Six weeks’ exposure to Latin America, even though it was a second visit and involved brief stops in seven countries, hardly constitutes a foundation on which to base an informed judgment. At the same time, it may not be inappropriate for me to voice some impressions.
There is no doubt that Latin Americans regard themselves as an oppressed people. Although their deliverance from the colonial rule of Spain and Portugal was achieved some 150 years ago, they do not feel economically or politically free. For example, Professor José Miguez Bonino begins his Doing Theology in a Revolutionary Situation (1975) with a historical analysis, which argues that Christianity entered Latin America in two distinct but equally oppressive stages, namely “Spanish colonialism (Roman Catholicism) and North Atlantic neocolonialism (Protestantism).” “The basic categories for understanding our history,” he writes later, “are not development and underdevelopment but domination and dependence.” Not that the domination is entirely from outside, however. Dom Helder Camara, Roman Catholic Archbishop of Recife in Brazil, is a courageous protester against continuing political and economic oppression by Latin America’s own right wing oligarchies and military governments: “It is a serious matter that, while external colonialism is ended …, the worst form of colonialism continues, I mean internal colonialism.”
Now evangelical Christians have no business to ignore this situation, to declare that it is no concern of ours, and to attempt to defend our pietism by the quotation of texts wrenched from their total biblical context. God made man in his own image. He still does, in spite of the distortion of his image by the fall, and he sets himself against anything that undermines the full humanity of man. We should have no quarrel with liberation theologians, therefore, who see “humanization” as a proper goal for Christian aspiration; our quarrels with them are rather that they sometimes equate that process with the biblical understanding of salvation, tend to espouse both utopianism and universalism, and often resort to dubious exegesis to support their position. But when will evangelicals develop their own biblical theology of liberation? It is of little value to denounce if we have nothing better to offer.
Granted the Latin American consciousness of oppression, the visitor is bewildered by the variety of competing solutions that are being proposed. Maximum publicity is given to the minority who advocate violent revolution. If liberation from the Spanish conquistadores was won by violence, they argue, only violence today can wrest power from North American multinational corporations and Latin American oligarchies. Che Guevara remains a cult hero for many students. More challenging for Christians is the example of Camilo Torres, who was a Roman Catholic priest; a little over a decade ago he joined the Colombian guerrillas and was shot in action. “I took off my cassock to be more truly a priest,” he declared, and “the Catholic who is not a revolutionary is living in mortal sin.” Two things struck me as I read his writings. The first is his extraordinary naiveté. He imagined that Colombia was ripe for revolution and that, given leadership, the people would rise and seize power. But he lived in a dream world of his own; his policies lacked realism. More important, they lacked a biblical base. His justification for violent revolution was founded, paradoxically, on the command to love our neighbour. For “only by revolution,” he reasoned, “by changing the concrete conditions of our country, can we enable men to practise love for each other,” that is, by bringing food, clothing, and education to the majority. But he made no attempt to reconcile his advocacy of violence with the non-violent teaching and example of Jesus.
It is with relief that one turns to the writings of Dom Helde Camara, whom one might describe as the Martin Luther King of Latin America. “My personal conviction,” he said, “is that of a pilgrim of peace …; personally, I would prefer a thousand times to be killed than to kill.” This is not because he has a weak social conscience, however. He bases his nonviolence partly on the requirements of the Gospel, and partly on the demands of realism. “Non-violence means believing more passionately in the force of truth, justice, and love than in the force of wars, murder, and hatred,” he writes.
I also admire Archbishop Camara’s discerning mind. He avoids blanket condemnations. What deeply troubles me in the contemporary debate is both the uncritical hostility to capitalism of many Latin Americans and the equally uncritical hostility to communism of many North Americans. Must we be so ingenuous in our use of slogan words? Dr. Miguez has been outspoken against capitalism, but in personal conversation with him in Costa Rica he explained that his attack is on “profit as an end in itself,” whereas the proper goal for production should be “the satisfaction of human need.” What evangelical can possibly disagree with this, without thereby enthroning greed rather than altruism as his motivation? Personally, I want to continue defending the freedom for creative human enterprise for which capitalism stands, but only if such freedom is responsibly controlled and is not made the excuse either for the spoliation of God’s creation or for the exploitation of human beings made in his image.
What about socialism? Of course evangelicals reject the appalling brutalities committed in its name, and the materialistic philosophy and crushing of personal initiative with which it has been associated. But is that the end of the matter? Good Pope John XXIII dared to write in his encyclical Pacem in Terris (1963) that we should recognize in socialism “good elements worthy of approval.” Evangelicals are foolish to turn a blind eye to the genuine idealism and solidarity with the poor and oppressed that undoubtedly motivate many young socialists. Significantly, when Ecuadorian Bishop Leonidas Proaño addressed a large gathering of Marxist students in Quito about the authentic, compassionate, and radical Jesus of the Gospels, the students responded, “if we had only known this Jesus, we would never have become Marxists.”
So is there any solution to Latin America’s problems? I am still convinced that there is more hope in evangelization than in any other single Christian option. We are under the authority of the Lord Jesus who has commissioned us. And nothing is more humanizing than the Gospel. Through it men and women begin to be remade in the image of God. Moreover, the Gospel of God’s love supplies the most powerful of all incentives to rescue people from everything that dehumanizes them. But this assumes that we are proclaiming the true and full New Testament Gospel. We must not use the Gospel to administer fresh doses of opium to the people, inducing them to acquiesce meekly to the status quo by promising them joy and justice in the sweet bye-and-bye.
I think Dr. René Padilla is right when he insists that “there are no global solutions.” He does not say this despairingly, however, but because he believes (as I do) that God’s way is to supply in his new society a model of human community as sign of his kingdom, and to encourage his people to be innovative. For example, Christian social action can include such enterprises as Christian cooperatives like those initiated by John Perkins for his people in Mississippi, a Christian medical center operated voluntarily by Christian doctors and medical students in their spare time as in the Dominican Republic, community development schemes as at Huaylas in Peru, the literacy and development programs sponsored by Alfalit in several countries, Gregorio Landero’s combination of evangelistic and social work on the coast of Colombia, the improvement of agricultural techniques for Indians as in Northern Argentina, and even the founding of a bank by Christian graduates as in Venezuela. One ardently hopes that Christian missions in Latin America will increasingly seek to promote such projects alongside evangelization; without the accompanying good works the Gospel lacks credibility.
