Liberation Theology

4. The Basic Christian Community Movement


When Somoza was president of Nicaragua during the 1970’s, Ernesto Cardenal, a Nicaraguan priest, was a revolutionary poet, expressing his feelings of revolt against him. Cardenal got so involved in his opposition that he joined a revolutionary movement, the guerilla FSLN. Although he began as a pacifist, saying that arms should be used only in self-defense, in 1978 he changed to support armed insurrection. When Daniel Ortega came to power, Cardenal was appointed Minister of Cultural Affairs in the Sandinista regime. The Catholic Church censured him for his action as a Marxist.
In an effort to advance the Marxist Revolution, Cardenal formed study groups on the order of communist cells, in which he advanced the revolution by teaching liberation theology. He made his theology as he went. Leaders would later call this practice, “doing theology.” Cardenal called his groups “The Basic Christian Community,” and later, “The People’s Church.” This essay concerns the development of libration theology in these cells. In order to make the cell appear to be a Bible study, Cardenal read Bible stories about poor and oppressed people, such as Jesus’ reading Isaiah 53.

“The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
because he has anointed me
to preach good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom
for the prisoners and recover the sight of the blind,
to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor” (Luke 4:18, 19).

Cardenal asks, “What does this story mean to you?”
Someone responded, “It means that we are the poor, oppressed prisoners, the proletariat. We are poor because the bourgeois capitalists have exploited us. And comrade Jesus came to liberate us.”
“Very good,” says Cardenal, “if this is what you think this story means, if this is what it means to you, be assured that this is what it means.”
“Read us another story,” someone requests.
“Very well,” says the priest, and he begins to read again. “Jesus entered the temple area and drove out all who were buying and selling there” (Matt.21:12).
“I know what that means,” said an illiterate peasant “the money changers are the greedy capitalists and our Liberator is overthrowing them because they are exploiting us.”
“You must remember the other Bible stories we have read,” says Cardenal, “how the Egyptians enslaved the Jews and how the Jews overcame by organizing, overthrew the Egyptians and delivered themselves [Notice the emphasis on self-liberation].”
The people exchange stories, traditions, superstitions and an occasional Bible incident.
“You are not the docile poor,” Cardenal told the people “you are the erupting poor. You are angry and it’s all right to be angry. God welcomes angry people into the church on their own terms. As God’s people you are expected to engage in creative disobedience (emphasis added).
“After a catechism drill from Juan Luis Secundo’s, A Theology for Artisans of a New Humanity, they were dismissed.”
Harvey Cox of Harvard Divinity School, attempting to justify Cardenal’s innovations said, “The Basic Christian Community is “the Christian response to the bourgeois revolution, the economic pattern of the capitalists and their ‘modern’ religious mentality.” This is an example of how the liberationists blamed the U.S. rather than the Soviets for the Latin American Revolution. Cox goes on to say that Jesus also ran into difficulty, “not principally over doctrine but rather because he clashed with property owners, defending the poor and landless.” “It was the rabble,” Cox said, “who formed the majority of Jesus’ movement. Jesus was executed as a threat to the Roman emporium, and Christianity was a political factor from its earliest days,” not over doctrine but with property owners as a political factor.” What Bible, pray tell, is Cox reading? This is a clear example of how these LT proponents make the Bible say whatever they want it to say in order to justify their apostate theology.
Regarding the “liberation” movement, Cox said, “This represents the most promising response Christianity has made so far to the change of the tradition from a modern to a post-modern world, the clearest sign of the continuing presence of Christ in History.” Cox and his progressive friends advanced “post-modern” rather than biblical Christianity.
These LT cells, called “The People’s Church,” spread all over the world. By 1984, we were told; there were 200,000 such groups in Latin America, with 80,000 in Brazil alone. And the Catechism drills were so effective that Cardenal taped them and printed them as a “Commentary on the New Testament.” These cell groups were effective, in that they supplied the revolution with both men and motive. And as you know, the Soviet Union came in with lots of money and supplies, while the missionaries from the U.S. marched in lockstep with them in the Marxists revolution, all the time blaming the United States as the oppressor, lobbying for all the money they could get from our government, and enlisting their churches in the name of Christ to aid in the support of the Socialist Revolution.
When the People’s Church services were over, it was time for the people to engage in the revolution against those who would establish democratic governments. These people truly believed what they had been taught and were glad to do as they were told. They joined their Marxist comrades and the missionaries from the U.S. and they all marched together to the drumbeat of the Soviet Union.
Cox continues, “Liberation Theology is a church theology…par excellence, emerging as it does from basic congregations vigorously engaged in mission…By this radical interpretation of the Bible and ‘worldly’ definition of the ‘base’, the Latin Americans are projecting a decidedly ‘post-bourgeois’ worldview that recognizes class conflict…as a principle mechanism for social change.” Marx had begun the class conflict…as a principle mechanism for social change.” And, I might add, he set the world into conflict to bring it about. Liberationists, having a theology based on Marx’s philosophy of history, and they are committed to the Marxist cause.
Speaking of the French Revolution, Edmund Burke said, “Something must be destroyed, or they seem to themselves to have existed for no purpose.”

New Testament Commentaries
Many other liberationists besides Ernesto Cardenal have written commentaries on the New Testament. Rev. Theodore Snyder, the Methodist minister who went about lecturing on Theological Options wrote such a commentary on Romans. Phillip Potter, General Secretary of the World Council of Churches (1972-84), and his wife, Bärbel Wittenberg-Potter, an ordained minister in the German Lutheran Church, wrote a Liberationist commentary on Galatians, which she titled Freedom Is for Freeing. Such liberties have been taken with the Bible that our generation has almost forgotten what God actually said about anything. You wouldn’t believe how they have distorted Paul’s letters. If each individual, according to his subjective understanding and in his own particular context, is free to interpret the Bible for himself without regard for the rules of hermeneutics. I wonder why anyone would write a commentary to explain what Paul meant, if it is understood in advance that he means whatever each reader thinks he means. Each person’s subjective understanding is his teacher.

Pope John II Opposed Liberationists
The roots of LT in the Catholic Church go back to the Second Vatican Council (1962-65), and the Second Latin American Bishop’s Council held in Medellin, Columbia (1968). Since the 1980s, the church hierarchy, led by Pope John Paul II, has criticized LT and its advocates for supporting the Marxist class struggle and the violent revolution. The pope visited Latin America and insisted that the bishops and priests desist. Nothing is more clearly established than this facts; it was broadcast in the news.

Marxist radicals influenced the Catholic missionaries to work with them in the “liberation of the poor.” Catholic missionaries, in turn, persuaded Protestant missionaries to join the Movement. Instead of liberating sinners from sin, both Catholic and Protestant missionaries, and their churches, assisted the Marxist in “liberating” the poor from poverty and oppression. As always, when people leave the Word of God, they also leave the God of the Word.

Along with the bishop’s declaration and the establishment of The People’s Church, another monumental event happened—Gustavo Gutièrrez, a Peruvian priest wrote the “bible” on LT in 1971 and titled it, A Theology of Liberation. From the 60’s on, LT has not been only “the preferred option for the poor,” but the preferred theology for the progressive churches – both Catholic and Protestant.

As a matter of helpfulness at this point, I should mention that one of the most helpful books against LT is Liberation Theology, the Church’s Future Shock, Gerald Berghoef and Lester DrKoster, 1984.