REIMAGINING TRADITIONS: REFORMED AND EVANGELICAL THEOLOGIES OF LIBERATION
Andrew C Stout*
Children of the Waters of Meribah: Black Liberation Theology, the Miriamic Tradition, and the Challenges of Twenty-First-Century Empire, by ALLAN AUBREY BOESAK. Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2019. Pp. 266. ISBN 9781532656712
Evangelical Theologies of Liberation and Justice, edited by MAE ELSIE CANNON and ANDREA SMITH. Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2019. Pp. 376. ISBN 9780830852468
Reformed evangelical theology is liberation theology. Is that a hyperbolic statement? Maybe. However, if we take the arguments and perspectives of Children of the Waters of Meribah and Evangelical Theologies of Liberation and Justice seriously, it is a surprisingly defensible statement. Gustavo Gutiérrez clearly understood his own initial articulation of liberation theology to be a contemporary and contextual application of traditional Catholic teaching.1 Similarly, these two recent titles are investigations of the themes of liberation and justice that seek to be faithful to the Reformed and evangelical traditions in a contextual way. Take this observation and combine it with the Reformed tradition’s roots in resistance to tyrannical political regimes, Calvin’s insistence on God’s concern for the oppressed, and the robust criticism of tyrannical rulers in his commentaries, and the claim that Reformed theology and liberation theology are synonymous takes on a certain plausibility.
In discussing Carl Henry’s call for evangelical social engagement and the formation of the religious right, Lilian Calles Barger notes that the first generation of liberationists eventually “found that they were no longer alone, and their call for a politically committed theology emboldened others to forward alternative visions for the social order under the authority of God.”2 In a previous issue of this journal, I reviewed Barger’s book on the history of liberation theology, along with James Cone’s posthumously published memoir Said I Wasn’t Gonna Tell Nobody 3 Both those titles
* ANDREW C. STOUT is Associate Librarian for Public Services at the J. Oliver Buswell Jr. Library at Covenant Theological Seminary.
1 Gutiérrez quotes John Paul II’s favorable assessment of liberation theology’s “preferential option” for the poor as he responds to Catholic criticisms in the Introduction to A Theology of Liberation, 15th anniversary ed. (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1988), xxvii.
2 Lilian Calles Barger, The World Come of Age: An Intellectual History of Liberation Theology (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018), 255.
3 James H. Cone, Said I Wasn’t Gonna Tell Nobody: The Making of a Black Theologian (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2018).
noted that the role played by liberative theologies—Latin American, black, feminist, etc. has set the agenda for contemporary theology in many important ways.4 This essay follows up the themes of the previous one, exploring current developments in liberation theology among Reformed and evangelical thinkers.
South African theologian Allen Boesak has been promoting his liberative reading of the Reformed tradition from the early days of black liberation theology. With his first book, Farewell to Innocence, 5 Boesak quickly became an important voice among the first generation of liberation theologians. In Black and Reformed, 6 he began to wrestle directly with the Dutch Reformed tradition’s complicity in apartheid, arguing that Reformational theology could be appropriated in a way to serve black liberation in South Africa. Alongside Desmond Tutu, Boesak provided the religious leadership for the anti-apartheid movement. Building on the insights of James Cone, and applying his insights to the Reformed and South African contexts, he forged a theology of protest in a historic situation.
Now an elder voice in liberation circles, Boesak’s theology has continued to evolve and to respond to global developments. One thing that has remained consistent is his conviction that the Reformed tradition, despite its shortcomings, speaks liberation to the poor and the oppressed. Boesak understands his “radical Calvinism,” with its emphasis on the supremacy of Scripture, to run parallel to Cone’s insistence that the theologian is primarily an exegete of Scripture (xxiv). While he builds on the insights of Cone and other black theologians, Boesak also points out the ways in which early black theology was neither fully decolonized nor attuned to feminist readings of Scripture. The challenge that is taken up in Children of the Waters of Meribah is the articulation of a black liberation theology that learns from the voices of women (particularly women from the Global South) and that is robustly counterimperial.7
The exodus narrative is the locus classicus of the liberative tradition. Boesak continues and develops this tradition. He approaches the exodus with the conviction that “We must discover the exodus narrative as a story of women’s revolutionary agency, rather than a narrative of patriarchal dominance” (35). This thematic state-
4 Andrew C. Stout, “A Rhetoric of Revolution: Evaluating the Legacy of Liberation Theology,” Presbyterion 45, no. 1 (Spring 2019): 153–59.
