Presidential Address 2010 When Liberation Becomes Survival

Abstract

AbstractThis articles uses three contemporary issues — the struggle for authentic racial and cultural justice for people who are in some way locked out of the “mainstream” of the privileged white power structure, the quest of women to live out their God-ordained humanity in every arena of the church and society, and the response of the church to the perceived threat of the homosexual agenda — to explore the necessity of drawing on the intellectual resources of Pentecostal/Charismatic scholarship to engage the social justice issues with which the church must wrestle in the twenty-first century. Historically, liberation theologies have been dismissed by the evangelical and Pentecostal communities as totally unbiblical responses to social ills driven largely by unbiblical philosophical understanding and agenda, but they have failed to speak a liberative word to those within our own churches whose very lives are circumscribed by blatantly unjust responses to these issues. This article calls for crafting liberative theologies as a Spirit-empowered and enlightened intellectual pursuit that takes seriously the biblical mandate to be responsive to issues of justice.