Theology of Liberation

Ο Δομινικανός Bartolomé de Las Casas (1484-1566), στον οποίο παραπέμπει ολόκληρη η παράδοση των αγώνων για την υπεράσπιση των ιθαγενών στη Λατινική Αμερική, υπήρξε από τους πρώτους ανθρώπους που προσπάθησαν να προστατέψουν τους αυτόχθονες από την εκμετάλλευση των αποικιοκρατών κατακτητών (conquistadors). Ο Bartolomé de Las Casas υπηρετεί ως επίσκοπος Chiapas από το 1543 και γίνεται αποδέκτης σφοδρών αντιδράσεων από τους αποίκους. Οι μόνοι που τον υποστηρίζουν είναι οι Δομινικανοί αδελφοί του. Δύο χρόνια μετά οι άποικοι τον εκδιώκουν, αναγκάζοντάς τον να ζήσει μαζί με τους «Ίντιος». Ο Bartolomé de Las Casas συναντιέται στη Γουατεμάλα με τον πρώτο επίσκοπό της, Francisco Marroquín (1499-1563), όπως και με τον Antonio de Valdivieso, επίσκοπο Νικαράγουας, δημιουργώντας από κοινού την «Επιτροπή της Ευχαριστίας στο Θεό», με στόχο την αποτροπή της εκμετάλλευσης των ιθαγενών. Οι άποικοι στη Γουατεμάλα εξοργίζονται με την παρουσία του και προσπαθούν να τον προπηλακίσουν, αλλά αυτός διαφεύγει στην Ισπανία το 1546. Δεν θα ξαναγυρίσει στο Νέο Κόσμο ποτέ ξανά, και το 1550 παραιτείται από την επισκοπή του.

Την εποχή αυτή, ο Δομινικανός θεολόγος και φιλόσοφος Juan Gines de Sepúlveda (1489-1573), αντλώντας επιχειρήματά από τους βιβλικούς πολέμους εκδίδει τις απόψεις του στο έργο Demócrates Segundo, που φέρει τον επεξηγηματικό υπότιτλο: «Σχετικά με τις Δίκαιες Αιτίες του Πολέμου κατά των Ινδιάνων». Ο Sepúlveda υπήρξε υποστηρικτής της αποικιοκρατικής επέκτασης και της δουλείας, θεμελιώνοντας τα επιχειρήματά του σε έναν ιδιότυπο αναγεννησιακό ανθρωπισμό. (αν και οι απόψεις του δεν είναι αποδεκτές από την κραταιά θεολογική σχολή της Σαλαμάνκα).Ο Sepúlveda προκαλεί τον Las Casas σε δημόσια αντιπαράθεση για το ζήτημα των ιθαγενών, μετά το δημόσιο αίτημα του πάπα Ιωάννη Γ΄. Οι δύο Δομινικανοί αντιπαρατέθηκαν σε θεολογικό, ιδεολογικό και πολιτικό επίπεδο, στην περίφημη «Διένεξη του Βαγιαδολίδ» (1550-1551).

Η «Διένεξη του Βαγιαδολίδ» σύμφωνα με τον σπουδαίο θεολόγο και φιλόσοφο Enrique Dussel αποτελεί τη σημαντικότερη αντιπαράθεση στην Ευρώπη περί του πολιτισμού του «Τρίτου Κόσμου», ένα θέμα που ανοίγει ξανά, πεντακόσια χρόνια μετά, με τη Θεολογία της Απελευθέρωσης. Στο κείμενο πραγματεύομαι αυτή τη σημαντική ιστορία: αφενός τη ζωή του σπουδαίου Bartolomé de Las Casas· αφετέρου την περίφημη «Διένεξη του Βαγιαδολίδ»...

The Wedding Feast of the Lamb Has Begun: The Relationship Between Eschatology and Liturgy in the Logoscentric Theology of Joseph Ratzinger

Roland Millare, S.T.D.

