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.