The God of the Exodus story took sides

December 19, 2023 1:30 PM

In the United States today, organized Christianity is mostly associated with restrictions on reproductive autonomy, countermajoritarian and white nationalist agendas, and an embrace of free enterprise economics (even though it has also played a central role in civil rights and progressive movements throughout U.S. history). A Theology of Liberation, by contrast, represents a tradition that put religious reflection at the heart of the struggle of the global poor. By embodying ambition instead of compromise, it also offered an alternative to the schismatic tendencies of multicultural liberalism. from Salvation Now
posted by chavenet (30 comments total)

We got some Liberation Theology from the younger religion teachers at my private, Catholic high school in the 90s. We lacked the history to understand the context, so it seemed extra passionate out of nowhere: we only got the "justice" part and were ignorant of the history of violence.

Now that I am older and know more, it seems self evidently righteous and correct -- but also kind of impossible to implement.
posted by wenestvedt at 1:40 PM on December 19, 2023 [4 favorites]

organized Christianity is mostly associated...

WTF? Associated by who? There are huge swaths of Christians out there working hard to support their communities and support justice for all. You'd think the left was populated solely by Athiests.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 1:46 PM on December 19, 2023 [28 favorites]

amen to that, the group doing some of the most visible work in my community re: LGBQT2SA is the United Church

the bigots and racists may be loud but they don't fucking speak for everyone
posted by elkevelvet at 1:54 PM on December 19, 2023 [7 favorites]

I appreciated the thrust of this essay, and the intent on highlighting the history of liberation theology's influence. One movement in the US that didn't get a mention, however, is the Sanctuary Movement.

Father Luis Olivares was a liberation theologian in Los Angeles, and along with Fr. Mike Kennedy set in motion the act of giving Central American refugees protection in a church, in the face of Reagan's Cold War policies.

For folks who want a glimpse at some more core materials of liberation theology, I uploaded a copy of Monthly Review's 1984 issue "Religion and the Left", which has pieces from Gustavo Gutierrez, Ernesto Cardenal, Camillo Torres, Dorothee Solle, Cornel West, etc.
posted by Snowden at 1:57 PM on December 19, 2023 [11 favorites]

Archbishop Romero! I wrote my undergraduate senior thesis (a million years ago) about the relationship/repetition between Liberation Theology clergy in Latin America and French Revolution Clergy who gave up their 1st estate status to stand with the 3rd estate.
I'm a Jew who has worked for pro choice catholic orgs, and LOVE liberal nuns (and El Salvador).
posted by atomicstone at 2:25 PM on December 19, 2023 [14 favorites]

Back in the 80’s, I was a member of the Unitarian church in San Jose. We had a family from Central America living in the church, openly defying the immigration police. The Unitarians are a very small denomination but have had a lot of influence politically in this country. Our minister was LGBTQ+. Liberation Theology was spoken of a lot, but without all the theology, given that Unitarians do not profess a faith collectively. Instead, your faith or lack of faith was your matter, and everyone was welcome. There was a lot of conservative backlash at churches like ours and Liberation Theology was mainly seen as a communist plot by a lot of conventional Christians. It’s kind of funny to see this post today, in contrast to the post about the pope’s new pronouncement. The Catholic Church back then had a very vocal minority promoting very progressive agendas.
posted by njohnson23 at 2:49 PM on December 19, 2023 [4 favorites]

As for who speaks for whom; the voting turnout of White Evangelical Protestants:

Attend religious services                      Trump | Biden
Monthly or more often               ████████    85%   █           14%
A few times a year or less often.   ████████    81%   █           18%

https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2021/08/30/most-white-americans-who-regularly-attend-worship-services-voted-for-trump-in-2020/
posted by torokunai at 3:07 PM on December 19, 2023 [3 favorites]

As for who speaks for whom; the voting turnout of White Evangelical Protestants

I'm not sure of your point; I don't think it's news that Whites who self-identify as evangelicals voted for Trump.

White evangelicals are a minority of Christians in this country. A sizeable minority, but still.
posted by mark k at 3:18 PM on December 19, 2023 [7 favorites]

If the quoted author wanted to say "Evangelical Protestants" they could have said "Evangelical Protestants". If they had said "Conservative Christianity" they would have even been a lot closer to what they probably intended.

Stating that social recidivism is the common face of Christianity belies a tremendous lack of connection with life in the U.S. Hell, even the recidivists themselves can't get over what a repressed minority they are.