Director: Matthew Levering, Ph. D


Numerous scholars have engaged Joseph Ratzinger’s theology of the liturgy and his eschatology. The unique contribution of this study is the focus on the inherent relationship between eschatology and the liturgy in light of Ratzinger’s insistence, under the influence of Romano Guardini, upon the primacy of the logos over ethos (“Der Primat des Logos über das Ethos”). Throughout our study, we will establish Ratzinger’s consistency in the underscoring the primacy of logos over ethos and the centrality of Christ in his theology, which enables him to maintain that the liturgy is inherently eschatological. The primacy of the logos is the central hermeneutical key to understanding the unique vision of Ratzinger’s Christocentric liturgical theology and eschatology. In light of Ratzinger’s consistent appreciation for the significance of the primary of the logos, he is able to show the significance of sacrifice in forming the Church and her worship, the Church as a communio and the hope rooted in her contradistinction with the world, rational worship (logiké latreía) and the Church’s mission of charity, and orientation of the Church’s worship (and all space and all time within it) towards the incarnate Logos within Ratzinger’s work.

When logos is subordinated to ethos, the human person becomes subjected to a materialist ontology that leads to an ethos that is concerned above all by utility and progress, which affects one’s approach to understanding the liturgy and eschatology. How a person celebrates the liturgy becomes subject to the individual whim of one person or a group of people. Eschatology can be reduced only to addressing the temporal needs of a society guided by a narrow conception of hope or political theology. If the human person wants to understand his authentic sacramental logos, then he must first turn to Christ the incarnate Logos, who reveals to him that he is created for a loving relationship with God and others. Ratzinger describes his work as having an “incomplete character,” yet this study has demonstrated that there is a unity within Ratzinger’s “fragmentary” writings that is defined by the primacy and centrality of the Logos incarnate.

Quand il est à Rome, le pape François déjeune chaque jour au milieu de bonnes soeurs dont il partage le modeste repas. Signe de la vie simple qu’il s’est choisie en référence à François d’Assise, dont il fut le premier pape à adopter le patronyme comme pour inaugurer une ère nouvelle. Mais aussi, dit-on, façon de conjurer le risque d’un empoisonnement, tant sa volonté de réforme heurterait les puissants du Vatican… Pour autant, en faire un pape révolutionnaire reviendrait à ne pas saisir à quel point son action est limitée par la doctrine, le fonctionnement des structures de l’Église et les difficultés contemporaines du catholicisme. Si François, professionnel de la communication et habile jésuite, tient tant à un aggiornamento, c’est avant tout pour tenter d'enrayer le recul, aussi rapide que profond, de la foi romaine partout en Occident.

La Carta Pastoral «Una Iglesia de la Amazonía en conflicto con el latifundio y la marginación social», es un documento extremadamente importante en el escenario de la Iglesia católica brasileña, en plena época de dictadura militar. Posiblemente, por primera vez en Brasil, una Carta Pastoral abordaba tan directamente los problemas sociales experimentados por el pueblo donde se desarrollaba la acción de la Iglesia.
    En un tiempo en que muchas Iglesias callaban ante la propiedad privada omniponente excluyente de los pobres, acaparadora de cantidades ingentes casi inabarcables de tierra (hasta un millón de hectáreas), expulsando a los posseiros y a los indios a la fuerza, sin diálogo ni indemnización, la Iglesia de São Félix significó una toma de postura emblemática en Brasil y en América Latina:
    su opción por los pobres, por los excluidos, los posseiros, los indios, fueron una constatación práctica que demostraba que otra Iglesia era posible, y que era posible concretar pastoralmente la utopía de la Conferencia Episcopal de Medellín, celebrada sólo tres años antes (1968).

