Liberation Theology and Praxis in Contemporary Latin America
As It Was in the Beginning?
9781915249616
9781915249593
Distributed for University of London Press
Liberation Theology and Praxis in Contemporary Latin America
As It Was in the Beginning?
A study of liberationist Christianity in Latin America, offering new insights for discussing liberation theology.
This highly interdisciplinary collection brings together diverse and complementary approaches from history, theology, cultural studies, architecture, sociology, and anthropology to reevaluate the legacy of liberation theology in Latin America.
Liberation theology was born in the 1960s at a time of Church renewal and socio-economic ferment, as many sought more radical solutions in the context of the exhaustion of developmentalist projects and the institutionalized violence of capitalism. The book’s central focus on the lived experiences and embodied practices of those engaged in social action in the region challenges the narrative that suggests that liberation theology had reached its decline by the end of the 1970s. It demonstrates that liberationist Christianity was at once more diverse and internally conflicted, more widely resonant outside ecclesial confines, and more interconnected over time than often allowed.
The chapters investigate a range of topics: the ecclesiology of a revolutionary movement of Argentine priests in the 1960s and ́1970s, the engagement of liberation theology with Participatory Action Research and its influence on architectural approaches and urbanism, 1980s feminist liberation theology, encounters with Western human rights at a time of Cold War repression and exile, and ecofeminist political theology in contemporary Latin America. Pulling these threads together, Liberation Theology and Praxis in Contemporary Latin America invites us to reconsider how we understand liberation theology’s history as well as its reach into the present day.
This highly interdisciplinary collection brings together diverse and complementary approaches from history, theology, cultural studies, architecture, sociology, and anthropology to reevaluate the legacy of liberation theology in Latin America.
Liberation theology was born in the 1960s at a time of Church renewal and socio-economic ferment, as many sought more radical solutions in the context of the exhaustion of developmentalist projects and the institutionalized violence of capitalism. The book’s central focus on the lived experiences and embodied practices of those engaged in social action in the region challenges the narrative that suggests that liberation theology had reached its decline by the end of the 1970s. It demonstrates that liberationist Christianity was at once more diverse and internally conflicted, more widely resonant outside ecclesial confines, and more interconnected over time than often allowed.
The chapters investigate a range of topics: the ecclesiology of a revolutionary movement of Argentine priests in the 1960s and ́1970s, the engagement of liberation theology with Participatory Action Research and its influence on architectural approaches and urbanism, 1980s feminist liberation theology, encounters with Western human rights at a time of Cold War repression and exile, and ecofeminist political theology in contemporary Latin America. Pulling these threads together, Liberation Theology and Praxis in Contemporary Latin America invites us to reconsider how we understand liberation theology’s history as well as its reach into the present day.
Table of Contents
Foreword: Theology in the Footsteps of the Martyrs
Martha Zechmeister, CJ
1 Introduction: As it was in the Beginning?
Pablo Bradbury and Niall Geraghty
2 Conflict and Ecclesiology: Obedience, Institutionality and People of God in the Movement of Priests for the Third World
Pablo Bradbury
3 Legacies of the “Bridge-man”: Catholic Accompaniment, Inter-class Relations and the Classification of Surplus in Montevideo
Patrick O’Hare
4 Orlando Fals-Borda’s Participatory Action Research: At and Beyond the Crossroads of Violence in Colombia, Camilo Torres’s Neo-socialism and Liberation Theology
Juan Mario Díaz-Arévalo
5 The Impact of Liberation Theology in the Latin American Built Environment
Fernando Luiz Lara
6 When Liberation Theology Met Human Rights
Anna Grimaldi
7 “Women, The Key to Liberation?”: A Feminist Theology of Liberation at the Catholic Women’s Conference at Puebla
Natalie Gasparowicz
8 Towards the Possibility of an Ecofeminist Theology: The Case of Collective Con-spirando
Ely Orrego-Torres
Afterword: Contemporary Witnesses to Life and Liberation: The Persistent Reality of Latin American Martyrdom as an Ever-Evolving Challenge to Liberation Theologies Today
Elizabeth O’Donnell Gandolfo
Martha Zechmeister, CJ
1 Introduction: As it was in the Beginning?
Pablo Bradbury and Niall Geraghty
2 Conflict and Ecclesiology: Obedience, Institutionality and People of God in the Movement of Priests for the Third World
Pablo Bradbury
3 Legacies of the “Bridge-man”: Catholic Accompaniment, Inter-class Relations and the Classification of Surplus in Montevideo
Patrick O’Hare
4 Orlando Fals-Borda’s Participatory Action Research: At and Beyond the Crossroads of Violence in Colombia, Camilo Torres’s Neo-socialism and Liberation Theology
Juan Mario Díaz-Arévalo
5 The Impact of Liberation Theology in the Latin American Built Environment
Fernando Luiz Lara
6 When Liberation Theology Met Human Rights
Anna Grimaldi
7 “Women, The Key to Liberation?”: A Feminist Theology of Liberation at the Catholic Women’s Conference at Puebla
Natalie Gasparowicz
8 Towards the Possibility of an Ecofeminist Theology: The Case of Collective Con-spirando
Ely Orrego-Torres
Afterword: Contemporary Witnesses to Life and Liberation: The Persistent Reality of Latin American Martyrdom as an Ever-Evolving Challenge to Liberation Theologies Today
Elizabeth O’Donnell Gandolfo