Undoubtedly when pressed the quoted author would say "#notallchristians" but that would not really help the lack of trust they instilled from the get-go.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 3:34 PM on December 19, 2023 [2 favorites]

From the outside, global religion, even religion that claims to be the same religion, is so broad in aims and actions that it is both trivially easy and utterly pointless to craft a box with just the people in it that you want to make any point you want to make. It's also so ill-defined and fluid that you don't actually need to define the box accurately so long as your description of a group seems plausible.
posted by krisjohn at 3:41 PM on December 19, 2023 [2 favorites]

organized Christianity is mostly associated...

WTF? Associated by who? There are huge swaths of Christians out there working hard to support their communities and support justice for all.

I am a far-left transgender Christian and I genuinely don't know whether it's true or not that most people associate Christianity with conservative bullshit but I'm not dismissing the possibility out of hand; I associate Christianity with my very liberal church and my own values but there are a lot of people who think of conservative evangelicals when they think of Christianity because that group is very loud and wields religion as a weapon and talks incessantly about how they're Christians doing Christian stuff for Christian reasons (I'm not saying they're correct just that they use this framing).

I don't necessarily think the perception that these people actually represent most Christians is correct but I think it is pretty widespread including among people raised in that environment (especially, I think, queer people) suffering from religious trauma and I am actually now very curious what people actually do think about when they think about Christianity.
posted by an octopus IRL at 6:25 PM on December 19, 2023 [10 favorites]

If someone tells me they are Christian, my initial assumption is they mean that they want me dead so I can go to hell. It is up to them to demonstrate otherwise.
posted by one for the books at 7:23 PM on December 19, 2023 [12 favorites]

I've been trying to read more of that book for a while. I thought I would like it, since I had professors in college who were big into liberation theology and taught us a lot about the repressive regimes that the US propped up in Latin America...

...but I dunno, man. It has been a hard book to get through, not just because it still has the... what's a better word than "genocidal"? ...the core Christian idea that everyone must be given the opportunity to achieve union with Christ, since that is ultimately the only source of salvation and happiness for humans...

...but also because it talks about "the poor" as if they're a specimen to be dissected, a relic to be venerated, a blob most important for their spiritual value within a spiritual theory, rather than being actual people.

Still... much better than the alternative, since most of those repressive regimes were Christian, too. If the only choices are liberation theology Christians and death squad-supporting Christians, I'll take the liberation theology Christians every time. They're one of the rare cases where an idea works better in practise than in theory.

(Or "praxis", as my professors insisted on continually saying.)
posted by clawsoon at 7:33 PM on December 19, 2023 [5 favorites]

Just by the numbers, among voters in the U.S., being Christian is associated with being Republican. You can see this in a couple of ways.

First, take a look at this Pew report on the demographics of Republican and Democratic voters. Specifically, look at the last chart, which shows that in the last four national elections (2016, 18, 20, and 22), the percentage of Republicans who are Christians (of any sort) was around 80%, with about 60% protestants (of any sort). By contrast, the percentage of Democrats who are Christians (of any sort) was around 50%. Since the percentage of Democrats and Republicans among voters is pretty similar (within four or five points), Christian voters are more likely to be Republican voters.

Second, take a look at this Pew chart on the religious leanings of Christians. The data are older here (from 2016), but the question being addressed is exactly what we want to know. Are Christians more likely to support Republicans? Given the stability in the numbers from the other set of polls, I'd be surprised to find any large shift since 2016. Anyway, the answer is clearly yes. The political "lean" among all U.S. adults is +7 in favor of Democrats. All 14 of the religious groups that have a lean more favorable to Republicans are Christian (unless you don't count the Mormons as Christian). The evangelicals are carrying most of the weight, but even mainline protestant groups like the Anglicans and the United Methodists had very strong Republican leans (+21 and +19, respectively).
posted by Jonathan Livengood at 7:48 PM on December 19, 2023 [6 favorites]

Are Christians more likely to support Republicans? [....] the answer is clearly yes. [....] All 14 of the religious groups that have a lean more favorable to Republicans are Christian

I don't really dispute the thesis, but I don't think that "clearly yes" follows from the chart -- I don't see population numbers for these groupings, without which the whole thing is a bit difficult to interpret, but in any event the fact that all R-positive groups are Christian does not have much bearing on whether Christians are more likely than the population as a whole to be Republican, let alone whether Christians are more likely than not to be Republican. If that's "exactly what we want to know," we're looking at the wrong chart.