Este artículo pretende trazar un bosquejo general acerca del método y de los contenidos teológicos de la Teología de la Liberación. El tema bíblico del Éxodo ha resaltado la realidad que antaño vivió la Iglesia latinoamericana. Tema del que se apropió la Teología de la Liberación queriendo subrayar la presencia de Dios en medio de las injusticias que vivió su pueblo. El método “ver, juzgar y actuar” del que se nutre la Teología de la Liberación nos resulta muy peculiar en relación al método que la teología utiliza tradicionalmente. Por esa razón, nos detendremos en estudiar las implicaciones del método de la Teología de la Liberación. Por otro lado, las reflexiones que llevó a cabo esta teología en relación al Padre, al Hijo, al Espíritu Santo, a los sacramentos, a la espiritualidad, a la eclesiología, etc., describen una teología que acarrea un compromiso con la praxis latinoamericana. Con todo, estamos ante una nueva sensibilidad teológica que quiere resaltar la reflexión, la práctica y, sobre todo, el compromiso de la vida cristiana con los pobres, herencia que poseemos.

This work was defended as a doctoral thesis at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam in 2009 and subsequently published as The Poor in Liberation Theology: Pathway to God or Ideological Construct (Abingdon: Routledge, 2014).
Keeping The Window Open: The Theological Method of Clodovis Boff and the Problem of the Alterity of the Poor
The question underlining this study is as follows:
What in the methodology of liberation theology, especially as developed and spelt out by Clodovis Boff, enables the poor to remain other and hence iconic?
Therefore, I have sought over the course of this work to examine how liberation theology portrays the unique and irreducible giftedness of the other poor. I have undertaken to ascertain to what extent liberation theology allows this other to be iconic, to be revelatory of Christ, and if it can offer any safeguards against the idolizing of the poor. I have, therefore, asked how the method of liberation theology can allow the poor to remain other and to what extent it prevents the poor from being made into an ideal and ultimately into idols.
The structure of the work is as follows. The first chapter begins with a consideration of how the poor have in fact been treated in liberation theology. It is clear that there have been a wide variety of approaches and emphases. Some socio-anthropological research will then be examined, to see how the poor seem to have responded to liberation theology, both on its own terms and in comparison with what is offered by neo-Pentecostal groups. One sample theological criticism of liberation theology’s concept of the poor will then be discussed. This chapter both presents and questions liberation theology’s use of the category of the poor, noting its strengths and actual or at least potential weaknesses.
The second chapter narrows the focus. It deals first with liberation theology’s retrieval of the notion of idolatry as a language to describe the current global capitalist economy. Thus, idolatry is first viewed in relation to the economy and economics. Alternatives are considered in the form of different utopias which liberation theology has developed. At the same time, the risks and dangers of utopic thinking are also examined. This leads me on to a discussion of ideology, which I link with idolatry. I discuss how liberation theology itself has understood ideology, and some other relevant contributions to the debate concerning ideology. I address the fairly frequent accusations that liberation theology is itself ideological. I conclude the chapter with an examination of one of liberation theology’s responses to the problem of idolatry and ideology, its insistence on the presence and transforming power of the God of Life.
My third chapter interrupts the direct treatment of liberation theology. I begin with a historical excursion. The Iconoclast controversy, culminating in the Second Council of Nicaea, marks the one time the church in council has seriously considered what it is that makes something iconic. Thus I present the issues at stake in the controversy, and the conciliar response. My point here is twofold. I applaud the Council for its recognition of the transcendent possibilities inherent in the material, thus opening the way for the claim that the poor can indeed be iconic. On the other hand, I note that the phrasing of the council’s documents is such that in practice it creates a new form of totality, thus effectively denying the transcendence it seeks to defend by its ideological approach. At this point, I introduce Emmanuel Levinas. To talk about the alterity of the poor necessitates a more general discussion of alterity, which Levinas made a central plank of his philosophy. But in order for there to be room for justice, it is necessary also, Levinas argues, to introduce the figure of the third, the other of my other. This, I point out in a brief return to liberation theology, is a facet of Levinas’ thought that has been largely ignored by Enrique Dussel, one of the major points of encounter between liberation theology and Levinas.
The use of the word ‘totality’ above refers not only to Levinas, but also to one possible way of describing idols. Jean-Luc Marion has developed a carefully thought-out body of work examining the nature of conceptual icons and idols, and I turn to him finally in Chapter Three. He gives me, in the first place, a language to discuss the problem which has been hovering over the previous chapters and is implicit in my title, Keeping the Window Open, concerning icons and idols. Second, in his discussion of the phenomenon of givenness and the figure of l’adonné he offers a further contribution to understanding the role of the liberation theologian in encounter with the other poor.
In the fourth chapter, having established the nature of the problem – how the transcendence (the mystery) of the other is made possible – and some potential responses from elsewhere, I turn to the theological method of Clodovis Boff to see whether this method can protect the poor from becoming idols and allow them to remain icons. This chapter presents a careful reading of Boff’s work over the past thirty years. I finish with a Conclusion that brings Levinas, Marion and Boff together, to suggest a way in which liberation theology can proceed that will help it to avoid the idolising of the poor.
Thus, the poor are allowed to be what liberation theology has always claimed they are, a sacrament of Christ, a privileged place of encounter with the God of the poor, who has heard the cry of his people and come down to set them free.

