April 29, 2011
Introduction
While many Latin American evangelical theologians have interacted, criticized, and dialogued fruitfully with theologies of liberation, there is a disturbing trend among critical “responses” to liberation theology from many North Americans. In reality, these critical “responses” would be better labeled as polemical dismissals, uncritical rejections, or even propagandistic defenses of American capitalism. This onslaught has been prompted by one facet of liberation theology that has been particularly intractable for privileged Euroamerican male academics: the denunciation of “savage capitalism” and the underlying relation to Marxist socio-economic criticism. While liberation theologians such as Gustavo Gutierrez and Jose Miguez Bonino cite social and economic theories and historical data extensively to support their argument, critics, such as J Ronald Blue of Dallas Seminary and Michael Novak of the neoconservative American Enterprise Institute, merely write off Marxism as “a glorified Robin Hood approach” to solving the problem of poverty without quoting either Marx or any liberationist’s use of Marx a single time.
The Fox News conservative pundit Glenn Beck has continuously attacked liberation theologians for undermining American principles. In an online article attacking Sojourners magazine editor Rev. Jim Wallis for undermining the “definition of individual salvation” that he holds, Beck even went so far as to assert that “there is a poison in some of our churches. Social justice…isn’t in the gospel, neither is redistribution of wealth.”
Perhaps Mr. Beck should consult the words attributed to Jesus, himself in Luke 4:18, and 6:17-26 which depict social justice precisely as a reversal of fortunes between the rich and the poor. This elucidates the grave danger in propagating criticisms without citing evidence from primary sources, historical data, or the Bible; while they consist of fabrications and half-truths that are easily debunked, many people will nevertheless hear and believe them at face value. This serves only to obscure the substantial issues and questions raised by liberation theologies and replace genuine dialogue with another condescending monologue from the white Euroamerican male perspective. In order to repair the broken bridge to genuine dialogue between North American theologians and Latin American theologians of liberation, these flawed criticisms, as well as their attendant sanctification of democratic capitalism, must be made to take account of the evidence. If, as Novak claims, democratic capitalism is the true way to express Christian love for the poor, then it must be demonstrated that this system has done more help than harm to the poor worldwide and in our own country. Novak’s question must be turned back upon his own prescription: will it liberate?
Critiquing the Critics
According to Blue, the first “major flaw” of “liberationists” is their emphasis on human rather than divine action and immanence rather than transcendence. According to Blue, Gutierrez’s argument that “God is in all men” has no biblical reference, because, he concludes, “there is no such biblical reference.” If Blue would only read 27 verses into Genesis, he would find the exact reference from which Gutierrez develops his argument: the imago dei.
Most baffling, however, is Blue’s analysis of the flaws inherent in Marxism: “Marxist theories lead people to some irrational conclusions.” No clear argument follows to clarify the glaring ambiguities of that statement. While he is trying to expose the alleged oversimplification of the liberationist contention that capitalist nations are largely responsible for Latin America’s destitution, his argument self-destructs. The present inequality, we are told, is more likely to be the result of the “contrasting foundations” of Latin America and the United states than exploitation. However, he identifies these foundations as “conquest and feudalism” (i.e. the exploitation of indigenous South Americans by the Spaniards) and the American “foundation of colonizers and free enterprise” (i.e. the exploitation of African slaves and the indigenous people and lands of North America as “capital” with which white men could freely engage in enterprise). Ironically, Blue goes on to admit that the best historical realization of the Marxist ideal of classless society with common ownership was in the early church!
In the final analysis, liberation theologians are pronounced guilty of emphasizing the precise themes that white Euroamerican male theology has neglected or even ignored. It would be fairer and more accurate to turn Blue’s own words upside down: by restricting their analyses and cures so stringently to the eternal dimension and divine intervention, non-liberationists have neglected historical time and earthly reality.
Michael Novak is more comprehensive both in his scathing criticisms of theologies of liberation and in his unabashed advocacy for American democratic capitalism. In his book Will It Liberate? Novak restricts his analysis and criticism to socio-economic and political concerns. The thrust of his argument is that theologies of liberation can only truly liberate if they abandon Marxist analysis and adopt democratic capitalism, which alone can truly lift the poor out of destitution.
