Intro to American liberation theology
From: Violence in Christian Theology, by J. Denny Weaver
As sinners, in one way or another, we are all part of those sinful forces that killed Jesus. Jesus died making the reign of God present for us while we were still sinners. To acknowledge our human sinfulness is to become aware of our participation in the forces of evil that killed Jesus, including their present manifestations in such powers as militarism, nationalism, racism, sexism, heterosexism and poverty that still bind and oppress.
And because God is a loving God, God invites us to join the rule of God in spite of the fact that we participated with and are captive to the powers that killed Jesus. God invites us to join the struggle of those seeking liberation from the forces that bind and oppress. This invitation envisions both those who are oppressed and their oppressors. When the oppressed accept God’s invitation, they cease collaborating with the powers that oppressed and join the forces who represent the reign of God in making a visible witness against oppression. And when the oppressors accept God’s invitation, they cease their collaboration with the powers of oppression, and join the forces who represent the reign of God in witnessing against oppression. Thus under the reign of God, former oppressed and former oppressors join together in witnessing to the reign of God.(20)
One dimension of the image of narrative Christus Victor is that it is the undoing of Anselm’s deletion. Anselm removed the devil from the salvation equation. Narrative Christus Victor restores the devil to the equation, but with a difference. In narrative Christus Victor, the image of the devil is not that of an individual, personified being. Rather “the devil” is the Roman empire, which symbolizes all the institutes and structures and powers of the world that do not recognize the rule of God. Thus “devil” includes ourselves. Following Walter Wink’s understanding of the powers, this devil is the symbol for the accumulation of all that does not recognize the authority of the reign of God.(21) In his contemporary construction of Christus Victor, James Cone wrote that the powers of evil confronted by the reign of God include “the American system,” symbolized by government officials who “oppress the poor, humiliate the weak, and make heroes out of rich capitalists;” “the Pentagon, which bombed and killed helpless people in Vietnam and Cambodia and attributed such obscene atrocities to the accidents of war;” the system symbolized in “the police departments and prison officials, which shoots and kills defenseless blacks for being black and for demanding their right to exist.”(22) What the victorious Christ has done is to rescue us from the forces of evil and allow us to be invited into and to be transformed by the rule of God. While that transformation is never complete, our participation in evil has now become involuntary and our lives take on the character of opposition to rather than cooperation with the forces of evil…
These folks are important allies.
Jon:
As one of ‘those folks’, I figured out that you were an important ally. I’m glad we’re all talking to each other now. I am not a theologian. I’m not even a very active church goer. As a non theologian, I find Walter Wink a little heavy going. If I could recommend one book it would be, ‘Jesus and the Dispossessed’ by Howard Thurman. Thurman was an African American mystic and intellectual. He was a friend of Martin Luther King Sr. The story is that MLK Jr. carried a copy of ‘Jesus and the Dispossessed’ everywhere he went. It’s the most profound book I’ve ever read. I usually can’t read more than a paragraph or two at a time. I have to set it down and think for a day or two after that.
14 February 2008, 11:35 pmStan:
Thanks, I’ll be seeking that one now, too.
What I appreciate about both Walter Wink and J. Denny Weaver, Rebecca Todd Peters, as well as Rev. Dr. Richard Holloway (there are quite a few more theologians to name), is their unequivocal support for feminism and their willingness to treat it as a central, and not a side, issue. For me, this is about as close to non-negotiable as anything gets. Weaver mentions James Cone, the African American liberation theologian, who I latched onto back in the 90s… another strong voice, who speaks to the condition of African America under the principalities and powers.
And I’m not sure that I might not be “one of these people,” too. The army took me to anti-racism, which took me to marxism, which took me to feminism, which accompanied me to some deep ecology. What’s left now is a big question mark about what is to be done. Somewhere in Jubilee may be an answer, because much as we hate to talk about it when we are still raging at the system, forgiveness (of debt and offense) is part of the equation. I have no doubt that, being perfectly honest here, my own resistance to non-violence as a principle/strategy and to forgiveness as part of the revolutionary process is rooted in a male perspective.
Here’s Wiki on “womanism” and a ref to Cone.
Here is Delores Williams who took Cone’s work into womanism (audio-visual). “No woman knows herself who has not entered the birth canal of her own life.” -Williams
15 February 2008, 6:28 ameoinmonkey:
“As sinners, in one way or another, we are all part of those sinful forces that killed Jesus.”
um, no, we’re not.
Any chance these ‘important allies’ could tone down their (fairly offensive) assumptions, at least when speaking to a wider audience? Is there a lesson there for all of us lefties perhaps?
15 February 2008, 10:21 amxenia:
I’ve noticed that in the last couple of years I developed a lot of compassion toward Jesus. Still strongly agnostic to atheist, I often feel pain when I look at him. I don’t see a God at all, I see a suffering, impoverished, modest man killed by a seemingly all-powerful alien state.
This feeling was especially strong for me in Spain. In the cathedral in Granada, they have an old statue of a crusader killing “Moors”, fairly graphically. The cathedral was built after the conquest of Granada in 1492, after the expulsion of Sephardic Jews and Muslims, at the time of forced conversions, a little before the inquisition took off.