But it is an interesting chart for sure. Notably Catholics have the same lean (+7D) as the nation as a whole, and numerous "mainline" denominations including Presbyterians and Episcopalians are considerably less Republican than the nation as a whole, with the UCC leading the way at +27D. And while atheists are admirably sensible overall (+54D), it is worth noting that they are considerably less sensible in this respect than COGIC (+61D), National Baptist Convention (+82D), and AME (+88D) (which brings us back to how a lot of these conversations have an implicit "well obviously we only care about white Christians" subtext that is a little hard to get past, and makes it difficult to take "just by the numbers" arguments that elide this complexity seriously).
posted by Not A Thing at 8:44 PM on December 19, 2023 [6 favorites]

The clear yes is to the question: Is being a Christian statistically associated with being a Republican? To say that they are associated is just to say that the probability of one conditional on the other is different from its unconditional probability. Looking around a bit more, here is a clearer, more direct overall measure. Among Christians, 43% are Republican or lean Republican versus 40% Democratic or lean Democratic. That looks really close! But association is about how those numbers compare with the population as a whole. Among non-Christians, only 23% are Republican or lean Republican versus 55% Democratic or lean Democratic. Since Christians make up about 2/3 of the whole population, we need to adjust for the sizes of these groups to get the population values, which look like 35% Republican versus 45% Democratic, if I've done my arithmetic correctly. (Feels inflated towards Democrats by about 10 points, so I may have done something wrong here or maybe it's an artifact of the way they asked their questions. Or maybe my feeling is wrong!) The point is that Christians taken all together are significantly more Republican than the population as a whole. That's unfair to historically Black churches and to the Unitarians, I know! But we're asking a question here about the whole group of Christians. Or at least, that's the way I understood the claim the author was making. (Really, the full story is even more complicated given that many Black Christians vote Democratic but are socially moderate or even conservative, especially with respect to abortion and LGBTQ issues.)

Anyway, I agree that the full detail is complicated in lots of ways. I also agree that the second link I posted would have been better with total numbers in each of the religious groups they looked at. The best I could come up with is from the Wikipedia entry on Christianity in the U.S.. It's not perfect, especially since we need to map back to the Pew lean chart, but it's not nothing. Anyway, we can note that the largest protestant denominations are Southern Baptist (5.3% of pop; +38 R), United Methodist (3.6% of pop; +19 R), Independent Baptist (2.5% of pop; not in the Pew list from my second link, but almost certainly +R, since they're conservative evangelicals), non-denominational evangelicals (2.0% of pop; not in Pew list), American Baptist (1.5% of pop; +1 D), Church of Christ (1.5% of pop; +11 R -- I think ... there are lots of variations on "Church of Christ," so I'm not super-confident about this), National Baptist (1.4% of pop; +82 D), Assemblies of God (1.4% of pop; +30 R), Evangelical Lutheran (1.4% of pop; +4 D), and Missouri Lutheran (1.1% of pop; +32 R). That's probably 20% of the population. All the rest are less than 1% of pop each, so it's diminishing returns here. It might also be relevant that almost all of the largest denominations -- with the exception of the National Baptists -- lean more or much, much more toward Republicans than the population as a whole. I would expect that that would go some way toward public perception of Christians in the U.S.
posted by Jonathan Livengood at 10:05 PM on December 19, 2023 [3 favorites]

I consider this a massive derail from discussing Liberation Theology:

Sunmary: organized Christianity is mostly associated...

Tell me no lies: WTF? Associated by who? There are huge swaths of Christians out there working hard to support their communities and support justice for all. You'd think the left was populated solely by Athiests.

We can probably agree that the brand-name Christianity has power structures and hierarchy and identifying as 'one of us and not one of them', while by-its-fruit-you'll-know-the-tree Christianity concerns itself with outcomes over affiliation, like being willing to invert power structures as done by that host of the party washing his guests' feet.

It sucks that the brand-name is associated with hypocrites, and it sucks that this stance of caring that choices cause outcomes -- the fruit borne on your tree -- takes more time to explain and has deeper nuance than the logo of a torture-execution device.

Considering TFA, I liked the piece. I think that there's a gap where outcomes matter and where liberation from an unjust political system (or an allegedly-democratic one that's skewed to preserve wealth and status and disenfranchise the rest) gives you a mental buffer from soul-sucking guilt at complicity plus also breathing space to oppose corruption and injustice and to act to get good outcomes for your neighbors.
posted by k3ninho at 4:12 AM on December 20, 2023 [6 favorites]

In my personal view, Christianity is nigh irredeemably tainted by centuries of bigotry and oppression. Which is sadly directly counter to what the religion seems to teach. Has any institution done more damage to gay rights, indigenous people and culture, human freedom and liberty, wars and destruction in the past 3,000 years? And yes, #notallchristians, but still. Not trying to dismiss the undeniable positive impact the good ones have on the world, but, uh, they do seem to be the vast minority of the faith.


