Liberation Theology and Niebuhr’s Christ in Culture

Walter Kansteiner was the Director of Economic Studies at the Institute on Religion & Democracy in the late 1980s before serving in the State Department and becoming the 13th United States Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs. Below is his writing on Liberation Theology and R.H. Niebuhr’s Christ and Culture. Links have been added for the benefit of readers and were not in the original typewritten document.

LIBERATION THEOLOGY AND R. H. NIEBUHR’S CHRIST IN CULTURE
Walter Kansteiner | Christian Ethics
October 20, 1985

In 1951 H. Richard Niebuhr had no notion of “liberation theology” as it is known to us in the 1980s. Yet, Christ and Culture makes for an interesting and valuable guideline in evaluating the composition of what is becoming an increasingly espoused and normative theology in the Christian Church of the late 20th century. Just as Niebuhr warns us not to attempt to place historical persons and concepts into neat and tidy categories, we also must avoid the temptation of generalized labeling and categorization. However, there are prominent features and guiding motivations within liberation theology that can be better understood if examined under the various motifs found in Christ and Culture.

Perhaps because of its relatively recent development, liberation theology does not clearly “fit ” into any of the five categories of Christ and Culture. (When using the term “liberation theology,” I am referring to the “mainline” thought of such writers as Gustavo Gutierrez and Juan Luis Segundo.) Liberation theology borrows certain aspects of each of the five answers to the question of Christ and culture. In addition to identifying with some of the positive aspects of these categories, it also is associated with the negative points and the weaknesses linked with the motifs.

Liberation theology’s essential movement can be reflected in Niebuhr’s “Christ Against Culture.” “The conflict of the believer is not with nature but with culture, for it is in culture that sin chiefly resides” (p. 52). The “culture” where sin resides, for the liberation theologist, is the systemic oppression of the military and oligarchical regimes of the world (which, of course, are supported by the capitalists of the North). “Culture,” then, becomes the bourgeois establishment. But unlike Tolstoy and other radical Christians, liberation theology does not call for non-resistance. The separation from the sinful culture does not follow liberation theology’s concept of “praxis.” It is here that the “Christ Against Culture,” in its traditional understanding, can no longer hold liberation theology. For the call from Gutierrez is not to simply withdraw and separate oneself from culture, but to overthrow it.

This active participation can be seen in Niebuhr’s “Christ of Culture.” Ritschl’s notion that “loyalty to Jesus leads to active participations in every cultural work …” (p. 100) fits neatly with the concept of praxis. Walter Rauschenbusch’s Social Gospel Movement shared this characteristic of complete involvement in the culture around you. Liberation theology, however, once again shifts the emphasis and hence breaks out of the motif. For within this active participation as described by Niebuhr, there is the basic goal of conservation: loyalty to Jesus leads to active participations in every cultural work, and to care for the conservation of all the great institutions” (p. 100). Liberation theology obviously does not concern itself with conserving the institutions that oppress the masses; it is those very institutions it wants to destroy.

In his chapter on “Christ Above Culture, ” Niebuhr describes the “church of the center” as characterized by acknowledging the radical nature of sin. Liberation theology has a very strong tendency to exclude its proponents’ “holy commonwealth from the dominion of sin” (p. 118). The question of the oppressed being liberated and then becoming oppressors themselves is not clearly answered by liberation theology. Juan Luis Segundo has acknowledged this weakness, yet he maintains that the oppressed becoming oppressors would only be a phase that would eventually be worked out.

The concept of a synthesis of Christ and culture reveals a number of problems with liberation theology’s understanding of Christ’s relation to culture. Liberation theology turns a deaf ear to the concept of a Lord “who is both of this world and of the other” (p. 120). The goal of “other-worldly salvation” is simply not part of Gutierrez’s platform. Shubert Ogden points to liberation theology’s weakness as one that stresses “emancipation” and ignores “redemption.”

Other-worldly salvation is pushed aside to make room for the main event – emancipation.

It is the total concern with the here and now that causes liberation theology to pick up a few characteristics found in Niebuhr’s “Christ, the Transformer of Culture” motif. The conversionists understanding of history can be distinctly recognized in liberation theology’s view of God’s liberation of men throughout history. “The conversionist (like the liberation theologist) lives somewhat less ‘between the times’ and somewhat more in the divine ‘Now.” The eschatological future has become for him an eschatological present” (p. 195). Present renewal (read: ‘the liberation from oppression’) is primary and the eschatological future strictly secondary (if thought of at all).

Bishop Helder Camara of Brazil has suggested that the synthesis of Marxism and Christianity could be compared to Thomas Aquinas’ synthesis of Aristotle and Christianity. Niebuhr suggests that for such a synthesis to take place there are two prerequisites: (1) “the presence of a widespread and profoundly serious radical Christianity protesting against the attenuation of the gospel by cultural religious institutions and (2) a cultural church great enough to accept and maintain in union with itself this loyal opposition” (p. 130). Is liberation theology the synthesis of Marxism and Christianity? Perhaps the prerequisites are far nearer to being fulfilled than in 1951. Liberation theology is widespread and genuinely radical. The second requirement, however, is more tenuous in its certainty; it does not appear that the cultural church (at least in Rome) is ready to fully accept it into the fold. It is ironic to note that liberation theology would consider such a welcome as nothing more than Northern co-option that results only in the weakening of the movement.

A frequent criticism of liberation theology is that it tends toward meliorism. Niebuhr’s “dualist” highlights this criticism: “Godlessness appears as the will to live without God, to ignore Him, to be one’s own source and beginning to be independent and secure in one’s self, to be godlike in oneself” (p. 154). This independence from God, the dualist points out, manifests itself in movements against the social law as well as zealous obedience to the law. Liberation theology is also guilty of a slight variation of this theme; that is, liberation theology attempts to place itself clearly on “God’s side.” “If we do not try to have God under our control, then at least we try to give ourselves the assurance that we are on His side facing the rest of the world” (p. 155). For all liberation theologists (and many of the “cultural church” thinkers), God is always on the side of the oppressed; God always prefers the poor. 

Like most modern theologies, liberation theology cannot be easily categorized. Its call for the emancipation of the oppressed clearly denotes its anti-culture tendencies. Yet its praxis orientation reminds us of a loyalty to Christ that leads to participation in culture. Liberation theology could be the 20th century’s great synthesis between Marxism and Christianity; yet its concentration on emancipation and its lack of concern for God’s grace and redemption give us wonder. As liberation theology develops and matures, it will demand new analysis and observation. R. H. Niebuhr’s Christ and Culture, like a well used measuring stick, will be there to size it up, compare it, and help us understand it in a better light.