In another corner of the building, you can see a bombastic monument to the men of church who were “victims of communism” during the Spanish civil war in the 1930s. Of course, the delicious (and unspoken) irony is that Franco’s forces were assisted by Moroccan (”Moorish”) troops in crushing the republican forces.
I never felt the contradictions of Christianity stronger in that church. Glorifying Christ as a majesty while killing people who spoke Semitic languages, and joining the old, semi-feudal crimes with the nationalist-fascist ones of the 20th century. Jesus on the cross seemed to be suffering twice as much. I wished I could get him out of the building and into the sunlight.
It is mindboggling to reflect on the implications of all this for Iraq, Palestine, Guatemala, etc. etc.
15 February 2008, 12:34 pmxenia:
To clarify the last point:
From the US media, would you even know that the oldest Christian communities in the world are in Palestine, Syria, Iraq, many of them with Syriac (variant of Aramaic, Jesus’ language) as their church language?
Yet, they are being maligned, killed and starved with the abundant help of devout Christians, and the lands regarded as holy in Christian tradition are devastated…
Similarly, remember that Mesopotamia is crucial for Jewish intellectual history (the Talmud)…
Poor Jesus.
15 February 2008, 1:08 pmStan:
Sin, according to many liberation theologians, is not — as the right would have us believe — the notion of ‘personal responsibility’; it is structural, and our participation in those structures is the point at which we become responsible. The crucifixion is emblematic of mimetic violence and of the system of domination, which requires victims, even those who are lawful. (This is what the non-violent strategy of the Christian leadership of the Civil Rights Movement was about… being “like Christ,” that is subverting the system by exposing its violence.) Taking these remarks literally (objectively?) misses the point. The forces that killed Jesus were the forces of empire and its comprador allies. All that statement means is that silence and inaction are complicity. If I were to say that no adult white American is innocent of the system of white privilege, or that no competent adult male can be innocent of the system of male privilege, I would be saying essentially the same thing. One of the quotes attributed to Jesus of Nazareth is, “Only the destitute are innocent.”
15 February 2008, 6:11 pmDeAnander:
I may have said this before, but A N Wilson’s book Jesus: A Life offers a lot of historical context as far as the Roman occupation, the political factions in Judaea and Galilee at that time, and the political significance of the Messiah story. From Wilson’s reading, those who try to recostume Jesus as a nationalist guerrilla are as far off the mark as the imperialists who have tried to turn him into General Jesus. I can’t recall much of the book’s argument and supporting data (was reading it during a rather stressful period) but I do remember it as very interesting and worth the time to read.
15 February 2008, 7:31 pmStan:
Historical Jesus is almost an academic discipline now; and this field of inquiry (Jesus from below) is, in many ways, necessary to bring people (with intellecutal backgrounds like mine, eg) into a position to see around the roles and narratives of various Christianities that support establishment, empire, and even reaction. My own faves are Wink & Crossan.
Many questions have been answered well regarding who this man was; and many have faded into the irresolvability of time.
The important thing to ask — from a practical standpoint today — is what is the practice of liberation theologies, and how do they fit the needs and desires of people in our own epoch. For the past twelve years of social change activism, my own experience working with faith-based radicals has been far better, more accepting, and principled than with any other group… and none of them have suggested that they are investing their good acts in a cash-out that includes “sitting at the right hand of God.” Far more important to them is the core of universal truth that is suggested by various narratives (in the way poems suggest); and the obligation to witness, speak truth to power, and to be “like Christ” as exemplars.
15 February 2008, 8:53 pmDeAnander:
For the past twelve years of social change activism, my own experience working with faith-based radicals has been far better, more accepting, and principled than with any other group…
That resonates with me also. I have known Christians who were as manipulative and mean as some of the worst sectarian left groups, but they were not radical liberation-theology Christians.
I suspect, but cannot prove, that faith-based radicals — being radical — cannot get away from the radical message of the faith, which at its heart is Kindness — kindness to one another, immediately and on an individual level, as well as the practise of resistance to organised cruelty on a larger stage. Where other ideologies with a similar commitment to large scale justice seem to fail, repeatedly, is in the practise of kindness and charity in the here and now (too much temptation to say that good ends justify cruel means, or that it doesn’t really matter how we treat the cadres today because our cause is just and will triumph tomorrow).
Christianity which loses that radical core of kindness quickly becomes nothing more than another ideology, power structure, oppressive institution, state cult… Perhaps where Marxism is flawed is that Marx was always writing in the abstract and the general, about masses of people, classes of people, and great impersonal historical forces; I am not literate enough in Marx to know for sure, but did he ever say that we should be kind to each other in the course of the struggle? that it was our revolutionary duty to witness against cruelty even from within our own ranks, not just from the overclass to the under?
hmmmm….
