Emancipatory Praxis and Liberation for Oppressors

Abstract

In an important essay on the liberation of oppressors, Jurgen Moltmann claims it is a sin for one human being to oppress another as scripture stipulates that if we do not practice love for persons whom we have seen, it is impossible to love God whom we have not seen. I would like to look at the main outline of Moltmann’s article for a number of reasons: 1) womanist theologians point out that although they have been oppressed by Black males who have excluded them in the articulation of Black theology, and in leadership positions throughout the Black church, because their theology represents the “politics of wholeness,” Black men, indeed the entire Black family must be included and 2) womanist theologians, in their offer of liberation to oppressors, do not only cross barriers of gender, including the Black male, but racial barriers in including the White woman. Black women, as they construct a theology from their experience of exclusion in terms of gender and race, practice liberation for their oppressors, in part because in relation to White women, they are the outsiders who are within, and in relation to Black men they are the insiders who are often on the outside. Womanist theology may be the only expression of liberation theology that explicitly addresses and includes in its praxiological task the liberation of oppressors.