5 Allan Aubrey Boesak, Farewell to Innocence: A Socio-Ethical Study on Black Theology and Black Power (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1977).
6 Allan Boesak, Black and Reformed: Apartheid, Liberation and the Calvinist Tradition (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1984).
7 Boesak’s own experience as a subject of imperialist oppression is invaluable to his critique of empire. It should also be noted that one contemporary Reformed thinker has challenged some of the prevailing notions of “empire” from those writing in the subdiscipline of political theology. For a fruitful and original biblical typology of empire, see Peter J. Leithart’s Between Babel and Beast: America and Empires in Biblical Perspective (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2012).
ment indicates the direction of Boesak’s reading of Israel’s redemption. While readings of the book of Exodus traditionally focus on the actions of Moses as he receives his commission from Yahweh at the burning bush and leads Israel out from Egyptian captivity, there are women who play crucial roles on the margins of the exodus story. Specifically, Boesak focuses on the role of Moses’s sister Miriam. He emphasizes her prophetic boldness, both in her interaction with Pharaoh’s daughter at the riverbank and in leading the Israelites in a song of praise to Yahweh after crossing the Red Sea. Her leadership is inclusive, emphasizing Yahweh’s role as the liberator of an oppressed people rather than his role as a violent warrior. The Israelite midwives, who resist Egyptian empire by defying the command of Pharaoh to kill their Israelite sons, are part of this same prophetic tradition. Boesak follows the lead of feminist scholars like J. Cheryl Exum who bring out these marginalized women’s voices.
For Boesak, one of the failings of early black liberation theology was a disproportionate focus on Moses as God’s appointed liberator of Israel. Miriam challenges the notion “that Yahweh now only mediates, speaks, and guides through men” (103). Boesak understands Miriam and the Israelite midwives to be the foundation of Israel’s prophetic tradition, and he adopts a feminist reading of the “rebellion” of Miriam in Numbers 12. This reading counterintuitively vindicates Miriam as a prophetic voice, calling into question the violent and even murderous response of Moses to an Israelite uprising. At first glance, this reading may appear to call into question the authority of the text and the actions of Yahweh. However, it actually anticipates Yahweh’s rebuke of Moses’s violent response in striking the rock rather than speaking to it in Numbers 20. By attending to the continuing role of Miriam during the desert wandering, Boesak provides an excellent close reading of the book of Numbers—a reading that takes the authority of the text with utmost seriousness.
In addition to the events of the exodus, Boesak focuses on the incarnation and the stories of Jesus’s interaction with women in the gospels: “As a theology of liberation, nothing is more central to Black theology than the exodus story and the story of Jesus of Nazareth. These two biblical realities anchor liberation theology as nothing else” (31). In discussing Jesus’s encounter with the Canaanite woman in Matthew 15, Boesak shows how the woman helps to clarify Jesus’s mission. She speaks confidently and prophetically to Jesus, making him aware of the expanse of his redemptive mission. He realizes through her questioning that his mission is not only to his own people, but rather, that he is called to suffer and overcome death in solidarity with both Jew and Gentile. Likewise, we must attend to the voices of women, voices that can reveal where the church has been complicit in patriarchy and in restricting the scope of Jesus’s mission. Appropriately, Boesak relies on the work of African womanist theologians like Mercy Amba Oduyoye and Elizabeth Amoah throughout his interpretation of the gospels.