15 February 2008, 9:35 pmStan:
Mahmood Memandi noted in his excellent work on the latter 20th C, that the thing that capitalism, Marxism-Leninism, and even the post-WWII national liberation movements had in common was the nearly enthusiastic acceptance of violence. Though they are loathe to admit it outside their circles, this affinity for violent fantasy is still in the very fabric of modern-day marxist culture. Marx himself spoke in this combative idiom, and cheered certain violence in a very male way (as I did for quite some time).
This affinity for violence is about aggression and revenge, not transformation; and therefore fundamentally masculine in character. And what Xtianity at its best proposes is that in the process of dying to the Powers (withdrawing from dependency and participation - a Jungian metaphor of constant self-annihilation and rebirth), the spirit of Jubilee has to prevail — the forgiveness of debt and trespass, followed by reconciliation… a kind of perpetual reset button. This disallaows the dehumanization of our enemies.
16 February 2008, 6:22 ameoinmonkey:
When someone says that we all have something in common as human beings, and that thing is an easily disputed and contentious philosophicaldoctrine that many people do not share and do not wish to share, I dont see how ‘taking it literally’ is ‘missing the point’. If the article had started with “Christians believe that humans all share in the sin of killing christ” then I could have thought “OK, thats what you think, lets see what you do with that…”, but when it starts with “We are all responsible for killing christ…” then that is stating a fact I believe to be both untrue, and quite patronising. Unfortunately, when someone believes in an almighty being who structures the universe, they have to apply it to everyone, and all ultimately harbour the desire (delusion?) to convert all to the truth as they see it. “Go forth and preach the gospel” doesnt really brook any argument, does it?
16 February 2008, 10:09 amAs for the problems inherent in taking a single (again contentious) source as the ultimate guide to all human life, and picking bits and bobs out of it to support ones own argument…
DeAnander:
liberation movements had in common was the nearly enthusiastic acceptance of violence
this takes me back to a thread at MoA
link
Powerful gender metaphors and feelings surround nationalism: nation as woman to be raped/invaded, msculinity=victory and defeat=sissy, male sexual performance as dominance/violence, and so on. And the humiliation felt by invaded and occupied populations very easily turns (in the minds of their male contingent) into the humiliation of being “treated like women,” having their manhood denied or “castrated”, an offence which can only be redressed by cathartic vengeance reasserting their “perfect” masculinity. None of this is news, of course. But imho it would be remarkable if movements of the oppressed which include oppressed males — unless they have a very astute and very radical critique of gendered power — would slip into a masculinist narrative of retributive/redemptive violence — i.e. Man On Fire as opposed to the narrative of the Passion.
Generations of Constantinian Christians have struggled with the “sissy” nature of Christ, coming up with some very strange (and imho weirdly heretical) dogma to get around the (to them) insoluble riddle of his nonviolence and unmanliness. “Muscular Christianity” was one version of an imperialised faith popular during the British Empire; today we have the Left Behind cult, all those bizarre books portraying Christ as a kind of warrior robot whose very glance slices flesh from bone and casts sinners into writhing agony — Christ as Terminator 2?
The message of forgiveness and reconciliation, charity and compassion, undermines the values of patriarchal masculinity; though Manly Men keep re-inventing an Imperial Christ, the gospel continues to be the story of a most extraordinary sissy
16 February 2008, 1:03 pmStan:
It’s missing the point because it is not meant literally.
It was written for Crosscurrents, a religious publication. I cross-posted (no pun intended) to let people who may not know it see that the “philsophical doctrine” of Christianity is actually far more plural than a reduction to “philosphical doctrine” suggests; and that on many important issues the religious right does not represent the values of all Christians.
That is not how it started, at all. It started, “The death of Jesus is not necessary to satisfy God’s honor.” Read it.
And it did not state the “responsibility” part as a literal fact. My pointy exactly. All declarative statements are not literal. That is determined by intent and context. Since Weaver is not claiming that everyone actually drove nails into the hands of Jesus — and this is pretty obvious — then the intent is fairly transparent, to convey a figurative truth… in this case about systemic evil and the difficulty (nay, impossibility) of escaping some measure of responsibilty.
In fact, this is a faulty generalization. Weaver is not an evangelist; and many, many Christians value cultural diversity and eschew proselytizing. You seem to be projecting your objections to something else here. Tillich, for example, said that believing in the existence of God is denying God. That’s a whole nuther thread; but I interject it as an example of the non-doctrinnarie thinking that goes on among theologians.
The religious tradition represented by Weaver does not make this come unanswerable command. “Gospel” means “good news,” and among liberation theologians that “news” is that even though you are oppressed and have been taught you have no worth, we see you as spiritual equals to all. This belief in spiritual equality was so provocative in 1st Century chistology (because it included women), that it was the basis of a period of terrible Roman persecution. This is not some totalizing formula except among the biblical literalists of the right. It should be farily apparent from the whole essay that this is not who is writing.
Again, you are attacking a straw man. There are 23 footnotes at the end this article; and the work is obviously exegetical. I still do not understand the offense.
16 February 2008, 4:40 pmDeAnander:
I think that Christianity is as much of a bogeyman [hmmm] on the secular Left as Marxism is on the Right. So many crimes have been committed by persons waving a banner labelled “Marx” or a banner labelled “Christ” that it’s easy enough to demonise either train of thought / ethical thread / literature and recoil in horror from the very mention of the name.