2nd edition of the book on the theology of Rubem Alves in a ebook format for free download, under the principle of sharing knowledge. It includes a posthumous tribute with little essays written by different theologians and colleagues of Alves. The book is written in Portuguese.
2a edição do livro sobre a teologia de Rubem Alves, relançado agora em formato ebook para download gratuito, sob o princípio da democratização do conhecimento. Esta edição inclui uma homenagem póstuma escrita por diferentes teólogos e colegas de Rubem Alves.

Georges Florovsky was saying that we have a tendency to underline that «eternal life is far away from the ‘’secular’’ to such an extent that the human personality to be in danger of division», and Gustavo Gutierrez was adding that «the natural and the supernatural order are deeply united». The man of faith lives in the limits of the historical time, the time/no time of freedom of Christ’s love.
The Christian Ontology and Metaphysics make no reference to knowledge of a substance or a causal principle, but they refer to truth of freedom of love as the latter acts in human relationships with God. In the Orthodox tradition and in the Latin American Theology of Liberation we meet a deep connection of the secularism and the eschaton in the history of incarnation.

James H. Cone is without question the most important Black Theologian of the last century in U.S. theology. This essay is an engagement with his work, focusing in particular on the shifts from European theology, in his Black Theology & Black Power, to Black Aesthetic Religious production, in The Spirituals & The Blues, to The Cross and the Lynching Tree. The core theme of this essay is the entanglement of spiritual/religious colonization with production/invention of racial hierarchies that then became the crucibles for the forging of racist imaginaries that entailed, authorized, enshrined, and sacralized white supremacy. The Janus face of this alchemy, however, was the production of a black religion of liberation that entailed decolonizing the “blackness” invented by the modern project of religious racist colonization. The essay considers how Cone’s works empowers us to think through the analogies between the process of the colonization of the indigenous peoples of the so-called “New World” and the “enslavement” of African peoples. The similarities have to do with the coupling of the colonization of imaginaries with the imposition of racial imaginaries, i.e. religious conquest is also a racial conquest, and conversely, racial conquest is also a religious conquest.

Focusing on three works by Jean-Luc Marion that discuss the questions of idolatry (The Idol and Distance, God Without Being, and In Excess), this article examines Marion's distinction between icon and idols and applies it to the question of the role of the poor in liberation theology, with especial reference to the liberation theologian Clodovis Boff.

Το κείμενο, με αφορμή την πρόσφατη αγιοποίηση του πρώην Αρχιεπισκόπου μάρτυρα του Ελ Σαλβαδόρ, Oscar Romero, διαπραγματεύεται το ζήτημα του δικαίου μίας βίαιης αντιπαράθεσης (πολέμου, επανάστασης, κ.λπ). Προσεγγίζεται έτσι ένα καίριο ζήτημα για τη "Θεολογία της Απελευθέρωσης", αλλά και για κάθε κοινωνικό κίνημα, και όχι απλά για κάθε χριστιανικό κοινωνικό κίνημα, που θέτει στον εαυτό του το πρόβλημα της κοινωνικής και πολιτικής βίας στο βαθμό που θέλει το ίδιο να συμβολίσει, να εκφράσει και να αγωνιστεί για ένα κόσμο ειρήνης, δικαίου και ελευθερίας.