Novak is critical of those who “blame America first,” which is precisely what the liberationist denunciation of capitalism seems to do. This statement betrays the underlying agenda of his subsequent argument: to shrug the blame for Latin America’s poverty and oppression onto the bad decisions made by Latin Americans. After dismissing the liberationists’ usage of dependency theory (the idea that the rich gain their wealth at the expense of the poor who are then made to depend upon the rich for survival), he blames Latin America for “allow[ing] itself to become unusually dependent upon foreign capital.”
The problem, according to Novak, is that Latin American production is entirely focused on export rather than internal distribution, and that corrupt government interventions prevent the poor from participating democratically in the political economy. In one sense, liberation theologians would agree with this point. As Jose Miguez Bonino demonstrates, in the wake of Spanish colonialism Latin America was seen by the Americans and British as “suppliers of raw materials first and of cheap labors and manageable markets later on,” and was forcibly restructured from sustainable agrarianism into an industrialized monoculture for the sole purpose of exporting cheap goods to the U.S. and U.K.
The corrupt government interventions Mr. Novak speaks of, in fact, occur to preserve the stability needed to protect a friendly atmosphere for foreign investment. “Thus, a history exists of U.S. pressure to topple democratically elected governments and install tyrants who secured stability,” including Abenz in Guatemala and Allende in Chile.
Conclusions
As Novak indicates, the true litmus test for the legitimacy of democratic capitalism is whether it has proven effective in the United States. Among his arguments for its success, Novak cites the fact that capitalism has made many goods which were once only available to royalty and nobility—such as silk stockings and spices—rapidly accessible to the poorest of immigrants to capitalist states.
What he never addresses, however, is where these cheap and accessible goods come from. Novak insists that capitalism does not exploit and dehumanize laborers, yet the desire of multinational corporations to maximize profits (the only true value in capitalist systems) has led to a race to the bottom for the cheapest possible labor and production costs. Instead of paying unionized American factory workers a dependable living wage to produce those beloved fruits of capitalism, those jobs have been exported to factories such as Kin Ki Industries in Shenzhen, China, where “workers are mostly teenage migrants, who work about eighty-four hours a week for 24 cents an hour with no medical insurance.”
The same operative principle of inequality has been observable in this country, in the evolving ratio between the income of CEO’s and the average factory worker. Before the Reagan years, the time during which Novak and many others began to sing the praises of free-markets and decry regulation as government interference, CEO’s earned forty times that of the average worker. As of 2001, “corporate leaders were earning 531 times as much as the average factory worker, a 571 percent increase.”
Additionally, during the 1980s, the poorest 20 percent of Americans saw a 10 percent increase in tax liability while the richest 5 percent benefitted from a nearly 13 percent decrease.
So much for the theory that the rich are not getting richer at the expense of the poor. In a time of financial bailouts which reward the very people and institutions that cause economic depressions at the expense of the general population, growing inequality at home and abroad, ever-increasing military spending and massive budget cuts to welfare programs and public institutions, the pro-capitalist arguments espoused by Novak are no longer credible. Certainly there are some, like Beck, who insist on promulgating this ideology in the face of mounting evidence, but they should not simply be shrugged off by those who know better. What is needed is a critical response that prizes academic integrity over polarizing polemics. Now more than ever the voices of liberation must be heard and their denunciations reiterated. It is time to join our Latin American sisters and brothers in the prophetic pronouncement of God’s solidarity with the downtrodden and of righteous indignation at their exploitation (Jer. 22:3-5). Rather than defensively react to preserve our own national interests, we must join in solidarity with our fellow Christians and pledge allegiance to God alone, not to any flag, for it is written, “No one can serve two masters” (Mt. 6:24; Lk. 16:13). Only then can we ever hope for true “liberty and justice for all.” Until we can achieve this kind of solidarity, the kind Jesus himself prayed for (John 17), there will only be liberty and justice for some.
Heretical Rhetoric 