OTOH I can’t offhand think of any big idea in human history that hasn’t been turned to abusive purposes by naughty people. I mean, the printing press is a great and wonderful thing but the first thing it printed after the Bible was the Malleus Maleficarum, a handbook for witch-hunters to aid them in a mass femicide in Europe. So printing presses, and books, are evil, yeah?
People will use any excuse, any banner, any feeble justification for the wrongs that they want to do or enjoy doing (cf the chilling and accurate observation by PD James — in the mouth of one of her fictional characters — that an abusive father did not abuse because he was drunk, he got drunk in order to have the courage to do what he wanted to to, which was to terrorise and abuse). Abusive people waving the banner of Christianity don’t invalidate all theological thought since the founding of the Christ cult, any more than the KGB automatically invalidates all Marxist theory…
Whenever I feel reflexively mistrustful of Christianity [which is a lot of the time I confess, since I’ve mostly been exposed to its Constantinian flavour and have a lifetime’s worth of allergic reaction :-)] I remember that Ivan Illich was a liberation theologian and an ordained priest. He took the implications of the gospel to their logical conclusion and in so doing, left a body of work that has touched me deeply. (He also eventually broke away from the established Church over his socialist/democratic beliefs.) I could no more reject that work because its author sincerely believed in God, than I could toss out all socialist thought because there were some really nasty people in the Red Guard…
Belief in God to me is like music to the tone-deaf. I don’t “get it” and never have. But I don’t think it makes nice people nasty; I think the nasty ones came that way to begin with and if they did not terrorise their kids with scarifying tales of hellfire, they’d be terrorising them some other way. If they weren’t hating gay people because they can find a handy excuse in Leviticus, they’d be hating gay people for some other more “scientific” reason, like “they spread disease” or “it must be a genetic defect.” They are failed Christians if anything… kind of like China today is failed Communism… and America today bears no resemblance to anything Adam Smith would have recognised as a healthy capitalism, while we’re comparing “actually existing” with theory
imho people who take an ancient (or modern) palimpsest of disputed manuscript and call it the ultimate guide to human life are silly whether they’re waving the little red book or the little black book… but regardless of the form of words it’s wrapped in, the confessing faiths are all pretty much on message about the basic instruction manual for a happier world: share, care, resist bullying but do not become a bully, and remember that each person breathing is just as real and just as human — as flawed and as hopeful — as yourself. hard to argue with that…
so I see theological language as a very powerful, poetic way to talk about very important things like justice, mercy, responsibility and another world that is possible (not pie in the sky but here on earth). there’s a resonance to it that simply is not found even in Pareto optimisation algorithms and Gini coefficients
it is a language which can bring the unquantifiable concept of love into the concept of politics and action. and as Auden said, “we must love one another or die” — another way of expressing the famous choice between socialism and barbarism?
the belief in spiritual equality is the radical idea: that we are all just human beings, not aristos and commoners, not owners and slaves, not uebermenschen and untermenschen. it contradicts every fantasy of gender, race, national supremacy. if for no other reason, this core or nub of the xtian gospel would be a very important meme to preserve…
16 February 2008, 6:07 pmStan:
…and it begins with writings that a lot of people know about.
16 February 2008, 7:49 pmaudrey:
This part I have to comment on (of course): “A modern equivalent might be a teacher who is sassed by her student. Her authority as teacher is threatened if she cannot enact punishment on the disrespectful student. The object of dealing with the student is not punishment per se. It is rather that some kind of compensation for the offense is necessary in order to maintain the integrity and stability of the teacher’s authority in her classroom.”
I wish that wasn’t in there that way, as if it’s objective truth. I’d frame those dybnamics so differently - her effectiveness is threatened if she cannot find the underlying cause for the disrespect and resolve that on its own level - keeping in mind that the disrespect may in fact be justified. Human “sin” doesn’t arise out of noplace, not in the classroom and not in the world. I’m pondering that today. I am in another of those teacher education classes at the moment, and a recurring theme in them is often how to control and motivate these evil hormonal teenagers. There’s often an “original sin” motif in those classes.
There’s a vague cloud of thought hanging over me that may or may not gel properly in a day or two, related to these ideas of violent resistance, nonviolent resistance, and finding another path that isn’t focused on resistance at all - but that may be because of this analogy of the classroom, where of course I’m the authority, not the oppressed. You’d never know that from hearing other teachers talk, which is something worth considering in itself, I suppose - when we are in power, we are not the sinners, it’s always those other people bringing it on themselves. It’s much easier to talk about another path when we’re in the role of teacher than when we’re in the role of abused spouse.
17 February 2008, 3:54 pmStan:
One path is withdrawal; but it’s far easier said than done. You raise the toughest questions.
17 February 2008, 7:51 pmpeggy:
One important thing about Jesus is that he gave up his family. If you have some people for whose well-being you are absolutely responsible, then you have to choose whether your responsibility for those people is more important than your responsibility for social justice. One may think that responsibility for one’s family is the essence of social justice, but it isn’t always. Tough choice.