Lest one should think that Boesak simply substitutes womanist and liberation readings of Scripture for a Reformed approach, I will note that his Reformed roots lead him to challenge these readings at various points. While he acknowledges the ways that the Bible has been wielded as a weapon of oppression by imperialist
regimes, Boesak cannot fully accept a liberative hermeneutic that views Scripture as compromised and harmful to black and native peoples because of its distortion by oppressors. Ultimately, the oppressed and the marginalized know better than to accept these imperialist distortions. God’s word of justice, liberation, and (I would add) of grace speaks clearly and powerfully enough to overcome corrupted interpretations of the text. Even while he sympathizes with and learns from feminist interpretations, he pushes back against certain readings that see the marginal roles played by women as clear evidence of the patriarchal bias of the text. Instead, he interprets the “marginal” roles these women play as “the first testimony of faithful resistance to empire the Bible offers us” (39). In this way, Boesak incorporates feminist concerns while also maintaining the authority of the text.
Boesak knows from experience what it means for an oppressive empire to distort the teaching of Scripture in the service of racial and ethnic bigotry. He experienced it under apartheid, and he is attuned to the ways that groups such as African women, Palestinians, and LGBTQ people experience bigotry today. This emphasis on praxis, a hallmark of liberation theology, squares with a Reformed understanding of Scripture: “The Scriptures, the Reformed tradition claims, ‘interpret themselves.’” Boesak takes this to mean “that the Scriptures resist interpretations, meanings, and applications that distort the heart of the biblical message, which is the tradition of liberation initiated by God in the earliest memory of ancient Israel and embedded in the truths articulated by Miriam and continued by the prophets” (18). The key to resisting distorted interpretations of the Bible and hearing Scripture speak clearly to our context today is to attend to the varied voices of the text in submission to the supremacy of God’s word. Boesak consistently turns to Calvin’s biblical comment-aries for liberative readings of the text, finding in the Calvinist tradition a faithful resistance to any authority that would set itself against the word of God.
Boesak writes with the prophetic urgency and the cadence of an experienced and effective preacher. He engages extensively with contemporary biblical scholarship, but always with a view to the application of the text. He weaves contemporary geopolitical issues into his readings of the text as a skilled preacher weaves illustrations through a sermon. By bringing his Reformed instincts regarding the supremacy and sufficiency of Scripture into dialogue with black liberation theology, he moves both traditions forward. He extends black liberation theology’s critique of white supremacy to address the plight of other marginalized groups. Boesak refers at one point to the “subversive theological ingenuity” (20) that black Christians have brought to their readings of the Bible, and it is this kind of ingenuity that gives credence to his own argument for the liberative potential of Reformed theology.8 It also affirms
8 Other Reformed thinkers who have called on the Reformed tradition to appropriate insights from liberation theology include Nicholas Wolterstorff and John W. de Gruchy. See Nicholas Wolterstorff, Until Justice and Peace Embrace: The Kuyper Lectures for 1981 (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1983); John W. de Gruchy, Liberating Reformed Theology: A South African Contribution to an Ecumenical Task (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1991); John W. de
Gutiérrez’s understanding of liberation theology as a contextual application of particular Christian traditions.
In his early assessment of liberation theology, Carl Henry highlighted two issues: “First, liberation theologians are correct that the Christian church should express concern and support for the poor in word and deed. But liberation theology falls far short of what the church has a right to expect from theologians who purport to represent the biblical Christ and to theologize on the authority of God’s revealed Word.”9 Most of the early assessments of liberation theology by prominent North American evangelicals fit broadly within this framework. They expressed agreement with the basic theme of concern for the poor, but they criticized—to greater or lesser degrees the theological and ideological grounds on which that concern was articulated.
It is worth noting that most of these early assessments, including the edited volume in which the above quote from Henry is found, consisted almost exclusively of contributions from white, male, North American and European academics.10 By and large, while commending liberationists’ concern for the poor, these evangelical scholars questioned the liberationists’ orthodoxy (at best) or condemned them as heretical (at worst). A strict North American evangelical orthodoxy, which sought to strain out any hint of Marxist or socialist influences on scriptural interpretation, was the criteria through which the insights of Gutiérrez, Hugo Assmann, and other leading liberationists were filtered.