Todo empezó entre 1981 y 1983 con Variações sobre a vida e a morte. O feitiço erético-erótico da teologia (La teología como juego, en español) y Poesia, profecia, magia. Meditaçōes, volúmenes que le sirvieron a Rubem Alves para, en el primer caso, replantear su visión completa de la nueva teología que comenzó a hacer y, en el segundo caso, para reelaborar los textos breves que comenzó a publicar en la revista Tempo e Presença. Alves comenzaba a experimentar la libertad expresiva total que no abandonaría nunca y que le permitió ubicarse como uno de los mejores escritores brasileños de la segunda mitad del siglo XX.

Στο εν λόγω κείμενο τίθενται σε διάλογο δύο ιστορικά παραδείγματα, στα οποία δοκιμάστηκε η σχέση πίστης και η χριστιανικής ηθικής: αφενός, το παράδειγμα του Γερμανού λουθηρανού θεολόγου και ιερέα Ντήτριχ Μπονχαίφφερ, τον οποίο εκτέλεσαν οι ναζί για τη συμμετοχή του σε συνωμοσία για τη δολοφονία του Χίτλερ, και, αφετέρου, το παράδειγμα της λατινοαμερικάνικης Θεολογίας της Απελευθέρωσης.

Σε ό,τι αφορά το πρώτο παράδειγμα, το έργο του Μπονχαίφφερ, μελετούμε τους όρους της "ηθικής της ευθύνης" και της "υποκατάστασης" ώστε να αποσαφηνιστεί η θέση του απέναντι στο ριζικό κακό, όπως αυτό του ναζισμού, και κυρίως το βασανιστικό δίλημμα της σχέσης της ηθικής με τη βία ενάντια στον τύραννο, δίλημμα που αναδεικνύεται στη βάσανο που η απόρριψη της βίας των Ευαγγελίων θέτει στον πιστό ενώπιον του ιστορικού εξευτελισμού της ανθρώπινης αξιοπρέπειας με αποκορύφωμα τη συστηματοποίηση του φόνου από το ναζιστικό καθεστώς. Με άλλα λόγια, πως υπάρχει και ενεργεί η χριστιανική ηθική που αναλαμβάνει την ευθύνη του άλλου από αγάπη, σε έναν κόσμο ακραίας βίας; 

Σε αυτό το πρόβλημα κατέθεσαν τη δική τους μαρτυρία οι λατινοαμερικάνοι θεολόγοι της απελευθέρωσης, οι οποίοι συγκλονισμένοι από τις ακραίες καταστάσεις των χωρών τους μετείχαν στην απελευθερωτική κοινωνικοπολιτική πράξη προκρίνοντας καταρχάς την ειρηνική οδό με πρότυπο τον δολοφονηθέντα Αρχιεπίσκοπο του Ελ Σαλβαδόρ Όσκαρ Ρομέρο, ο οποίος ουδέποτε ανέλαβε την πολιτική βία αν και αγωνίστηκε με ζήλο για την αλλαγή της θεσμικής κοινωνικοπολιτικής φτώχειας, αδικίας και καταπίεσης.

Μέσα από τα δύο αυτά παραδείγματα, αναδύεται και αποσαφηνίζεται διερευνάται η σχέση Εκκλησίας, πίστης και πολιτικού γεγονότος, διαπιστώνοντας ότι αν και η θεσμική Εκκλησία διακρίνεται από το πολιτικό κράτος, δεν δύναται ως "σώμα πιστών" και "έτερος τρόπος υπάρξεως" να αυτονομηθεί από τον κοινωνικοπολιτικό χώρο και την ηθική του ευθύνη. Έτσι, η «κοινωνική δικαιοσύνη» αποτελεί βασική χριστιανική επιταγή, ακόμα και αν γνωρίζει ο πιστός ότι δεν κείται εκεί
η εκπλήρωση της εσχατολογικής ελευθερίας του ανθρώπου.