18 February 2008, 5:21 ameoinmonkey:
If theological statements about sin, human nature and god/the Christ are not to be taken literally- ie to be merely regarded as some supposition without basis in fact, even by their own author- then how are they relevant? I understand your point about taking the text of the bible as a basis because many people have read it and know “the story” (no matter how poorly), but you cant seriously think that theology is the study of a text that theologians assume to be, as it were, false testimony. Besides, as I skirted around, it is, I believe,a lot easier to pull a nasty, conservative message of hatred and bigotry out of the bible than one of love and peace (and even if people disagree, they must know it is a possibility). Why favour the supposed words of Christ in the New Testament over those of St Paul, if your starting point is that Christ was nothing special (ie not the son of god, or even a special prophet, or possibly even a real person with a historically verifiable existence, but just some character in some stories that a lot of people happen to have read)?
18 February 2008, 12:31 pmI also do not agree that it is a straw man argument to assume that the bible and the tenants of christianity are meant to be taken seriously by its adherants, in terms of preaching the gospel (however you want to change the understanding of what that is assumed to mean) and taking the bible to be a guide to life in the modern day, rather than an ancient book with as much potential (ir)relevance as any other ancient book from any part of the world, wether sanctified by mass popularity or not.
I do however think it is a straw man argument to imply that I have some antipathy to all christians, when my original point was merely that I dont like being told (as the above post clearly does, at the start, whatever the full article may emphasise about that entire message) that my nature as a person can be defined best by any doctrine involving god, sin and personal responsibility for such.
folktruther:
I haven’t read this blog for some time and consequently am shocked on how much it has degenerated. Mr Goff’s comment that Marx and marxists have an enthusiastic acceptance for violence and violent fantasies is utter bullshit, worthy of the sleazoids on TV. That people are sinful is the kind of anti-people garbage that power systems have peddled throughout history to legitimate oppressive power.
Obviously Mr Goff is headed for the right.
STAN: I have been affiliated in one way or another with Marxism, and studied Marx, Lenin, et al, for a little while now. Revolutionary violence is part and parcel of the whole paradigm, and if you like we can start a quote-fest from the horses’ mouths. Violent revolution is not a fantasy of the Marxist tradition; it is called “necessity” again and again.
Read the accounts of “sin” that are out there, from leftists like Tillich, Illich, McDougall, MLK, Wink, or a host of others — which you obviously haven’t. My whole issue with another poster is that there is a tendency on the left to conflate all religious precepts with one particular version of Xtianity… a little like associating all Marxists with Pol Pot. You don’t like it, and I don’t like it (Marx is part of my world view), because it is unrepresentative of the larger and more complex intellectual tradition. Neither do faith-based radicals.
When I follow the secular drivel of Christopher Hitchens into the realm of “just war” against Saddam, then I’ll accept the “right” label. I’m already to the left of Marxism-as-a-whole on (1) ecology, (2) gender, and (3) the state.
-The Degenerate One
18 February 2008, 2:54 pmCharles:
I am not literate enough in Marx to know for sure, but did he ever say that we should be kind to each other in the course of the struggle? that it was our revolutionary duty to witness against cruelty even from within our own ranks, not just from the overclass to the under?
^^^^^
19 February 2008, 3:38 pmI think not. I have to think about it a little more. He says something like it indirectly in that the goal is a free association of free producers, or something like that, but I think the direct answer to your question is that he did not.
Charles:
Generations of Constantinian Christians have struggled with the “sissy” nature of Christ, coming up with some very strange (and imho weirdly heretical) dogma to get around the (to them) insoluble riddle of his nonviolence and unmanliness. “Muscular Christianity” was one version of an imperialised faith popular during the British Empire; today we have the Left Behind cult, all those bizarre books portraying Christ as a kind of warrior robot whose very glance slices flesh from bone and casts sinners into writhing agony — Christ as Terminator 2?
^^^^
And so we get the hymn “Onward Christian Soldiers !”, the Crusades and the like
Jesus did say “render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s.”
Of course, God was no uhhh you know. He had his only begotten son killed.
19 February 2008, 3:46 pmCharles:
the belief in spiritual equality is the radical idea: that we are all just human beings, not aristos and commoners, not owners and slaves, not uebermenschen and untermenschen. it contradicts every fantasy of gender, race, national supremacy. if for no other reason, this core or nub of the xtian gospel would be a very important meme to preserve…
^^^^
19 February 2008, 3:57 pmIn my last year of law school , I wrote a paper on this meme, “The Greatest Commandment” or Law according to Jesus, which is the law of love: A “lawyer” as Jesus, “What is the Greatest Commandment? ” J replies “love thy neighbor as thyself” which he says is the same as loving God. There is an implication somewhere is that this is the essential summary of the Ten Commandments
Stan:
Before he said that, he asked, “Who’s image is this on the money?” The answer was, “Caesar.” To which he replied, “Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s,” and gave the money back.