Evangelical Theologies of Liberation and Justice represents something of a sea change in evangelical attitudes toward liberation theology and social justice issues. The makeup of the contributors alone is indicative of the shift. The vast majority of the authors are non-white, and seven of the eighteen are women. This demographic shift not only corresponds to overt and unapologetic commitments to themes of justice and liberation, but it also results in a much greater diversity of perspectives, concerns, and experiences. In keeping with liberation theology’s focus on praxis, the authors of this volume are not exclusively academics but also pastors and activists. They seek to capitalize on the growing evangelical commitment to social justice by Gruchy, John Calvin: Christian Humanist and Evangelical Reformer (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2013).
9 Carl F. H. Henry, “Liberation Theology and the Scriptures: Five Objections to Liberation Theology,” in Liberation Theology, ed. Ronald H. Nash (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1984), 191.
10 Another example along these lines is Carl E. Armstrong, ed. Evangelicals and Liberation (Nutley, NJ: Presbyterian & Reformed, 1977). An exception to this early trend would be Emilio A. Núñez C., Liberation Theology, trans. Paul E. Sywulka (Chicago: Moody Press, 1985). A Guatemalan theologian who taught at the Central American Theological Seminary, Núñez received his education in North America. While he writes from a Latin American perspective, his critique takes the same basic shape of those delivered by North American evangelicals.
“developing a specifically evangelical view of liberation that speaks to the critical social justice issues of our time” (xii).
There is a very basic, if rough, distinction between the types of essays in this book. The first type critiques traditional evangelicalism’s lack of a liberative impulse and points to other traditions from which it should learn. The second type identifies and develops liberative themes that the authors see as inherent in the evangelical tradition. The various sections of the book deal with questions of methodology, chart the history of specific liberation movements, rethink the concept of sin from liberative perspectives, explore marginal voices, and reexamine central aspects of evangelicalism’s heritage. While earlier evangelical assessments approached liberation theology with suspicion, the evangelical scholarship represented here turns the tables. It assesses and tests traditional evangelical orthodoxy by the themes, concerns, and standards of the developing tradition of liberation.
In the first chapter, Paul Louis Metzger helps readers to make sense of the differences between early critical evangelical assessments of liberation theology like Henry’s and the more robust affirmations found in this book. Metzger uses the distinction between centered- and bonded-set methodologies to explain the complicated relationship between evangelicals and liberationists. Early evangelical assessments focused on the boundaries that defined and separated North American evangelicals from liberationists, identifying who was in and who was out of each circle. Today’s more justice-oriented evangelicals have turned their focus to the common values and common goals that they share with the various liberation streams.
There is a consistent theme of “imagination” that runs throughout the volume. Soong-Chan Rah offers a searing critique of the “diseased imagination of evangelicalism” (45), noting how the boundary patrolling nature of evangelical theology results in an attitude of triumphalism. This triumphalism has caused evangelicals to ignore the sorely needed theology of suffering and lament embodied in the African American church. Andrea Smith seeks to “synergize the concept of being born again with the mandate to end structural forms of oppression” (124). Smith shows how a foundational evangelical tenet like conversion involves imagining the world in a new way. This reimagining of the fallen world is exactly what is needed in order to overcome white supremacy and systemic forms of oppression, and then to work toward the realization of the kingdom of God. This theme of imagination is evidenced in other contributions as well, and it represents an important impulse in much of contemporary theology.11
11 Another example of the far reach of “imagination” in contemporary discussions of race is Willie James Jennings, The Christian Imagination: Theology and the Origin of Race (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010). Imagination has impacted apologetics as well. See Andrew Davison, ed., Imaginative Apologetics: Theology, Philosophy, and the Catholic Tradition (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2012); Holly Ordway, Apologetics and the Christian Imagination: An Integrated Approach to Defending the Faith, Living Faith (Steubenville, OH: Emmaus Road Publishing, 2017); Justin Ariel Bailey, Reimagining Apologetics: The Beauty of
The authors display varying degrees of awareness of the different streams of each tradition. Some treat evangelicalism and liberation theology as wholly separate traditions, critiquing evangelicals for their exclusive focus on personal salvation and urging them to learn from the structural and communal focus of liberation theologies. Others display more depth and nuance in their understanding of the historical and theological interplay between these two traditions. An example of the latter is Amos Yong’s chapter on global pentecostalisms. Yong, an established Pentecostal scholar, shows how the explosion of pentecostal theologies in Latin American, Asia, and Africa has resulted in an evangelical spirituality that not only emphasizes the preferential option for the poor, but has actually empowered the diverse voices and theological perspectives of the poor and the marginalized. Yong’s chapter not only gives an excellent survey of the diverse and multidisciplinary developments in liberation theology (he grasps these continuing developments better than any con-tributor): he also shows how pentecostal theologies can offer a liberative pneuma-tology to the broader church.
