulf has become part of the continuing colonization of Latin America. Its resources and its labor (in this case, liberation theologians and their

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thought) have been extracted for the pleasure of the first world, with little real change having taken place back in the "colonies." The same forces that had been complicitous in the first and second waves of the political colonization of Latin America are now even more actively at work on its theological colonization. As a result, the categories of liberation theology are invoked more often to salve the conscience of the first world than to secure the liberation of those for whom it was created.

LISTENING AGAIN TOMARX

In some ways, the analysis of the Latin American context offered by Dussel and his colleagues confirms the conclusion of Alistair Kee in his highly original work Marx and the Failure of Liberation Theology. ¹² Kee argues that liberation theologians, far from being "too Marxist" as critics inside the church sometimes claim, have not paid enough attention to Marx-especially to his criticism of religion ("the premise of all criticism"). More specifically, liberation theology seems to have been co-opted by the very structures theologians failed to bring under critical scrutiny.

Marx claimed that human beings make religion and that this is not just an expression of the mystery of human nature (as Feuerbach had believed) but a fundamental mistake. This claim has always presented a problem for Christians. How far are they willing to go with Marx? As an atheist, Marx did not hesitate to apply his criticisms in a thoroughgoing way, not only to superstition and popular piety and not only to institutional forms of the church but also to the concept of revelation and to the ontological status of religious belief in general. The potential and the limits of a Christian appropriation of Marx is a subject that very few theologians have bothered to investigate in any depth. ¹³ Liberation theologians have, for the most part, deflected the question, arguing that Christianity is not a "religion" in the sense that Marx used the term or that his criticisms only apply to its institutional bureaucracy. But is this really an adequate response?

Perhaps the obstacles erected against liberation theology have been so effective precisely because theologians have failed to confront Marx's ontological critique, which claims that religion is a purely human creation. This is not to suppose that one will need to dispense with any sort of doctrine of revelation in order fully to appropriate the Marxist critique. But if we were to take more seriously Marx's claim that religion arises "from actually existing forces," we might better recognize the degree to which those same forces give rise to the opposition to religion. In this way we may initiate a whole new direction in theological study, not only of

 ¹² Alistair Kee, Marx and the Failure of Liberation Theology (Philadelphia: Trinity Press International, 1990).
 ¹³ A happy exception is Nicholas Lash, A Matter of Hope: A Theologian's Reflections on the Thought of Karl Marx (London: Darton, Longman, and Todd, 1981).

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liberation theology but of also our more general understanding of the origins of belief, and of the doctrine of revelation in particular. Where might such a study begin? This question will necessarily evoke a wide variety of answers, but to provide one possible starting point I want to return to The Church in Latin America.

Permeating Dussel's book is the theme of martyrdom, of witness. Almost every chapter makes some mention of the many-known and unknown-who gave their lives in the struggle for liberation. All the contributors are clearly aware that the blood of the Latin American martyrs provides a witness the power of which far exceeds the academic theologian's or the historian's expression of the horrors and hardships of the epoch. While the logic of specific theological claims is always open to cross-examination and rebuttal, the martyrs provide a much more enduring witness. And their deaths are not interpreted as failure; to the contrary, they are the glory of the movement, demonstrating its truth in a way that makes mere language seem vacuous by comparison.

"It is easy enough for the outsider to make sweeping claims about the successes and failures of a movement, it is something very different to advocate a position while living under threat from those who would see it quashed. "

Here the complicity of those who live and work outside the Latin American context becomes most obvious. It is easy enough for the outsider to make sweeping claims about the successes and failures of a movement; it is something very different to advocate a position while living under threat from those who would see it quashed. Those North American and European commentators who make their living by offering facile critiques of liberation theology might do well to stop trying to explain its theoretical inadequacies and instead try to explain why so many people continue to give their lives in order to achieve liberation for the people. Such a change would not, of course, put an end to the colonization of Latin American theology, but it would, at least, help rectify the tendency toward reification and intellectualization seemingly present in so many of these critiques.

But the witness of the martyrs may have a yet more important role to play. It may urge all theologians, Latin American or otherwise, to reexamine Marx's most profound and challenging criticisms of religion and to take them into account in the reconstruction of the theological enterprise for the present age. At minimum, this would require us to reconceive the relationship between the sacred and the secular so that the church is seen not merely as one of many players in a larger political sphere but, rather, as a way of envisioning the whole world-an alterna-

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tive politics of nonmastery. ¹⁴ It might also suggest a need to reconceive the writing of church history-paying more attention to the significance of human lives through suffering and martyrdom and less attention to "creeds, councils, and controversies." Finally, we might begin to recognize the potentially revelatory role of human character, and to break ourselves of the habit of assuming that propositional logic will play the most argumentatively significant role in theology. ¹⁵ Perhaps the most important impact of The Church in Latin America is to remind us that the categories of theological method are not etched in stone, and that not only our most fundamental assumptions but also our own accounts of those assumptions, must be challenged and reconceived in every generation.

¹⁴ For a detailed analysis of this problematic, see especially John Milbank, Theology and Social Theory: Beyond Secular Reason, Signposts in Theology (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1990).
¹⁵ I have tried to sketch some of the potential implications of these methodological alternatives in Faithful Persuasion: In Aid of a Rhetoric of Christian Theology (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1991).