Christian theology and worship confess that the church is sinful. The church, then, stands in need of reminder. Christians need to be reminded of what they have known again and again, but forget time and again as well. This is one condition of our sinfulness. We fail to grasp the good news of God’s justice, liberation, grace, peace, and love. The theology of liberation emerged as a reminder of the church’s sinful failure, and of what it is called to be. It has reminded the church of its complicity with injustice, domination, oppression, and violence. It has also reminded the church of its vocation as a liberating agent of God the Liberator. Marx famously observed religion as “the opium of the people,” but advocates of liberation theology proclaim that however true this is as a description, it is also the case that Christian faith cannot be authentic if it is nothing more than an opiate. This is a claim always central to Christianity, but in the 1960s a new emerging school of theology...
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Minch, M. (2011). Liberation Theology. In: Chatterjee, D.K. (eds) Encyclopedia of Global Justice. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-9160-5_108
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