Theology of the Body: When liberation theology becomes a caricature of itself

Thursday, June 05, 2008

When liberation theology becomes a caricature of itself

One of the reasons that I think the ecumenical movement is absolutely doomed to failure is the absolute silliness that comes out of the World Council of Communists...I mean the World Council of Churches. Here is the latest missive, (actually, they call it a communique, which so totally 60s) brought to you from the lovely island of Cuba, where everything wrong with the country is the fault of the U.S. I think that Fidel Castro might have been the author, as it mostly seems to be a propaganda piece for his sadistic government. (If you've never read Armando Valladares account of his time in the Cuban gulags, pick up Against All Hope now. It is truly horrific.)

Anyway, here's my favorite piece of tripe from their communique (I feel like I should wear a beret when I write that word)

"In order to sustain justice movements, spiritualities should affirm the outcries of rage and grief from those wounded by injustice, for these are positive values that can energize and focus revolutionary change."

Now I'm just not quite sure what to make of this particular sentence. Is it the outcries of grief and rage that are positive values? Or is it spiritualities that affirm the outcries? Since when are grief and rage positive values? At least, when are they positive values for anyone who has outgrown adolescence? (Am I the only one who is embarrassed by what a morose and sulking teenager that I was? And that I kind of liked it?)

At this point the only people who really take this stuff seriously are the professors who have written themselves into a intellectual corner by advocating Marxist Christianity and are unable to extricate themselves from their past work. (I'd love to see one of them say, "You know, all of my past work was crap and you shouldn't read it"). Most students don't really care for this sort of stupidity, except for the ones who have lost their faith and need to fill their minds with something else. Liberation theology is the opiate of the theologians who have lost their faith. It's a Christianity without Christ, which is to say it's not Christianity at all.