Peter Goodwin Heltzel, Pablo A. Jiménez, and Emmett G. Price III also unearth the liberative streams that run through evangelical theology in their chapter on Gordon-Conwell’s Center for Urban Ministerial Education (CUME) and its first director Eldin Villafañe. The work of Villafañe and CUME are concrete example of praxis-oriented evangelical theology that has been positively influenced by the first generation of liberation theologians. Roberto Chao Romero identifies a neglected liberative stream within evangelicalism, which he calls “brown theology,” by looking beyond the North American evangelical context. Romero’s chapter is notable for the fact that, despite dealing with Latin American theology, it neither makes use of the term “liberation” nor mentions Gustavo Gutiérrez. Instead, he identifies other streams of Latina/o theology, demonstrating the way that the volume as a whole looks beyond the first generation of liberation theologians in order to forge genuinely evangelical contributions to the tradition. The fact that the authors are not overly focused on the first generation of liberation theologians helps to explain the absence of extended discussions of Marxist influences on liberation theology. The editors do note the critical engagement with Marxist thought that characterized Latin American and black theology (viii–x). However, they reject evangelical dismissals of liberation theology on the supposed grounds that it is “communist” or “nonbiblical.” By demonstrating how the tradition has developed and been influenced by global evangelicalism, this judgment is born out.
Other topics include the contributions of womanist theology (Chenequa Walker-Barnes), the biblical mandate for reforming our treatment of animals (Sarah Withrow King), the ways that liberation relates to issues of body image (J. Nicole Morgan), and the parallels between Indigenous cultural perspectives and the cultural assumptions of the Bible (Terry LeBlanc and Jeanine LeBlanc). Theologies arising from experiences of the low caste and outcast peoples of the Indian caste system are
Faith in a Secular Age (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2020).
helpfully explored (Rajkumar Boaz Johnson), and Howard Thurman and Martin Luther King Jr. are resourced to flesh out what is lacking in evangelical understandings of liberation (Mae Elise Cannon). A few chapters are heavy on rhetoric and light on insight, but no contribution is without helpful and surprising perspectives and applications. Evangelical Theologies of Liberation and Justice is an important step toward developing a theological foundation for justice-oriented evangelicalism. It is immensely helpful in coming to terms with the fraught relationship between North American evangelicals and the liberative tradition.
So, to revisit the opening statement: Reformed evangelical theology is liberation theology. Or perhaps it is more accurate to say this: Reformed evangelical theology at its best is liberation theology. The two books reviewed here collectively give coherence to the idea that liberation theology is always the contextual application of particular theological traditions. A more recent observation from Gustavo Gutiérrez supports this notion: “[T]o say that theology is ‘contextual’ is, strictly speaking, tautological; in one way or another every theology is contextual.”12 If we take seriously the contextual nature of our theology, we will begin to see the ways that Reformed and evangelical theologies are already shaped by the contexts in which they were born and developed. Very often, these contexts were ones in which white perspectives were privileged, women were not treated as fully equal, and people of color were subject to various forms of dehumanization. If the best impulses of our traditions are to be maintained, utilized, and developed, we must face their distor-tions, abuses, and shortcomings. In so doing, our traditions will be enriched by the voices of the global church, and we can hope that they will come more closely to reflect God’s coming kingdom.
12 Gustavo Gutiérrez and Gerhard Ludwig Müller, On the Side of the Poor: The Theology of Liberation (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2015), 32.