Dialogic Mediations: Reflections on the Hopeful Future of US Liberation Theology

Abstract

At present, and for some time now, many have been asking questions about the prospects and future of liberation theology, and for good reasons too. After all, liberation theology has been around for about 40 years now. In terms of the academy, that could just as well be counted in “dog years” due to the academy’s penchant for the latest thing: yesterday liberation theology; today postcolonial theology; tomorrow who knows? But, besides this matter of age or “long-history,” if it can be called that, there is also the fact that the historical context of liberation theology has changed much in the course of those 40 plus years. We are probably all informed of the pertinent changes by now, but it might still be worth mentioning the resistance that liberation theology has met with in certain sectors of the church: the decline of mainline liberal churches and the expansion of conservative mega-churches and of charismatic and holiness movements that are not always receptive to liberation theology; the entrenchment of capitalism as both an economic and cultural system; the internationalization of corporations; the fragmentation of the political and religious Left; the silent deepening of a racial, ethnic, and class divide; the loss of a sense of the thoroughly relational character of the web of life; and the narrowed sense of public purpose and political possibility that marks contemporary public life and thought, among other things.