Liberation Theology: problematizing the historical projects of democracy and human rights

Liberation Theology and Liberation Christianity continue to inspire social movements across Latin America. Following Michael Lowy’s analytical and historical distinction between Liberation Christianity (emerging in the 1950s) and Liberation Theology (emerging in the 1970s), this paper seeks to problematize the historical projects of democracy and human rights, particularly in relation to the praxis of Liberation Christianity and the reflection of Liberation Theology. Liberation Theology emerged across Latin America during a period of dictatorship and called for liberation. It had neither democracy nor human rights as its central historical project, but rather liberation. Furthermore, Liberation Christianity, which includes the legacy of Camilo Torres, now seeks to ‘defend democracy’ and ‘uphold human rights’ in its ongoing struggles despite the fact that the democratic project has clearly failed the majority of Latin Americans. Both redemocratization and ‘pink tide’ governments were not driven by liberation. At the beginning of the first Workers’ Party government in Brazil, Frei Betto – a leading liberation theologian – famously quipped ‘we have won an election, not made a revolution’. In dialogue with Ivan Petrella, this article suggests that Liberation Theology

democracia y derechos humanos en relación con la praxis de la liberación del cristianismo y la reflexión de la liberación. La teología de la liberación surgió en América Latina durante la dictadura y clamaba por liberación.
Democracia. Derechos humanos. Imaginación institucional.  and Liberation Theology (emerging in the 1970s). However, Lowy's proposal does draw into sharp focus the relationship between Liberation Christianity, Liberation Theology and the historical projects of democracy and human rights in Latin America. It is in Liberation Christianity, and certainly that espoused by Camilo Torres, the Cuban Revolution, the Sandinistas and Zapatistas, that one finds the seeds of the proposal that the nature and mission of theology is regime change.

A story
Perhaps to contextualize (and concretize) this theological proposal, I can offer a story from January 2019.
At the conclusion to his Presidential speech at his investiture ceremony, Brazil's current President took a Brazilian flag off the podium and held it aloft with his Vice-President and declared impromptu: "This is our flag and it will never be red. It will only turn red if it needs our blood to keep it green and yellow" (BOLSONARO, The crowd roared its approval. A few days later, I was invited to join a meeting of Liberation Christianity. The Pastoral Land

Commission (CPT) and Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem
Terra (MST) held a regional meeting for the states of Rio de Janeiro and Espírito Santo. There were lots of red flags, hats and t-shirts -and no blood! There were also lots of frightened faces amongst those gathered following the Presidential election and the reconfiguration of Brazilian politics. As is customary in meetings of Liberation Christianity, it began with an análise de conjuntura (assessment of context) before opening for group reflections. It quickly struck me how activists were worried by the undermining of democracy throughout the election cycle, and with the proposals of the new government. Equally, it was evident that the ongoing 'judicialization of politics' was seen by activists present at the meeting as a good way to frame the work and struggles of social movements and pastoral agencies in their pursuit of human rights (and indeed land rights). In Brazil's increasingly dysfunctional and polarized politics, the judiciary has entered the vacuum to 'resolve' political disputes and impasses through court rulings. Following this logic, Liberation Christianity -at least in the form of the meeting of the CPT and MST -has highlighted judicial channels -and by implication human rights discourse -as possibly offering political protections for various struggles.
Liberation Theology speaks of a theology of liberation and a Christianity of Liberation, not a theology of democracy or a Christianity of human rights. Both of these latter exist, but they are not inspired by the Cuban Revolution. Both of these latter exist, and can even be seen as important tools in the struggle. 2 However, a Liberation Theology and a Liberation Christianity must 'go beyond' (to take up Ivan Petrella's challenge) and refocus on regime change. For example, at no point in the análise de conjuntura in the Liberation Christianity meeting was recognition of the failure of democracy and human rights for 'the poor' in Brazil discussed.
Ivan Petrella (2006, p. 52) is disposed towards democracy as a method for Liberation Theology. However, he does highlight the need to reject the mainstream definition of democracy. Petrella Petrella provides a compelling democratic vision from within Liberation Theology. But it is contestable. Jose Comblin (1996, p. 231) writing at the close of the twentieth century noted:

Graham McGeorch
One of the unanimities across Latin America is democracy. Left or Right, everyone unconditionally wants democracy. Democracy has become an unquestionable myth. It is exalted, cultivated, an absolute reference. Behind such enthusiasm is naturally the memory of military regimes and National Security.
When the choice is between dictatorship and democracy, Liberation Theology, naturally, favors democracy. Likewise, while I would like to suggest that rather it is the Cuban Revolution (and revolutionary precursors) that is the primary inspiration for Liberation Christianity and Liberation Theology. Fundamentally, neither Liberation Christianity nor Liberation Theology are primarily focused on reform or renewal of the church. This is a secondary consequence of the primary struggle: regime change. In

the analysis of Clodovis Boff and Marcella Althaus-Reid Liberation
Christianity and Liberation Theology need to be understood as independent of Church and State. One of the difficulties for both Liberation Christianity and Liberation Theology is that they have become increasingly focused on ecclesiastical matters in detriment to nurturing viable political projects of liberation, in other words of creating conditions for revolution, for regime change.
In a wider sense, the utopian horizon of Liberation Theology has shrunk. Ivan Petrella has argued provocatively that Liberation Revista Sociedade e Cultura. 2020, v. 23: e59897 Liberation Theology: problematizing the historical projects of democracy...

