Gimme That Ole Time Liberation Theology

on April 16, 2013
Nancy Cardoso Pereira
(Photo credit: ClaudioCarvalhaes.com)

By Barton Gingerich (@bjgingerich)

Last week’s Ecumenical Advocacy Days featured a fine flashback to the heydays of the Religious Left: Liberation Theology, which reinterprets Marxism through a Christian prism. With the fall of the Soviet bloc, liberationists lost much of their popularity. Nevertheless, adherents persist today, though they address a shrunken audience. As the EAD Sunday lunch panel suggests, there is some tension between extreme Marxism with more moderate theo-political measures.

Dr. Nancy Cardoso Pereira of Costa Rica presented on “A Faithful Table.” Pereira—whose specialties include “social relations of gender, agriculture, peasants, Latin American feminist hermeneutics”—holds a plethora of degrees, predominately from Methodist institutions. Her affinity for Native Central American folkways was evident; she opened by stating, “We come from corn; we are seed.” “The earth is God’s table. Land is God’s table. God is not separate from it,” she furthered. “The world, my needs, my body, my holes,” the seminary dean said while pointing to her ears, nose, eyes, and mouth, “It’s so sensual! It’s so erotic!” Some of the audience members (this reporter included) squirmed somewhat uncomfortably in their seats.

Matters soon turned to work, labor, and what is wrong with the world: “[Businessmen] kidnap God’s table and mediate it with money and companies.” Pereira pondered, “Work is a way to be in dialogue with others…We are landless. We lost the opportunity and the connection.” She waxed eloquent on the sacramental nature of bread and land, only to warn, “Every sign can transform itself into a countersign…the diabolic moment of turning away from God and Christ.” “Capitalism…exhausts the resources of the land-bread dialogue…Give us this daily bread or Monsanto,” she bemoaned. Pereira condemned “the voracious appetite of the profit motive” which is “disguised by industry ad campaigns and PR.” The seminarian announced, “It is not possible to find what we’re looking for in the capitalist system…It is not a time to humanize capitalists…to give capitalism a soul.” “Capitalism is not falling from itself,” she observed, “We have to face this straight on. We have to do more.”

Her agrarian themes returned when she concluded, “Worldwide peasantry are attacked by the forces of modern technology.” On the other hand, Pereira remained hopeful as she cajoled, “Another world is possible… ‘Without capitalism, there is not life’—we don’t have to accept that!” “We have nothing, but we share everything,” she concluded.

Gerardo Reyes Chavez of the Coalition for Immokalee Workers followed in the plenary panel. He and his organization have fought for higher wages, safety precautions, and employee protections in agriculture. Immigrant workers often face many perils in this world. For example, women who had been sexually harassed were immediately fired upon any complaint. Chavez and others worked to achieve more just working environments. The Immokalee region of Florida, which provides nearly 90% of tomatoes in the offseason for fast food chains, stands as a high priority for many restaurant companies. Chavez negotiates and tries to peacefully contend with these corporations to better the lives of farm laborers. “Ideas and who came up with them don’t matter if they don’t fit the reality you find yourself in,” he advised

Dr. Pereira outright rejected such a moderate tone. “It’s about class struggle. Let’s name it for what it is,” she contended, “If we are just reaction, then capitalists and corporations…tell us what to do.” She concluded, “We are sure we want land reform. We want agriculture, not agribusiness. Globalize hope, and globalize the struggle.” These statements received a hearty applause.

While these revolutionist themes are nothing new under the sun, they do evidence an oft-neglected extreme. While “ordinary radicals” and other Evangelical Left compatriots stand in solidarity with organizers and workers like Chavez (generally through political activism), many evangelicals hope that such activists will stay away from some of Pereira’s agri-communist suggestions. Not that long ago, such ideas transformed mainline Protestant missionaries into foreign social workers and siphoned congregational tithes to violent guerillas like the Sandinistas. Since the denominational exodus came about during the later quarter of the 20th century, one wonders if the inexperience and naiveté of young evangelicals will get the better of them.

  1. Comment by Sara L. Anderson on April 16, 2013 at 1:40 pm

    I’m a little dense. Does Pereira want us all to dig up our back yards or grow tomatoes in pots on Manhatten balconies in rebellion against agri-business? Or does she want collectivism? That worked SO well in the USSR! Improving the working conditions of farm laborers is a good thing; “land reform” and its implications, not so much.

  2. Comment by Bart Gingerich on April 16, 2013 at 3:10 pm

    It was obvious from her commentary that she’s leery of any kind of free market. Sure, agribusiness is bad and corrupt, but “power to the people” led by “agrarian reformers” is a rather tired yet frightening trope. She wears her Marxist sympathies on her sleeve.
    This is not the “grow a tomato to fight the man/for your health” or “local is best” approach that, thankfully, is growing in the United States. It’s much more.

  3. Comment by Holgrave on April 17, 2013 at 8:14 am

    The economist Hernando de Soto, not exactly a left-wing Marxist, has supported a version of land reform (private property formalization). It’s not the idea that’s bad, it’s what the Marxists mean by it.

  4. Comment by Bart Gingerich on April 17, 2013 at 8:18 am

    Exactly.

  5. Comment by Donnie on April 16, 2013 at 3:00 pm

    It’s funny how “progressives” claim that conservatives are living in the past, yet they’re the ones who want to repeat the same failed policies that have been failing for many, many decades now.

  6. Comment by frederick johnsen on April 16, 2013 at 5:02 pm

    Let us begin by praying in the name of Parent, Child, and Holy Kernel (note one sarcastic and doubtful raised eyebrow) for the revival of Communism with a Cross.

  7. Pingback by Gimme that ole time liberation theology - The Layman Online - The Layman Online on April 18, 2013 at 9:00 am

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