The outbreak and course of the rebellions of Börklüce Mustafa and Sheikh Bedreddin in 1416 still pose a series of historiographic and religio-problems which do not allow a satisfying and detailed reconstruction of their provenance and chronology. Widening the exploration of the source base for these movements is one of the well-known desideratum for a better understanding of the turbulent period of the Ottoman interregnum and its aftermath in the early fifteenth century. Apart from the social and political aspects of the rebellions (which have been approached and interpreted in a variety of often contrasting ideological and methodological frameworks), their intriguing religious dimension has been also the focus of increasing scholarly and general attention. Drawing on new advances in research on apocalyptic, mystical and millenarian trends in the late Byzantine/Balkan Orthodox and early Ottoman religious life and inter-religious contacts, the paper will attempt to delineate the possible pedigree of their apocalyptic, utopian and trans-confessional underpinnings as well as the debates surrounding their provenance.

The article discusses the similarities between the writings of Jan Hus and Leonardo Boff. The author attempts at explaining them by conducting a comparative study, including text analysis and elements of prosopography. Appa- rently, comparable socio-economic conditions and biographies may have influenced the works of the two theologians.

Todo empezó entre 1981 y 1983 con Variações sobre a vida e a morte. O feitiço erético-erótico da teologia (La teología como juego, en español) y Poesia, profecia, magia. Meditaçōes, volúmenes que le sirvieron a Rubem Alves para, en el primer caso, replantear su visión completa de la nueva teología que comenzó a hacer y, en el segundo caso, para reelaborar los textos breves que comenzó a publicar en la revista Tempo e Presença. Alves comenzaba a experimentar la libertad expresiva total que no abandonaría nunca y que le permitió ubicarse como uno de los mejores escritores brasileños de la segunda mitad del siglo XX.

This paper provides a brief overview of the origins of ethno-
liturgical compositions and the scope of this aesthetic of music in the church, especially stress ing their link to the concept of acculturation of the Theology of Liberation. The paper then extends the discussion, pointing out what the musical-aesthetic ideas of this movement are, and why it is linked to the Theology of Liberation. The main point noted in this paper is concerned with the possible theological, past
oral and aesthetics reasons for its development and  subsequent decline. Finally, the paper reflects on the Pop phenomenon and its influence on ecclesiology and liturgical music, leading to some conclusive points on the character of an acculturated liturgical music in a church increasingly marked by a Pop culture. The question posed by the paper is: What are the pastoral and musical consequences of this influence?

This talk was delivered at the Conference of Religious Studies "Resistance to Order and Authority in Religion", Budapest, October 2020.
It analyses the life, thought and work of the Colombian priest-guerrilla Camilo Torres and their relation to Marxism.

Anyone who has even a passing familiarity with Christianity will probably have noticed an apparent contradiction (or, at the very least, a certain tension) at its heart. On the one hand, it would seem to have a suspicion of the lesser goods to be had in the pleasures of this finite and ephemeral world, preferring instead to set its sights on those greater goods that are the promise of the eternal and heavenly world “to come.” Hence, Christians are often told to forsake everyday cares to store up their treasures in heaven, which has led certain critics to suggest that Christianity has an enervating effect on social engagement, encouraging those who suffer injustice to defer satisfaction to the afterlife instead of seeking it in the here and now. On the other hand, the defining “event” of Christianity has the transcendent and infinite God of the Hebrew Bible, whose name cannot even be spoken, taking on the flesh of a first-century man named “Jesus,” who spends most of his life healing the sick, feeding the hungry, and living in solidarity with laborers, tax collectors, and prostitutes. And, even as he reminds his followers that his kingdom is “not of this world,” he suggests that entry into that kingdom is very much tied to what one does in this world for the least, which is to say the most “worldly,” among us.