Graham McGeorch
Theology has lost sight of viable historical projects of political and economic change (2006). He says this needs to change. This shrinking of the utopian horizon is most clearly demonstrated today by two major trends in Liberation Christianity, particularly evident since the reemergence of democracy in Latin America and the coming (and going) of 'pink tide' governments. Discourse within Liberation Christianity has been widely co-opted into the redemocratisation project and generally expresses itself through human rights discourse and processes. In other words, with Latin America's recent 'turn' (or 'return') to the right, Liberation Christianity has chosen to 'defend democracy' and 'uphold human rights' within the broader narratives of democracy and human rights, without specifying what kind of democracy and human rights it is seeking to defend and uphold, particularly in light of its 'option for the poor'. In the 1950s, these two aspects were secondary to the 'critical reflection on revolutionary praxis'.
To return again to Petrella (2008), in order to counter current trends in scholarship on theologies of liberation and the praxis of Liberation Theology itself, it is necessary to 'go beyond'. By this Petrella means uncovering a more comprehensive and integrated approach to knowledge: Perhaps the future of liberation theology lies beyond theology.
At the heart of liberation theology lie two elements: the first is epistemological, the liberationist attempt to do theology from the standpoint of the oppressed The second is practical/moral, liberation theology's commitment to thinking about ideas by thinking about institutions… The epistemological has priority over the practical/moral: before changing the world you need to be converted to the need to change the world. (Petrella, 2008, p. 148). Sung uses this 'option for the poor' to demonstrate that the difficulty arises for Liberation Christianity when the God who it claims liberates does not indeed liberate. In other words, the problem described by Sung is that those engaged in Liberation Christianity no longer necessarily encounter the person of Jesus in the face of the poor. Or to put it another way, the question can be asked, who makes an 'option for the poor' in the 21 st century and who are 'the poor' for Liberation Christianity? Sung ultimately locates this problem at the door of Liberation Theology as theology.
I will return to this in the final (theological) coda.
Sung and Aguilar share a concern for the fragmentation According to Santos, due to external pressures Cuba did not find the right balance between resistance and (new) alternatives.
Cuba's revolutionary government has been guided by resistance and anything new is a new form of resistance rather than a new solution.
The result is a revolutionary process that becomes reformist. The alternative, from a reformist rather than revolutionary perspective, is never a viable option.

A Theological Coda (for discussion): faith and ideology
There is no consensus on what is meant by faith; just as there is no consensus on what is meant by ideology. Juan Luis Segundo was among the first theologians of liberation to undertake a 7 It is worth stating that there are substantive theological proposals and discussions about the relationship between theology and social sciences. Liberation Theology would do well to enter these dialogues and to heed Ivan Petrella's (2006, p. viii) call to reassess the role of social sciences as a only "pre-theological" moment in its methodology.

sustained reflection of Faith and Ideology in his seminal work on
Jesus of Nazareth, El Hombre de Hoy ante Jesus de Nazaret (1982). An earlier contribution by Samuel Silva Gotay (1980) drew attention to the fact that Liberation Theology identifies two kinds of ideologies: ideologies of order, and ideologies of change (1980, p. 214). Gotay (1980, p. 214)

