Arguing for Solidarity With the Poor

On The Side of the Poor: Theology of Liberation
By Gustavo Guttierez and Cardinal Ludwig Muller
Orbis Books, 2015

Book Review by Dr Joseph Forde, from Signs of the Times Winter 2024

Liberation theology, according to Gerhard Müller, until 2017 Prefect for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in the Roman Catholic Church, “is one of the most significant currents of Catholic theology in the 20th century.”(1)

With its emphasis on the preferential option for the poor – a theological perspective developed by Gustavo Gutiérrez in his ground-breaking work of 1971: A Theology of Liberation,(2) that examined the context in which the poor resided in Latin America and considered them to have a special place in God’s people – it chimed perfectly with the analysis put forward by Pope Francis in his first apostolic exhortation, Evangelii Gaudium, where he stated God shows the poor ‘his first mercy’.(3) When referring to the preferential option for the poor, Gutiérrez and Müller argue a need for Christians to show solidarity with – and compassion for – the poor, including in the ways that they seek to influence the shaping of public policy. As such, Gutiérrez and Müller contend that liberation theology is concerned with material (eg. political, financial, environmental, technological) aspects of poverty on the lives of the poor, their causes, and the need to remedy them, and with the spiritual wellbeing of the poor.

This is a key difference, of course, between liberation theology (with its foundations firmly rooted in a theological anthropology) and Marxism (with its historical materialism devoid of any spiritual dimension). Drawing distinctions between the two, whilst also acknowledging what they share, is a key theme of the book, perhaps to lay to rest any anxieties some in the Roman Catholic hierarchy may still harbour about liberation theology and its Marxist influences.

With this purpose in mind, Gutiérrez and Müller are keen to re-emphasise that liberation theology is a Catholic theology of grace and salvation ‘now applied to history and society;’(4) something Gutiérrez’s classic text of 1971 also makes clear, stating: “The salvific action of God underlies all human existence,”(5) and: “To work, to transform this world, is to become a man [sic] and to build the human community; it is also to save. Likewise, to struggle against misery and exploitation and to build a just society is already part of the saving action.’(6) Good works and grace thus go hand in hand, as, from a Roman Catholic perspective, they must, to attain redemptive liberation via salvation.

Chief weakness

The book’s chief weakness is that it does not attempt to address what many consider to be the limited extent to which Catholic liberation theology, as a lens through which to examine and strategize a response to the plight of the poor in post-industrial contexts, for example, can be seen to have much value. A case in point was its now infamous (and unfortunate) inclusion in the Church of England’s report on the social impact Mrs Thatcher’s policies were having on the less well-off in the UK in the 1980s, called Faith in the City, published in 1985.(7) As Revd Dr Malcolm Brown, Director of Faith and Public Life for the Church of England, has since pointed out: “Faith in the City was theologically deficient, flirting, as many of us did, with Liberation Theology with insufficient appreciation that urban England and its people were more than a little different from El Salvadorian base communities [of the kind that Gutiérrez’s study had focused on].”(8) In hindsight, many would now agree that a far better theological anthropology to have adduced in Faith in the City would have been the one that Archbishop William Temple had embodied; namely, the reformist strand of Anglican Socialist tradition out of which his concept of the welfare state had emerged, and to which Thatcher’s polices were – at least to some degree – antithetical.(9)

Nonetheless, On the Side of the Poor is a welcome reappraisal of Catholic liberation theology, written from a Roman Catholic perspective, and one wonders whether such a book would have been produced had it not been for the esteem with which Pope Francis holds Gutiérrez and his theological legacy. I doubt it, frankly, but welcome this book as an important contribution to our understanding of the influence that liberation theology has undoubtedly had on shaping some aspects of Catholic social teaching over the last half century or so. It is also written in a fairly accessible style (as is the classic text of 1971 by Gutiérrez), and so will be of interest to lay Christians from any denomination who share a concern for the plight of the poor, and who are interested in exploring ways of approaching that aspect of Christian discipleship.

Notes

1. Cited on the back cover of G. Gutiérrez and G. Ludwig Müller: On the side of the Poor: The Theology of Liberation (New York, Orbis Books, 2015).
2. G. Gutiérrez: A Theology of Liberation (1971), (New York, Orbis Books Ed, 1973).
3. Pope Francis: Evangelii Gaudium: The Joy of the Gospel (London: Catholic Truth Society, 2013).
4. G. Gutiérrez and G. Ludwig Müller: On the side of the Poor. p.81.
5. G. Gutiérrez: A Theology of Liberation, p.153.
6. Ibid, p.159.
7. Church of England, Faith in the City: A Call for action by Church and Nation: The Report of the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Commission on Urban Priority Areas (London: Church House Publishing, 1985).
8. M. Brown, Anglican Social Theology: Today and Tomorrow, in S. Spencer (ed.), Theology Reforming Society: Revisiting Anglican Social Theology (London: SCM Press, 2017), pp.125-43.
9. For more on William Temple’s thinking on welfare, see J. Forde, Before and Beyond the ‘Big Society’: John Milbank and the Church of England’s Approach to Welfare (Cambridge: James Clarke & Co), pp.21-33.

Dr Joseph Forde is Honorary Research Fellow in Historical Theology at the Urban Theology Union, Sheffield, UK, and is the author of: ‘Before and Beyond the ‘Big Society’: John Milbank and the Church of England’s Approach to Welfare (Cambridge: James Clarke & Co. 2022).