He and his cadre were intentionally homeless, and strong critics of everything urban. Cities are a function of empire. His rejection of the money was a rejection of empire, not a call to obey.
And the essay that started this thread is very clear that the crucifixion was not ordered, or preordained by God.
A good quote, though, on the cross:
19 February 2008, 6:19 pmCharles:
Before he said that, he asked, “Who’s image is this on the money?” The answer was, “Caesar.” To which he replied, “Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s,” and gave the money back.
He and his cadre were intentionally homeless, and strong critics of everything urban. Cities are a function of empire. His rejection of the money was a rejection of empire, not a call to obey.
And the essay that started this thread is very clear that the crucifixion was not ordered, or preordained by God.
^^^
I can go with the “render unto Caesar” quote as rejection of money, and not a call to obey. Jesus threw the moneychangers out of the temple, said the meek shall inherit the earth, said blessed are the poor in spirit, said it’s easier for camel to go through the eye of needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven; as you say, lived up to a vow of poverty.
I don’t mean to argue theology, but one version is that Jesus had to die in order to save everybody else from their sins. I don’t know whether that was preordained. If Jesus said, “My God why hath thou forsaken me ? ” , it would imply that God at least _let_ him be killed. Of course, he rose from the dead anyway, so, no harm , no foul (smile). I have no problem with those who say God didn’t sanction it. However, the God of the Old Testament is no shrinking violet, and is violent, at least as presented in writing, no ?
On the Devil, one of “his” temptations of Jesus is saying he will place Jesus at the head of all the worldly governments, which the Devil leads. So, this is a Christian anarchist principle.
22 February 2008, 4:46 pmStan:
Girard and Wink both have a good deal to say about Satan… that this is a personification of structural evil, not a bad-tempered angel.
Walter Wink – a Christian scholar who reads Greek — has examined the Gospels in their original forms. His studies reveals something very interesting about social systems, and about what the Gospels say about them.
In the third book in his “Powers” trilogy, Engaging the Powers, he finds that in translation and modification over the centuries, the term “world” in the English versions of the New Testament is a literal translation from the Greek word, kosmos. In fact, we use the same word, cosmos, as synonym for the universe… but also figuratively, for example, as a synonym for world-view. Wink notes that kosmos had various meanings that can only be gleaned now from context.
As it turns out, many instances of the term in the New Testaments, and non-canonical gospels as well, do not mean “world,” but “system.” Wink further determines that the system opposed – through non-violent strategic resistance – by Jesus and his disciples was what Wink terms the “domination system.” Jesus opposed the domination of one human by another, whether that was the domination of Rome over Palestine, the rich over the poor, or of men over women.
Using these two premises, Wink then re-translates several passages:
And so it goes. Through scholarship and a rejection of literalism, many Christians are trying to recover Christ (or original Christian practice made relevant for our time) from subsequent agendas, from false prophets, from patriarchs and pretenders.
Most of all, they want to recover this practice from the perversions of Satan… not a being, but a zeitgeist, a spirit manifest in the structure of sin: the pretension to rule in place of God over Creation.
We live in a deeply satanic epoch by this account.
Even the Scriptures, once they are contextualized by anthropology, do not make Satan out the slavering, yellow-eyed critter of horror films. Satan is a personalizing term to stand for the transcendently collective horrors human beings can commit. Girard sees this personification in the spirit that seizes a lynch mob – which is exactly what facilitated the crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth. It is a cultural , as opposed to individual, phenomenon. Satan is not the contender for God’s power; but the crude, pathetic imitator – “the ape of God.” Satan has no power to change the Creation at its essence; and so settles for intervention in culture, in politics, in the profaning of Creation. The pretension of power that does not self-organize and self-stabilize, but which requires constant and violent re-imposition through falsehood and force. Satan is the spirit invoked by The Accuser.
Girard calls Satan – again as a linguistic marker for a phenomenon that exists but resists easy description – a parasite.
Walter Wink takes this description further, showing how the collective spirit which we personalize as Satan is Power – inner essence, culture, groupthink – that supports this pretension of power in the form of domination.
I can only think here about the run up to and execution of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. With the public idolatry as it worshipped war technology, the lynch mob mobilized in Congress and the body politic to conduct the invasion – eagerly seizing on the most transparent lies as justification – we have bracketed the spirit of Satan.
The fact that our children can identify corporate logos and not the flora and fauna of Creation is a Satanic fact. It is the manifestation of structural sin (in the religious account, of alienation from God). The invocation of the name of Jesus by war makers, slumlords, usurers, abusive sexual partners, and bigots is the spirit of Satan (manifestations of our zeitgeist) in its most obscene and parasitic pretense.
Many — helped along by commodified entertainment — suggest that Revelations describes Satan as The Beast. But, in fact, the strongest evidence suggests that Revelations is referring to Rome.
Nevertheless, Satan the petulent angel or cruel demon is more useful as the trivialization of religion, the presentation of a boogieman to frighten us with its extroverted evil… and anesthetize us to the almost banal presence of Satan in our everyday speech, our consumer idolatries, our dehumanization of the neighbor we are bound to love, our admiration of conquest and domination (“the myth of redemptive violence”), and our greatest sin of omission – the refusal to study… to make the effort to understand Creation (and its precondition, which Tillich calls God) in a way that displaces our egos and the idols of manufactured desire and thoughtless imperial nationalism.