Catholics, officially giving a platform for anti gay rhetoric by default. And I think their position on birth control is unacceptable in a dangerously crowded world. American Christians,... Well, I think it's obvious that a vein of frothing rage is extremely prominent in the majority of self identifying Christians. And they are welding power once more to pass hate laws and legally enforce making lives worse.

So I am extremely unlikely to consider any Christian an ally, under the best of circumstances. The religion seems far too weighted against actually loving your neighbors, and more about persecution of the different. And for me and mine, that can and often does mean literal death. Faith in service of hatred is one of the most dangerous things. Murdering because God says so.

I don't see any way to square that circle..... Modern Christianity seems like a active hate crime from where I stand, in small town Texas.
posted by Jacen at 4:27 AM on December 20, 2023 [1 favorite]

Some Unitarians consider themselves Christian, but most do not, despite the history of the denomination.

When most large Christian institutions fight against the liberation of women and work to keep them second class citizens within their own structure, it's hard to take them seriously on liberation of the poor.
posted by rikschell at 5:14 AM on December 20, 2023 [2 favorites]

I get it, riskschell, but here we have bishops in South America (and the Global South) talking to Rome looking for liberation.
posted by k3ninho at 5:38 AM on December 20, 2023 [2 favorites]

I spent my a good chunk of my childhood with holy roller grandparents--whom I loved deeply--so my Jesus Quota was filled early and after adolescence, I knew firmly that I was not going to be a churchgoer during my life. My husband, on the other hand, grew up in the United Church here in Canada. He is an atheist at the end of the day, but I have to say that the United Church blew my mind in that they are the least Jesus-y church I have ever met. Their whole deal is founded on principles of equality for all and doing good deeds in your community. I mean, I am still not a Christian, but I respect them more than I did my grandparents' Church of Christ in the Southern US. IIRC, they are fairly liberal; their members tend to vote Liberal or NDP. (UC, not CoC, obv).
posted by Kitteh at 5:55 AM on December 20, 2023 [3 favorites]

As far as the big derail about "Are Christians widely considered to be oppressive assholes?"

I cannot be bothered to go chase it down, but I am pretty sure that yes, there are multiple surveys over the last decade finding that among the under-30s, Christianity generally is held in low esteem as a hatemongering, racist creed for Torquemada wannabees who are most noteworthy for their hatred of gay and trans people. Though no doubt that last has since been replaced by "abortion-banners" as the uppermost thing in peoples' minds.

It makes no difference if "most Christians" are not hate-mongering racist abortion-banners. The quiet ones who work to increase voter registration don't get talked about enough to be noticed.
posted by Aardvark Cheeselog at 6:11 AM on December 20, 2023 [3 favorites]

they are the least Jesus-y church I have ever met. Their whole deal is founded on principles of equality for all and doing good deeds in your community

That sounds more Jesus-y to me...
posted by polytope subirb enby-of-piano-dice at 6:40 AM on December 20, 2023 [6 favorites]

For better or worse, "love the poor Jesus" and "populist apocalyptic I'm-right-about-everything cult leader Jesus" were the same person.
posted by clawsoon at 6:47 AM on December 20, 2023 [1 favorite]

I think that bar chart is saying:

"Of white evangelical Protestants who go to church monthly or more often, 85% voted Trump."

A different Pew study related to church attendance during Covid said "The share of U.S. adults who say they generally attend religious services once a month or more has dropped slightly, from 33% in 2019 to 30% in 2022" -- so just the once-a-month-or-more people are already less than a third of all voters.

Another Pew study says "In 2021, Pew Research Center reported that "24% of U.S. adults describe themselves as born-again or evangelical Protestants." -- so now we're down to 24% of 30% (if the monthly churchgoers are evenly spread out across sects).

So 85% of the 24% of Evangelicals, of which 30% go to church monthly, is roughly 6% of everyone.

Not that we need to ignore them - as everyone above said they're the loudest squeaky anti-freedom wheels ever.
posted by AzraelBrown at 9:05 AM on December 20, 2023 [1 favorite]

Despite the phrase that people are focusing on, it's an interesting article. I'm an atheist can't muster a ton of interest these days in the specifics of theology, but I was raised Catholic in the '70s and it definitely feels like the US Catholic church turned hard away from this path.

The (equivocal) embrace of violence in the struggle for equality is especially striking. I think you'll find a lot of mainline Christians in the US who like parts of liberation theology, but the number who do that and except violence is going to be vanishingly small.

