On November 16, 2017, Pope Francis tweeted, "Poverty is not an accident. It has causes that must be recognized and removed for the good of so many of our brothers and sisters." With this statement and others like it, the first Latin American pope was associated, in the minds of many, with a stream of theology that swept the Western hemisphere in the 1960s and 70s, the movement known as liberation theology.
Born of chaotic cultural crises in Latin America and the United States, liberation theology was a trans-American intellectual movement that sought to speak for those parts of society marginalized by modern politics and religion by virtue of race, class, or sex. Led by such revolutionaries as the Peruvian Catholic priest Gustavo Gutierrez, the African American theologian James Cone, or the feminists Mary Daly and Rosemary Radford Ruether, the liberation theology movement sought to bridge the gulf between the religious values of justice and equality and political pragmatism. It combined theology with strands of radical politics, social theory, and the history and experience of subordinated groups to challenge the ideas that underwrite the hierarchical structures of an unjust society.
Praised by some as a radical return to early Christian ethics and decried by others as a Marxist takeover, liberation theology has a wide-raging, cross-sectional history that has previously gone undocumented. In The World Come of Age, Lilian Calles Barger offers for the first time a systematic retelling of the history of liberation theology, demonstrating how a group of theologians set the stage for a torrent of new religious activism that challenged the religious and political status quo.
Rezensionen / Stimmen
...[T]he book brings together insights that, certainly, enrich the debate about these theologies... * Kleber Machado, Church of Scotland, Journal of Reformed Theology * ...the significance of the book is not restricted to its biographical character, as it tackles some common but misguided views about liberation theology * Kleber Machado, Church of Scotland, Edinburgh, Journal of Reformed Theology * Innovative and compelling * Journal of American History * A comprehensive history of the ideas that constituted early liberation theology. Barger's work provides critical background for understanding contemporary religious demands for social justice that are based in particular contexts, yet intersectional and global in scope. * Christian Century * Sweeping... successfully demonstrates how, across the Americas, theologians rejected abstractions in favor of slowly and painfully seeking out something to say about God that spoke to the last, rather than the first. * Catherine R. Osborne, St. Peter Claver Catholic Worker, Studies in Religion * This book is a major contribution both to church history and religious studies. * Church History * Calles Barger provides fascinating vignettes of unexpected connections, such as the friendship between Reverdy Ransom and Jane Addams, or Bonhoeffer's brief sojourn in New York in the early 1930s * J. Matthew Ashley , Commonweal * The World Come of Age is a word of historical depth and theological insight. Barger's extensive research makes this book an excellent survey of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Christian social thought. * Andrew C. Stout, Presbyterion * A sweeping transnational intellectual history that runs from the sixteenth-century revolutionary theology of Thomas Munster to the Black Lives Matter movement of today. * Journal of the American Academy of Religion * This is an important, comprehensive treatment of the social, political, and theological forces that contributed to the emergence of liberation theologies in the Americas in the 1960s and 1970s... The book is very well researched; the footnotes alone are a valuable resource... Summing up: highly recommended. * CHOICE * As a timely, ambitious, and rigorous intellectual history of liberation theology, The World Come of Age will be of interest to broad academic audiences, especially intellectual and religious historians, as well as scholars and students of liberation theology, political theology, and religious ethics. ... Barger's book displays the vitality of early liberation theology and the ongoing importance of efforts to recover its unappreciated resources for freedom dreams in the present. * Tyler Davis, Reading Religion * What a delight it has been to turn off social media and dive into this deeply reflective, thoughtful work of intellectual history. The book is not what I was expecting, and that is a good thing, because it is better * richer, more layered and complex, and intellectually challengingthan I expected, or even might have hoped for.... This is a landmark work.Paul Harvey, Journal of Church and State * This remarkable history should be read by anyone who thinks they understand the relationship between religion and politics. Barger convincingly demonstrates that liberationists participated in the forging of a secular age in which religious claims are a familiar feature of the public sphere. Lucidly written and theoretically nimble, this book will inspire a new generation of activists to think about how their moral calls to reform might change the world. * Kathryn Lofton, Professor of Religious Studies, American Studies, and History, Yale University * The intellectual history of liberation theology is an obvious and yet tellingly neglected subject. Lilian Calles Barger has filled a large gap with a perceptive, comprehensive, and gracious book radiating her broad learning and her deep personal engagement with the subject. * Gary Dorrien, author of The New Abolition: W.E.B. Du Bois and the Black Social Gospel * Lillian Calles Barger's The World Come of Age is a masterful exploration of the causes, course, and consequences of liberation theology in the twentieth century. Through extensive research across two continents, Barger skillfully weaves together the stories of thinkers and activists from varied backgrounds throughout Latin America and the United States. This book should be required reading for scholars of American and Latin American religious, cultural, and intellectual history. * Christopher Cameron, Associate Professor of History, University of North Carolina, Charlotte * The World Come of Age is written clearly and compellingly ... Barger makes extraordinary use of both archival material and personal conversations with those at the center of these movements ... The World Come of Age will benefit not only undergraduates and graduate students seeking an entry point into this theological and cultural history but also those studying the cross-pollinating influences of politics and religion in the Americas. * Jennifer Fernandez, Perspectivas * The epilogue of this book sets the hermeneutic for how to judge its object of study... As readers further her intellectual history, they might turn toward Afro-Latinx, queer, and indigenous theological uses of liberationist thinking to challenge racial and sexual violence and its intersection with class. * Emanuel Padilla, Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary, Religious Studies Review *
Lilian Calles Barger is a native of Buenos Aires, Argentina, who as a child immigrated to the United States with her parents. She holds a Ph.D. in humanities/history of ideas and currently works as an independent scholar. Her expertise is in the relationship between religion and modernity, cultural history, women, and feminism. She has published two previous books and written for Women's Studies Journal, Aeon, Yes! Magazine, Christian Century, the anthology The Religious Left in Modern America: Doorkeepers of a Radical Faith (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018) with her essay "Pray to God, She Will Hear Us," and online venues. She has served a podcast host for the New Books in Gender Studies, part of the New Books Network, having produced over one hundred episodes. She lives in Taos, New Mexico. Lilian@Lilianbarger.com
Autor*in
Independent ScholarIndependent Scholar