22 February 2008, 6:08 pmJonas:
To translate “cosmos” as “system” is to replace one Greek word with another (which certainly “means” something different). The meaning of cosmos is, basically, “order”. The verb “kosmein” means to give a certain order to things, to arrange things, make them look nice (compare “cosmetics”). “Order” has always been a basic concept of Western imperialism (and Western thought in general), the goal “to bring order” (compare “New World Order”) one of its most fundamental justifications to this very day (here the West = order: the East = chaos / the male = order: the female = chaos / Western soldiers, who “fight like men”: unmanly terrorists, who bring chaos etc.)
23 February 2008, 2:10 pmIt is certainly no accident that Jesus appeared in a place that was and still is the intersection of East and West and the Gospels must be read in the context of this presence of western “order” in the form of Greek philosophy and the Roman military right in the middle of what was already then considered a dangerous antithesis to our “values”.
Josiah:
I think you’re on to something really important here, Stan, but it’s going to take time to sink in for some of us. Especially regarding activism, and the role of religion or some sort of spiritually based community groupings in future social movements. I for one have been taking a much closer look at the religious worldviews of my ancestors recently, trying to pick apart what was reactionary or harmful about them and what is adaptive in a way that our disposable, industrialized ideologies are not.
In spare moments between the craziness of work and whatnot, I’ve been reading Karen Armstrong’s wonderful book “The Great Transformation,” (not to be confused with the Karl Polanyi classic) which is a fascinating study of the social tumult and creative ferment of the “Axial Age” which gave birth to Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism and Confucianism as we know them today.
Could we be heading into something analogous, in any way, to the “Axial Age”?
25 February 2008, 9:07 amCharles:
Of course, Jesus also is “reported” to have said that the love of money is the root of all evil.
25 February 2008, 5:23 pmCharles:
A good, modern one for American liberation theology is Martin Luther King. He even did a self-sacrifice like Jesus.
Jesse Jackson is an American liberation theologist too.
25 February 2008, 5:27 pmeoinmonkey:
Technically, only Catholics can be Liberation Theologians. Jesse Jackson and MLK were, as Im sure people know, Protestants. And since Catholic means “accepting the recieved doctrines of the Catholic (all encompassing) Church”, and Liberation Theology (however admirable- not the point) is AGAINST the doctrines of the Church, only BAD Catholics (again, not in the sense of their personal morality, but in the sense of their adherance to the religion they claim to submit to/live by) can count themselves as such.
27 February 2008, 1:31 pmCharles:
How about MLK and JJ as national liberation theologists ?
28 February 2008, 9:58 ameoinmonkey:
Why not invent a new title, rather than co-opt one from a different, and mutually exclusive, religious approach?
29 February 2008, 9:16 amIn fact, Protestant groups have always been in the forefront of radicalism and anti-authoritarianism, mainly due to their rejection of centralised (Roman) Church authority on matters of doctrine and behavior, and produced the oldest still-extant Western European branch christian group dedicated to non-violence, in the form of the much maligned Quakers.
Of course, many more Protestant groups have been at the forefront of religious violence and bigotry towards the Other, as seen repeatedly in the history of the United States- including persecuting said Quakers.
Charles:
Why not invent a new title, rather than co-opt one from a different, and mutually exclusive, religious approach?
^^^^^
For twenty years or so I’ve been claiming “liberation theologist” for MLK. I don’t exactly subscribe to the idea that Catholics have a copyright on it or it can only be applied to Catholics. So…
Malcolm X was a liberation theologist. He wasn’t even Christian.
I got an idea. Why don’t you share the term “liberation theologist”. That would be sort of liberated Christian of you.
29 February 2008, 2:39 pmeoinmonkey:
“I got an idea. Why don’t you share the term “liberation theologist”. That would be sort of liberated Christian of you.”
^^^^^^^^^^^^
When did I ever claim to be a christian?
“I don’t exactly subscribe to the idea that Catholics have a copyright on it or it can only be applied to Catholics. So…
Malcolm X was a liberation theologist. He wasn’t even Christian.”
^^^^^^^^^^^^
I see what you are saying, but you cant erase the differences between religions and religious churches/schools of thought that easily, and it is both confusing and disengenuous to try. There was, to quote Irish writer Eamonn McCann, “quite a to do about the differences at one time”, and there still is. A Catholic is not a Protestant, any more than A Muslim is a Jew, or a Hindu a Sikh. I dont mean to imply they cant all get along if they try and remember (and act like) they have no monopoly on faith and truth, but it doesnt help to pretend they are all the same deep down, because this just isnt true. If you want to argue for some ecumenical (I suppose supra-ecumenical would be the neologism if it were to include religions other than christian) version of Liberation Theology, then you might be better off coming up with a new title.