This course will provide a systematic introduction to Christian thought organized around the central tension involved in attending to the sufferings of this world while setting one’s sights on the next. This exploration will be framed by the Sermon on the Mount, which is one of the key passages of the New Testament, in which Jesus provides what is perhaps the clearest articulation of how the “old law” of this present world is related to the “new law” that he is thought to have inaugurated. This will require us to first consider those Jewish sources, which Jesus took to be his own and upon which he claimed to expand. In this way, we will consider the central tension between contemporary Christianity and “secular” society as a continuation of the earliest negotiations between the emerging “Jesus” movement and the Jewish tradition to which it belonged. After an investigation of this problematic in the foundational documents of the Jewish and Christian canons, we will turn to various contemporary readings in Christian social thought that consider the implications of the “Jesus-event” for pursuing the ends of social justice. These readings will provide an introduction to defining Christian doctrines, like the Incarnation and the Trinity, while also providing a platform for thinking about larger questions concerning the meaning of suffering, the demands of justice, our obligations to the poor, and the ultimate ends of our lives together, which should be of broader interest for persons of any or no religious affiliation.

Lanham, MD: Lexington Books/Fortress Press, 2022.

Using Christian communities in the former Yugoslavia as a case study, Branko Sekulić introduces the concept of ethnoreligiosity to the theological discussion in order to resolve the confusion that occurs when scholars talk about the concepts of ethno-religion or ethnoreligion. Ethno-religion/ethnoreligion came to describe the phenomenon of ethnic religion as a certain cultural specificity and which by itself has no negative connotation, but due to the lack of a better expression , it has been used as a term for the phenomenon of ethnic and religious conflict and discrimination. In that sense, ethnoreligiosity can be defined as a phenomenon resulting from the usurpation of the religious aspect of human life by the ethnic one, or more precisely, it emerges as a consequence of an ethnic (ethnonational) ideological overtaking of the structures of the religious organization. It takes place through the attempt to give sacral connotation to a particular ethnonational myth as an integral part of ethnonational ideology, with the result that religious feeling is no longer generated on a religious but primarily on an ethnonational base. By understanding the proper definition and manifestation of ethnoreligiosity, one will have the opportunity to discern the basic components of this phenomenon not only within the countries of the former Yugoslavia, but in other countries as well.

https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781978712966/Ethnoreligiosity-in-the-Contemporary-Societies-of-the-Former-Yugoslavia-The-Veils-of-Christian-Delusion

This draft of modern theology in Latin America shows its three dominating tendencies, which are responsible for its present development: the reception of a pluralistic theology of religion in the application to the mosaic of pre-Columbian religions, the return of the - albeit modified - theology of liberation, so as a radicalized feministic theology. Some theologians advocate an indigenous theology that is generated on the one hand from the pluralistic principle and on the other hand from the principle of liberation from colonial foreign infiltration. Though the postmodern philosophical preliminary decisions are leading the discourse, it is not always explicitly addressed. For this reason, the portrayal of prevalent theological directions is followed by some critical questions regarding the fundamentals of postmodern thinking.

Sept. 9, 1985

For more on this, see my Religion and Revolution in Latin American (1983) and my Grass-Roots Organizing in Rural Brazil: Movimento de Educação de Base and Comunidades Eclesiais de Base (1983). Available below on Academia.edu

J.J. Tamayo, researcher in religious studies at the university of Madrid Carlos III, has shown with his recent publications that theology can free itself from cultural and dogmatic narrowness in order to respond  to the challenges of the present. In his new book: "Teologías del Sur. El giro descolonizador"  (Madrid: Trotta 2017). In this renunciation of all forms of colonialism he leaves each religious Eurocentrism behind and looks with  engaged interest  to African, Asian Latin American and Black American concepts of theology. He reveals the still-existing colonial structures on the southern part of the world. Unfortunately these are a constitutive element of modernity. To change the mindset in general, Tamayo focuses on feminism, ecology, and option for the poor as the fundamental challenges of the present time. Social and religious hegemonies to the disadvantage of the marginalized people obliges him to stand up against patriarchy, (neo) -colonialism, neo-liberal capitalism, racism, environmental destruction, crisis of democracy and fundamentalism of all kinds. The aim of his book is based on criticism of previous (Christian) religious concepts. The way must be opened to a theology with human-friendly ethics and visionary global responsibility. Therefore it is necessary to learn in the West from the [indigenious] theologies of liberation which have been developed in the South.