Liberation Theology

Since the 1960s, when the Second Vatican Council set in motion a chain of reforms that would transform Roman Catholicism, theologies of liberation have risen from the socioeconomic margins to claim a central place as a globally disseminated complex of progressive religious movements and epistemologies. Gestated in a revolutionary crucible fired by the ideological claims of third world decolonization, liberation theologies opened public space for deep revisionings of Catholic identity and polity, in movements that touched and transformed Protestantism, as well as in other world religious faiths—particularly Judaism and Islam, and even Buddhism. To speak of a theology of liberation in the singular is to overlook the multiplicity of religious and sociological perspectives liberationist thinking has spawned over the past 40 years. Theologies of liberation have played a role in many of the profound shifts of cultural identity that have unfolded since the latter half of the 20th century—particularly on the axes of gender, race, sexuality, and class. Arising out of the liberationist impulse, if not exactly born of liberation theology, have come profound feminist theologies; queer and sexual theologies; North American Black and womanist theologies; third world theologies from Africa, the South Asian continent, and Korea; as [Page 430]well as theologies influenced by recent trends in postcolonial criticism. In addition, liberation theology played a crucial role in political movements in Latin America—particularly in El Salvador, Nicaragua, Guatemala, and Brazil—as an ideological cornerstone of Christian-based community movements. Given the global sprawl and differentiation of theologies of liberation, this entry offers a sampler of voices from a few important movements. After describing the methodological orientation common to all liberationist theologies, this entry reviews a few perspectives in liberation theology from Latin America, some Latin American and Latina feminist theologies, U.S. Black theology of liberation and womanist theologies, and finally sexual and queer theologies from North America and Latin America.