3 March 2008, 11:01 amCharles:
I’m thinking that the Liberation Theologists got the term “liberation” from the left’s terminology: “national liberation” movement, “women’s liberation” movement, etc.
I’m not saying that there is no difference between Catholics and Protestants. I’m saying it would be sort of unliberated to require that only Catholics can be Liberation Theologists, since the Catholics got “liberation” from others.
11 March 2008, 1:07 pmeoinmonkey:
There is a big difference between the undifferentiated use of a single word to define something, and a term or phrase (containing that word) being used specifically about a theological standpoint. Since the term “liberation” springs from the root “liberty”, it was/is also clearly being utilised in different form by campigners against slavery, and Libertarians, to name but two examples. This doesnt mean that they all share something in common beyond the belief in a human right to liberty, as they define it. I dont think you can peg them all as “the left” either, even if this is (and it probably is) where Liberation Theology got its name from (it is a left-wing Catholic strand, for all that that is some sort of oxymoron).
The point is, Liberation Theology, or a Liberation Theologian, ARE specific to one group of religious believers in a single strand of religious doctrine. As I stated above, it is disengenuous to equate two different religions by using the specific terminology from one to describe another, simply because they have certain surface traits in common. For an example: If a true Liberation Theologian was quizzed on the subject of human Liberation (in this sense, a liberation from poverty, as well as from the contentious subject of Original Sin) they would have to tell you that, to their mind, the only (note, not even so broad as “the best”) way to escape such things is through communion with the True Roman Catholic Church, involving partaking of its sacraments such as confession and communion. As decent people, they would (we hope) not subscribe to the view that people should be forced to do so if they choose otherwise. A Protestant would hold a completely different, and mutually exclusive, view- that liberation from poverty, misery and sin comes only through a personal relationship with Jesus the Christ, not through membership in a human-created Church. A Jew, Muslim or indeed any other religious believer would again differ from both. Therefore, if someone is to be called a Liberation Theologian, it requires belief (and physical and mental participation in) in things that Malcolm X, MLK and Jesse Jackson implicitly and explicitly reject.
12 March 2008, 12:36 pmCharles:
Is J. Denny Weaver a Catholic ?
14 March 2008, 4:23 pmRazumov:
Just when I think I am leaning left…
Jesus freaks?
Has the core of the red left so rotted that now students of Marx (much less of Lenin) are ready to lap up the most brain damaging drug of all time?
The Cathari were radical, homosexual, vegan, anti-wealth/power revolutionaries who lived the lives of suffering saints and opposed Rome with the patience of sheep and about as much intelligence. When push came to shove they happily threw themselves into bonfires. They died. Rome won.
The belief that a God that *does not exist* is going to save you from your enemies is a toxic lie that only a fool or the worst kind of enemy would sell to the oppressed. Yes, it makes them feel better. So does crack and reality television.
While I understand (and agree with) the desire to see these people as allies, what kind of a materialist, much less revolutionary, can ever afford to lose sight of how dangerous an escapist lie religion is to those suffering under the heel of the empire?
STAN: The dangerous escapism of, say, Martin Luther King, John Brown, and Harriet Tubman… hmm? What I most despised when I was affiliated with leftist formations was the instant transformation, by the most sectarian among us, of anyone who doesn’t comprehend the apotheosis of Marx and Lenin into “fools and enemies.”
27 March 2008, 2:54 pmRobert Karaffa:
Escapism?? Everything I have learned and any action I have taken in regards to Social Justice, and in response to Institutional Violence and Empire, started with a seed planted by a “Liberal” minister in a small town Ohio church. This man took real risks with his career and personal life and he used the gospel message to inspire people to get out of the pews, go out into the world and get something done. Religion for me has always been the absolute and real risk-taking opposite of escapism.
28 March 2008, 8:18 amCharles:
Has the core of the red left so rotted that now students of Marx (much less of Lenin) are ready to lap up the most brain damaging drug of all time?
^^^
Marx doesn’t characterize religion as brain damaging or dangerous. His attitude toward religion is a bit more nuanced. He says it’s the heart of a heartless world, cry of the oppressed creature, soul of a soulless condition.
“The foundation of irreligious criticism is: Man makes religion, religion does not make man. Religion is, indeed, the self-consciousness and self-esteem of man who has either not yet won through to himself, or has already lost himself again. But man is no abstract being squatting outside the world. Man is the world of man – state, society. This state and this society produce religion, which is an inverted consciousness of the world, because they are an inverted world. Religion is the general theory of this world, its encyclopaedic compendium, its logic in popular form, its spiritual point d’honneur, its enthusiasm, its moral sanction, its solemn complement, and its universal basis of consolation and justification. It is the fantastic realization of the human essence since the human essence has not acquired any true reality. The struggle against religion is, therefore, indirectly the struggle against that world whose spiritual aroma is religion. ”
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1843/critique-hpr/intro.htm
See for example, Marxist Herbert Aptheker’s book _The Urgency of Christian-Marxist Dialogue_.
Marxist attitude toward religion depends on the role it is playing in a particular situaion.
Chavez in Venezuela is said to be “devout”.
28 March 2008, 3:30 pm