Political Religions or Religious Politics?!

Religions such as Christianity are political through their differing ideologies about what church should be, what Christianity should look like, who gets into heaven and who doesn’t and so on. Politics can be influenced and moulded around particular religions for example in American politics in the 1900’s it was essential that the president was a Christian and transmitted openly Christian values. But how does politics relate directly to a particular faith? Liberation theology can be the answer to this.

Liberation theology can be viewed as combining the political and the religious in order to learn about God. Does one learn about God through books or through action? Liberation theology would answer this by saying that to understand God one needs to go out and do his work. The essence of Jesus message can be found in Luke 4:18&19 “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind,
to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour”. His message is one of liberation and social action. Therefore why do Christians seem to be hiding away from the world within church’s attempting to keep themselves pure and holy?  

Gustavo Gutiérrez believed there was a new way of doing theology and this was rooted within Marxism. He argued that if faith were equated with liberation praxis (praxis being unable to separate knowledge from action) then the nature of theology would be transformed. Believing that God had a bias for the poor, by serving the poor the question is do we learn about God? Should one abandon the books, the bible studies, even attending church and just serve the poor and needy instead? Yes it may be possible that one learns about God’s gracious side and develops a servant heart, but even Gutierrez argues action for social justice always needs to be rooted in the practice of faith for example prayer and liturgy.

It can therefore be argued that the more common features of Christianity i.e. praying, reading the bible, attending church etc go hand in hand with social action, serving the poor and fighting for justice. One question that can arise from liberation theology is who is saved? If it is not liturgy vs. social action, does being a Christian mean one has to do to do both? Is it possible to be a Christian by only doing one? Or by not doing either, can one be saved by a simple childlike belief in God and not have to ‘do’ anything.

Fraser argues the central purpose of God is justice through activity. Ideas alone are never the message of the gospel- action is. However one criticism of liberation theology is that by placing trust in Marxist analyses of history then theologians are elevating humanism at the expense of God. Furthermore, with the collapse and failure of Marxism, is not the whole argument and fundamental belief system undermined?! Therefore, how can one argue a point from a sinking ship (or a sunken ship?).

To summarise, despite its faults, liberation theology encourages people to learn more about God through action. It is not arguing we should abandon the books but telling the rich Western culture to maybe view Jesus as the radical political revolutionary rather than just the divine teacher and through this second viewing encouraging us to go out and learn about God through action.