I cannot be bothered to go chase it down, but I am pretty sure that yes, there are multiple surveys over the last decade finding that among the under-30s, Christianity generally is held in low esteem as a hatemongering, racist creed for Torquemada wannabees who are most noteworthy for their hatred of gay and trans people

I think there's potentially some confusion as people recall factoids about the difference between Christians and White evangelical Christians. And perhaps seeing relative trends away from Christianity in younger people, and viewing it as an absolute.

A majority of young people are still Christian. Overall attitudes about non-evangelical Christians are still positive. Christianity definitely has a (IMO well deserved) branding problem, but it's the sort of branding problem Disney has: people aren't universally associating it with positive things.

And, of course, perceptions are also skewed for highly secular atheists often only have to engage with the bullying evangelical Christians. I think that's why the line about what Americans "associate with" Christianity could be written and get past an editor even though it's a sentence that makes sense only from a narrow perspective.
posted by mark k at 9:43 AM on December 20, 2023 [1 favorite]

This was a really interesting read! Thank you for posting. I am going to pull my copy of this book off the shelf and finally give it a read.
posted by kensington314 at 1:33 PM on December 20, 2023 [1 favorite]

...but I dunno, man. It has been a hard book to get through, not just because it still has the... what's a better word than "genocidal"? ...the core Christian idea that everyone must be given the opportunity to achieve union with Christ, since that is ultimately the only source of salvation and happiness for humans...

...but also because it talks about "the poor" as if they're a specimen to be dissected, a relic to be venerated, a blob most important for their spiritual value within a spiritual theory, rather than being actual people.

I wonder if the tone is partially about translation? Surely it's also somewhat grounded in the book's context--as a series of lectures, essentially. I'm sure it was presented in a rather stifled context, not like a rural base community in Peru or something.

On the salvation question I have always assumed that Gutierrez was a kind of covert universal salvationist, someone who would have read the most expansive intention into Nostra Aetate. But maybe I've always been wrong, I don't imagine it's something he spoke much about since his theological focus was elsewhere.
posted by kensington314 at 2:15 PM on December 20, 2023 [2 favorites]

Thought I'd copy-paste the bit of this article that speaks directly to the title of this FPP

The Exodus story is the “paradigmatic” lens through which Gutiérrez reads this salvation history. God desires the liberation of his people, but even they can look back fondly on “the security of slavery” by “beginning to forget” the horrors of enslavement in Egypt, Gutiérrez writes. But the very act of breaking free of Pharaoh’s grip leads to a “desacralization” of the prevailing social order and justifies direct Christian action in history. If there is any “final meaning of history,” such an end gives “value to the present.” God’s promise of salvation in the future should drive Christians to commit to a just social order now.

The most controversial section of A Theology of Liberation addresses the universal call of Christian love in a region split into oppressive and oppressed classes. Gutiérrez argues that the God of the Exodus story took sides and that Christians must as well. Quoting the French bishops, he points out that class struggles were a fact, not something one advocated or deplored. More importantly, as Brazilian educator Paulo Freire argued in Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1968), liberating the oppressed would liberate the oppressors as well. “One loves the oppressors by liberating them from their inhuman condition as oppressors,” Gutiérrez writes—that is, “by liberating them from themselves.” Quoting Che again, he emphasizes revolution as an act of love in a Latin American context. While in the 1988 edition Gutiérrez was careful to denounce “terrorism and repression,” in the original text he was more ambiguous. “The political arena is necessarily conflictual,” he had written. “The building of a just society means the confrontation—in which different kinds of violence are present—between groups with different interests and opinions.” In short, violence was natural in the pursuit of liberation, even if one should do all one could to avoid it.

These ideas presaged a convergence between North Atlantic and Latin American liberation theologies. In the United States, Black American theologian James H. Cone was already making similar arguments in response to the civil rights movement’s turn toward Black Power. “Unless the empirical denominational church makes a determined effort to recapture the man Jesus through a total identification with the suffering poor as expressed in Black Power,” Cone wrote in Black Theology and Black Power in 1969, “that church will become exactly what Christ is not.” Cone also prefigured Freire, who would later write in the foreword to the 1986 edition of Cone’s book, A Black Theology of Liberation: “The man who enslaves another enslaves himself. . . . Whites are thus enslaved to their own egos. Therefore, when blacks assert their freedom in self-determination, whites too are liberated.”
posted by kensington314 at 2:21 PM on December 20, 2023 [1 favorite]

Man, I'm an observant Jew yelling at y'all. Liberation Theology is about Jesus wrapped in a RED swaddling cloth. It's about the "kingdom of heaven" being on EARTH for the poor before they die. Its fucking Marxist. It's everything you all type all the time. Yelling about Christians. These are your people.
posted by atomicstone at 6:00 AM on December 21, 2023 [4 favorites]