The other day, our church program contains a quote from Dom Helder Camara: “When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I asked why the poor have no food, they call me a communist.” The Sunday message was about the commandment “love thy neighbor as yourself.” The pastor talked about levels of love. In connection to the quote, “feeding the poor” would be one level which meets an obvious need, and “doing something about why no food” is the next level which is working for justice. Assigning a high priority to the demand of justice is supported by Mathew 23:23. (“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You give a tenth of your spices–mint, dill and cummin. But you have neglected the more important matters of the law – justice, mercy and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former.)
This message appeared to be well-supported and well-articulated for the most part. However, near the end of the message, the pastor seemed to take a different tone and went to a more mundane route of exalting the congregation to be nice and so on. It seems to be a little out of place with the earlier part of the message, but I did not give it too much thought. Following the sermon, one of the old-timers blurted out something about “liberation theology” in a disapproving tone. I have heard something bad about the term, and am started to wonder how the quote and liberation theology are related. This led to a little bit of searching on the internet.
It turned out that Dom Helder Camara was a famous archbishop of Olinda and Recife in northeast of Brazil, and a influential figure in the so called “liberation theology.” His best-known work is a book titled “Spiral of Violence.” He observed a spiral of violence: injustice leads to revolt which leads to oppression that intensifies injustice. He proposes to break the spiral of violence with Action of Justice and Peace.
Even though the writing was from 1970s, his central observation is quite accurate today. There continues to be persistent and structural injustice in the international trade and within a nation. Take the relation between US and China as an example of relation between a developed country and a underdeveloped country. China performs most of the dirty manufacturing for US, while the people in US enjoy cheap toys, clothes, electronics and so on, the people in China suffers the slave-labor condition in factors and the pollution in the air. Just in case, this is a little to vague for most people, take Apple as microcosm of this relation. The factory that manufactures iPod was basically run as a labor camp, which tens of thousands of workers locked in the factor compounds, while in US Apple employees each got an iPod for Christmas. Maybe China is a little too far away for one to be concerned, then take a look at the news reports in US. The level of violence in some of the inner cities is horrifying – would this be close enough for some loving Christians to do something? The pastor who delivered that sermon did not touch anything outside of US. He seemed to be ready to talk about the inner cities -- at least the poor neighborhoods nearby, but he stepped back from that pretty quickly.
Call me blind, but I don't see the connection between the reputation of liberation theology and the quote of Archbishop Camara. In the book “Spiral of Violence” Archbishop Camara proposed a non-violent Action for Justice and Peace in the same vein of Gandhi and Martin Luther King. One of the main criticism of the liberation theology is its militant messages. So far as I can tell, Archbishop Camara was not advocating for violence.
Labeling a message on justice as liberation theology is at minimum an overreaction. Stepping out of one's comfort zone to love another and seek justice for another is very hard. However, mis-characterizing it is no way to avoid the demand of justice.
Pro 21:3 To do what is right and just is more acceptable to the Lord than sacrifice.
