Religion as Revolution

2018

Ernesto Cardenal Martinez (born 1925) is a Nicaraguan poet and priest who served as Minister of Culture (1979-1987) in the Sandinista government formed after the 1979 revolution that overthrew Anastasio Somoza DeBayle. Cardenal’s preparation for the priesthood included work with another poet priest, Thomas Merton, at Gethsemani Abbey in Kentucky, though he completed his theological training in Cuernavaca, Mexico. Cardenal credits Merton as a spiritual and mystical influence but cites Ezra Pound as a more important literary influence. The combination is useful in understanding the relationship between religion and politics that Cardenal embodies. What he learned from Pound, he says, is that anything, most notably history and politics, can be included in poetry. He put this to work especially in his early poems, many of which are historical narratives that tell the story of Nicaragua in particular and of Central America in general. One could say that they function as foundation myths, and this makes them intensely political in a way that has been compared to Pablo Neruda’s work. This mythical function echoes “Pre-Columbian” Meso-American spirituality and is also firmly rooted in Cardenal’s reading of Hebrew scripture – particularly the Psalms, but also the historical narratives that, again and again, tell the story of God’s presence in and with God’s people.

2010

This book on the missiology of M. Richard Shaull makes a definite contribution to both the history of Christianity and missiology in Latin America and the Caribbean. The story of Millard Richard Shaull, a missionary from the United States who was transformed by historical praxis and pastoral ministry in Latin America, is worth telling. M. Richard Shaull was a pioneering voice in the movement called liberation theology in Latin America and the Caribbean. His solid theological background in the Reformed tradition, his attentive and open mind, and his prophetic vocation and vision discerned in the midst of suffering and hope provide for the development of a relevant theology of mission. John A. Mackay, a towering figure in the ecumenical movement, and Shaull's mentor at Princeton Theological Seminary, became his main source of inspiration and theological advice. It was in the 1950s that M. Richard Shaull started to reflect and write on the church and its mission in the sociopolitical turmoil taking place in countries like Colombia and Brazil. His active involvement over the years in the World Student Christian Federation (WSCF) and his influence in the founding of Church and Society in Latin America, an avant-garde ecumenical organization in the early 1960s, place him both in the larger map of the ecumenical movement, particularly the World Council of Churches, and in the ecumenical movement in Latin America and the Caribbean. Shaull influenced the lives of theologians like Rubem Alves, his student in Brazil and at Princeton Theological Seminary, whose own work as a liberation theologian made a profound impact in the initial development of liberation theology in Latin America with his book, A Theology of Human Hope (Corpus Books, 1969). Dr. Á ngel Santiago-Vendrell, Assistant Professor of Evangelism at Asbury Theological Seminary (Florida Dunnam Campus), has gathered an impressive amount of information, which he diligently organized. He has selected important primary sources, analyzed the correspondence, and placed documents in their historical dimension (some of them unpublished and known to the general public for the first time). He has also traced books and essays forgotten or lost in missionary archives and personal collections of missionary executives.