suggests that Liberation Theology and Liberation
Christianity, simply by dividing society into classes identifies a prevailing order that is 'natural', 'reasonable', 'eternal', 'divine' or 'representative', and by implication a critical counter-representation that is to 'delegitimise', 'disintegrate' and 'substitute' this order for another kind of life. Gotay notes that theology, alongside other disciplines, necessarily expresses itself through ideologies.
Juan Luis Segundo advances this argument, too. He suggests that faith and theology without ideology is impossible. However, he Segundo's reflections on faith and ideology appear in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s in at least three different books -The Liberation of Theology (1976), El hombre de hoy ante Jesus de Nazaret (1982) and El dogma que libera (1989). While in the first two books mentioned Segundo sought to demonstrate the necessity of ideology to faith (and by implication theology), by the time he publishes El dogma que libera, Segundo has suggested that this necessity need not be deterministic. He manages to make this affirmation because, through a pursuit of the liberation of theology, Segundo concludes that dogma (which he understands to be doctrine, theology) is fundamentally unstable. This 'discovery' by Segundo is inherently positive for him and for his understanding of Liberation Theology.
It means that theology is not normative, it is evolutionary (Segundo, 2000). In terms of theology, Segundo's discovery is a turn away from the platonic and neo-platonic underpinning of Western theologies (be they Roman Catholic or Protestant) in the ideology of both classes. While a fuller explanation of this is not possible here, it is worth noting again that perhaps Segundo's familiarity with Orthodox theology and particularly Russian Religious Philosophy from his study in France comes to the fore in his turn away from the underpinnings of Western theologies. 8 The consequences of this are revolutionary. Jose Miguez Bonino (1975, p. 2) famously recorded the conversation between performers and congregation at theatre performance by a group of young people from a shanty town in Uruguay in a well-to-do  Bonino (1975, p. 2) registers the initial shock amongst those who heard the answer, he soon tidies it up by referencing the fact that Jesus has throughout history been associated with the ideal or historical ideology of Christian religion or full humanity. In this case -as Marcella Althaus-Reid would point out -the ideal or historical ideology of Western theology is that Jesus/Che is male, Manabeira Unger's social theories of change, of the need for Liberation Theology to 'go beyond' this institutional settlement, he chooses to do so by ultimately challenging Liberation Theology to relocate its epistemologies and methodologies inside the social sciences and other academic disciplines. This is certainly one option.
However, the 'go beyond', can also be framed as a need for Liberation Theology to further locate its epistemologies and methodologies within theology. An example of this would be to revisit Juan Luis Segundo's proposal to liberate theology. It is clear that democracy is not necessarily a theological concept; although theology can certainly construct arguments in its favor. It is also clear that historical Christianity, while currently favoring democracy, has lived through a myriad of political regimes (and has favored a myriad of political regimes). Liberation Christianity has positioned itself against dictatorship and in favor of democracy, for example.
Moreover, it is even clearer that human rights discourse is not necessarily a theological concept. Indeed the theological based critiques of human rights are quick to highlight that the secular, individuated, autonomous nature of the person developed and defended by human rights discourses before the state and other persons is a limited and limiting perspective of personhood.
Frequently theologians arguing for or against human rights discourse find common ground in the theological concept of human dignity. Human rights and human dignity are distinct for theology, independently of whether the latter is used to support or critique the former.
The fact that both Jung Mo Sung and Marcella Althuas-Reid point to the fact that any 'go beyond' suggested by Petrella needs to be theological is perhaps the primary challenge facing Liberation Theology and Liberation Christianity. Without this, Liberation Theology is vulnerable to a reification of democracy and human rights because of its particular relationship with the social sciences. It is worth restating that neither democracy nor human rights are in and of themselves theological concepts. They are human constructs of philosophy and the social sciences, and may or may not be made divine depending on theological options.
Clearly Liberation Theology and Liberation Christianity have found and continue to find democracy and human rights to be helpful, even useful (dare one say divine when so little reflection has been produced by Liberation Theology about democracy and human rights?). However, Liberation Theology has, to this point, supported democracy and human rights because of the analysis of the social sciences. It has been rather slower to analyze democracy and human rights from an 'option for the poor' which demonstrates the widespread failure of both for the Latin American masses.
Does this make democracy and human rights a 'pre-theological moment' (PETELLA, 2006, p. viii Love is a theological category that has found its way into Liberation Theology and Liberation Christianity. The Cuban Revolution, which provides the primary inspiration for both, brought forth the perspectives of revolutionary action as an act of love. And Liberation Theology -in its indecent and queer turn -has taken this act of love further. Marcella Althaus-Reid (2004, p. 147) has asked what happens when we love those theologically prohibited, when "the institutionalised forms of relations with God are simply not flexible enough"? This love in the 'go beyond' of the 'institutionalized forms' of theology or (political) society is part of the 'institutional imagination' of Liberation Theology. It is historically grounded -part of what Marcella calls the caminata of theology. It is also the place where Liberation Theology's love of the poor ultimately problemtizes the Augustine edifice of Western theology. This Augustine edifice is found in the theologically seductive categories of a prevailing order that is 'natural', 'reasonable', 'eternal', 'divine' or 'representative', to recall the words of Samuel Gotay. Juan Luis Segundo's attempts to find a critical counter-representation that is 'delegitimising', 'disintegrating' and 'substitutive' of this order for another kind of life -'institutional imagination' -is the forerunner to Althaus-Reid's critique of the Augustine edifice in Western theology. Loving outside Augustine's theological institution is about more than voting for democracy. This is the challenge to Liberation Theology of the 'go beyond' issued by Petrella.