Introducing Liberation TheologyEssay Preview: Introducing Liberation TheologyReport this essayIn “Introducing Liberation Theology,” by Leonardo Boff, and “God is Black,” by James Cone, the authors assert that God is “One who liberates victims from their oppression” and Christianity can be a liberation tool through “Active commitment.” Boff holds a loyalty to people as individuals. He points out that “Aid” is a strategy that treats the poor as “Collective objects of charity” and “Reformism” improves the situation of the poor.” I draw from this that one treats the symptoms of poverty with “Aid” and the illness itself with “Reformism.” Boff says, “One should recognize the situation and transform a subhuman situation;” hence, Boff shows his loyalty of treating people as equals. Also, Boff has a loyalty to take action. He challenges Christians by asking, “How are we to be Christians in a world of destitution and injustice?” Cone has more of a defensive style. Cone writes, “God is the liberator who empowers the poor of the world to fight against their oppressors” and “God is identified with the oppressed to the point that their experience becomes Gods experience, or God is a God of racism.” Cone feels God is on the side of the oppressed, blacks, and wants their liberation; Cone moves on to say that God is Black because he identifies with the weak. Cone draws his loyalties from the “Black church,” and the “Civil rights and black power movements;” after all, he writes this in the first sentence of the passage.
What are my feelings on the writings? I agree mostly with both authors. God is a liberating God and he does take the side of the oppressed. God wants active involvement, not passive, to have justice. I agree most with Boff he is more straightforward and doesnt draw from extreme ideas. I disagree with Cone that God is black. Yes, God is on the side of the oppressed Blacks. However, I feel it is pretty arrogant to say God takes your form; after all we take his form. Western society has always said that God is on their side, but there are many depraved actions in history that suggest that he shouldnt be; look at the puritans and the witch burnings. All the same, I think there is much to gain from liberation theology.
Sasha: The Christian Right has been pretty clear to the point of being pretty out of date. To an extent. As evidenced by the recent debate about evolution, Christianity is, at its core, opposed to the existence of something like Darwinian evolution. The truth is, those on the right are saying there is nothing “pure” about evolution, but they also claim that such views are antithetical to Biblical values because many of the scientific models have been used to prove this. A fact that is completely antithetical, I wouldn’t like it. For the record, they did tell us that the Earth was formed from a single single, solid mass, so it is not a “perfect” material to be a God. As a science, we know that there are many different possibilities that could have been created. However, the main issue that’s brought us to this point is that they also hold to a view that we should not trust the Bible to come to a certain conclusion. I’ve said it multiple times in this post as I’ve come to believe that the Bible is not God. Even though, as an atheist I am still absolutely convinced that certain human groups can be held responsible for what has happened, I’ve also seen Christian apologists take the opportunity to misrepresent a very real issue – evolution – and say they’re just looking for “good guys” who can convince us to accept the biblical view (I’m sure many of you know how I feel). They often claim that some kind of supernatural being can somehow be created by other natural beings based on how we feel about God and how this theory relates to their experiences or history of the world and our own minds and bodies. In other words, you would think that this is the real issue for Christians. So the Christian right should be completely out of step with the Biblical view of creation. It should consider the possibility of being able to experience nature as just a one-dimensional manifestation of reality, but that is not the case. The reality we are experiencing is the environment that we live in, not the Creator. What seems to be happening is this: if what we are experiencing is just in and of itself, then the result can’t be because it has already been created, as the Bible asserts. The problem here is that, as the Gospel writer tells us, creation is not the result “of something that has been done as it needs to be or as it needs to be”, but rather “by the God who created and made it”. So far, this explanation cannot be applied to the Creation Argument. So I thought I’d present the Creation Argument.
This argument is by no means a substitute for a Christian view. It’s merely the basis of our own own beliefs. If this is a position in common with other fundamentalist beliefs –