When this article appeared, Samuel Escobar had been a leading evangelical theologian in Latin America. He was living in Argentina and was serving as president of the Latin American Theological Fraternity and in the leadership of the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students. In the past he had served as president of Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship in Canada.
Jim: What are the positive challenges and contributions that liberation theology has for theology in Latin America and North America?
Escobar: The major challenge of liberation theology is that it forces us to take seriously the situation out of which we speak. The way we visualize the world in which we live conditions our approach to the Bible, Christian doctrine, and obedience. In his book, Doing Theology in a Revolutionary Situation, Miguez Bonino takes three chapters to describe, interpret, and analyze the situation. Only then does he speak about theology. I think that this is the major challenge of liberation theology.
This is similar in degree to the biblical approach where we read in Acts of how the church grew in relationship to its surrounding environment. Only in that context can we understand the epistles and the theology done there.
Jim: What are some of the realities of that situation out of which theology must be done in Latin America?
Escobar: What we basically have to question is an attitude towards the world. How do we see the world around us? Do we see it as a static reality that will not or should not change, and see our role as Christians inside that static reality? Or do we see the world as a changing reality, and then relate to it as Christians in that way?
Most theology up to this point has been done without recognizing a changing world. Liberation theology forces us to take change into account.
All of these changes can be presented in two ways. They can be presented as an impressionistic picture, as phenomena which are not interconnected. On the other hand liberation theology says you have to find a way of presenting these changes systematically, so that you can understand them as part of a whole process.
Wes: When a liberation theologian says that North American theology, particularly in evangelical circles, has been done in a way which has not been sensitive to the ideology behind it and influencing it, would you largely agree?
Escobar: Yes I would. We are being forced as Christians to realize that fact and to correct it. But what should be the source or the standard for this work of correction? For me it is going back to the earliest Christian sources. We need to go back to these sources and revise our lifestyle. We may need to go back all twenty centuries and again become New Testament Christians. Unless we do that, we will simply be taking a stand which is based on an ideology and interpreting scripture through this same ideological grid. Liberation theology can perhaps be accused of reading the Bible with the tools of Marxist ideology. But we must honestly ask ourselves, are we reading the Bible through the lenses of capitalism as it has developed up to this point? I think that Christ is our Lord, not money. But in a society in which power is the god, the church must also find a way of saying no to that temptation. Marxism gave an answer to the problem of wealth and of property and means of production, but didn’t give an adequate answer to the problem of power. Once wealth is distributed, people do not automatically become good; their sinfulness becomes visible in their use, abuse, and misuse of power, and there is no adequate prevention for it.
Where are the Christians these days in the Soviet Union? Where is Christ present? He is down there, among those who are powerless. Solzhenitsyn spoke of this, and recent studies of the Russian Church show this. Christ is there among the powerless. That’s a way of being poor.
Wes: It’s not for the church to desire the society in which it is most comfortable, either.
Escobar: Your point is well taken. It is not the role of the Christian community to give her blessing to a given political program. On the other hand whatever Christians decide upon, that role be conditioned by their Christian convictions. And that becomes very acute in the issue of violence. If I contemplate three or four systems and determine that one of these proposes an answer which is violent, I as a Christian cannot take that role because, by principle, I am opposed to violence. Although I want to change, I cannot accept a violent means to that change. I, therefore cannot choose to identify with any of those systems. However, I have to recognize that the roots of violence are not only subversion, but also injustice when it is rampant in society. People feel so oppressed that the only way out seems to explode. If I join the cause of those who say no to the subversive violence, I cannot do that without saying no to any violence -- to the violence that keeps people oppressed and creates the soil out of which violence grows.
At the same time, we must be aware that not just actions which come from a political intention have significance for society. There are many politically irrelevant ways of serving people that can create more healing for the fabric of society, whatever the system, than those which are specifically political.
Jim: Much evangelical theology is at one with liberation theology over questions of power and violence. Established evangelical theology points to the stand against violence by Latin American evangelicals and will play that off against the violence of liberation movements in Latin America while they themselves are clearly comfortable with the violence and the power of this society and in their own theology. That is a real contradiction, a real use of a position that they themselves don’t want to be criticized by.
Escobar: I see what you are saying. There is always the danger of a pacifist position being ideologically used by others, and one has to be aware of that. I think that part of the drama that we see in the gospel passion stories is the way in which the final outcome can be manipulated in one or the other direction. It’s important to remember how clear Jesus was about his intention and the way in which his presence and message cut through any human enterprise. That has to be recovered.
Wes: When the word addresses itself to us and builds us into a body, there is discontinuity with the normal historical processes within the world. Any comfortable Christian identification with historical processes, whether the processes of reactionary repression or the Marxist view of the flow of history, is confronted by the radicality of the word which stands over and against those understandings of history.
Escobar: One has to realize that our stance can be manipulated by those whose position is other than capitalism. Christ would not let the establishment manipulate him. Yet he also had a clear stance against being a zealot. That position is hard to take because it makes other people think that you are a neutralist, which is not the case.
Jim: The position you are talking about is essentially a very vulnerable one.
Escobar: It is. This description of the Christian church almost by nature presupposes a minority church. For Christians in the West it is not easy to see how the official acceptance of Christianity by society in the past developed an ideology to support the status quo. The process of secularization has nearly brought about an ideological vacuum. While in Marxist society the ideology behind the system is clear, in the West you have to work hard to see it.
Evangelicals often claim to have no ideology. But that’s not true. Recent events are showing that. I think we are seeing it operative in such literature as Hal Lindsay’s and Harold Lindsell’s. They seem to be saying, “We are for power and for the right of the powerful to exist and impose their rules.” This is a kind of theology of domination.
Jim: Yoder has pointed out the accepted axiom: “Thou shalt make history come out okay.” This is written over every book on revolution. That kind of historical view of our actions in relation to God’s purposes in history runs right through Marxist theologians and young evangelicals alike.
Escobar: That takes us back to the question of a moment ago: “Does God make history or do we make history?” Although it may not be apparent, by being faithful to God we are making history. This has come to me with renewed clarity in re-reading Hebrews, especially the eleventh chapter, describing the Old Testament faithful. When you read the Old Testament in light of this calling of faith, you realize that these people were not saying, “We’re going to make history now.” No, it was through faithful obedience to their call that they made history.
Jim Wallis is editor-in-chief of Sojourners.
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