Journal of Hispanic/Latino Theology, 2000

Full-text available at http://hdl.handle.net/10523/12753. David Tombs, ‘The Legacy of Ignacio Ellacuría for Liberation Theology in a “post-Marxist” Age’, Journal of Hispanic/Latino Theology 8.1 (August 2000), pp. 38-53. Note This paper was originally presented at the American Academy of Religion Meeting, Boston, 20th November 1999, at the Religion in Latin America and the Caribbean Group in a session on ‘Liberation Theology in a “Post-Marxist” Age’ to mark the tenth anniversary of Ellacuría’s assassination. It was subsequently published as David Tombs, ‘The Legacy of Ignacio Ellacuría for Liberation Theology in a “post-Marxist” Age’, Journal of Hispanic/Latino Theology 8.1 (August 2000), pp. 38-53. It is reproduced here with kind permission from the Journal of Hispanic/Latino Theology. Abstract The shifts in global politics in the last two decades have been described as the demise of Marxism and the triumph of capitalism. In this context, the murder of Ignacio Ellacuría SJ, five other Jesuits and two women (who had sought protection in their residence at the Universidad Centroamericana in San Salvador), was one of the last military operations conducted in twentieth-century ideological conflicts over Marxism. As Rector of the University, Ellacuría was an ‘engaged intellectual’ who was well-known for his commitment to the poor. In response members of the Salvadoran military, church and business community repeatedly claimed that Ellacuría was a Marxist subversive and eventually these accusations precipitated his assassination. The analysis of his relationship to Marxist movements, analysis and thought presented here demonstrates that this was never the case. Ellacuría had contacts with leaders of the armed opposition but was never a member of any armed or Marxist group. He drew on Marxist analysis and terminology but, as his response to the Vatican Instruction on liberation theology shows, despite recognising the value of parts of its analysis he always remained critical of Marxism as a system and distanced himself from aspects that he saw as incompatible with his Christian faith. He insisted that he was a Christian not a Marxist, and that the most significant influence on his thought was his faith in God in a world of inhuman suffering. Since Ellacuría’s death, El Salvador’s peace process and transition to democracy in the 1990s has changed the social and political context in which he worked. However, the structural violence and poverty remain a crucial challenge to Christian faith in El Salvador and elsewhere in Latin America. Ellacuría’s understanding of the virtues and potential pitfalls of theological engagement with Marxist social analysis will continue to be relevant for liberation theology as it seeks to present Christian faith in a prophetic way in the new so-called ‘post-Marxist’ context.

Journal of Church and State, 1979

The Catholic Historical Review 10, no. 1, 2024

Burn & Oates, London 1994, 244pp. ISBN: 0 86012 215 8. The book has been published in several countries, on three continents (America, Europe and Asia), in 19 different editions, in four languages: Spanish, Portuguese, English and Italian, 1994

In 1992, Pedro CASALDALIGA and Jose Maria VIGIL made this systematization of the spiritual experience the Latin American Continent was living. The first chapter makes a general approach to the human spirituality; the second one describes the lay spirituality of liberation, and the third one explains explicitly the Christian spirituality of Liberation.

Critical Research on Religion, 2020

The history of the Nicaraguan Revolution has received considerable analytical attention. Typically, the successful overthrow of the Somoza regime in the late 1970s is associated with the Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional, a Marxist/socialist inspired vanguard group. While the role Christians played in the revolution is often acknowledged as a significant one, in part because many Sandinista cadres were Christian revolutionaries, little attention has been paid to the degree to which Sandinismo, as a unique perspective on socialism, shares elective affinities with liberation theology, a prophetic expression of Christianity. This manuscript sets out to explore the relationship between liberation theology and Sandinismo-as-socialism. It starts by considering the perspective of Christian revolutionaries on this relationship. It then identifies the electives affinities between the aforementioned cultural frameworks, and it evaluates the Nicaraguan Revolution in light of these elect...

Estudios Interdisciplinarios de América Latina, 2020

This article examines the impact of La Ciudad Católica, an organization formed in 1959 by French and Argentine lay activists who coined and proposed a counterrevolutionary interpretation of Catholic social doctrine. Prompted by the rise of progressive Catholicism, Argentina's internal crises, and the global Cold War, Ciudad Católica advocated the formation of a cou-nterrevolutionary vanguard and the grassroots mobilization of an "Army of God" to counter the threat of "revolutionary war" and build a new Christian state. While partaking in a transnational network of counterrevolutionary Catholicism, these activists provided theological justifications for "anti-subversive war" and the dismantling of the liberal state. Este artículo analiza el impacto de La Ciudad Católica, la organización formada en 1959 por seglares católicos franceses y argentinos, quienes fra-guaron y plantearon una interpretación contrarrevolucionaria de la doctrina social de la Iglesia. Ante el impacto del catolicismo progresista, las crisis políticas argentinas y la Guerra Fría global, La Ciudad Católica propuso formar una vanguardia contrarrevolucionaria y movilizar a las bases ca-tólicas como "Ejército de Dios" para contrarrestar la amenaza de "guerra revolucionaria" e instaurar un estado cristiano. Al tiempo que participaban