Religion and Social Change

Religion has historically been an impetus for social change. The translation of sacred texts into everyday, non-scholarly language empowered people to shape their religions. The United States is no stranger to religion as an agent of social change. In fact, some of the first colonial settlers in what would become the United States were acting on religious convictions when they crossed the Atlantic and made their way to the New World.

Disagreements between religious groups and instances of religious persecution have led to wars and genocides—the very same European settlers that came to the New World looking for religious freedom persecuted Native Americans, forced conversions and family separation, and used religion to justify the practice of human slavery.

Liberation Theology

Liberation theology began as a movement within the Roman Catholic Church in the 1950s and 1960s in Latin America. Liberation theology combines Christian principles with political activism; it is the synthesis of Christian theology and Marxist socio-economic principles, emphasizing liberation for oppressed peoples. It uses the church to promote social change via the political arena, and it is most often seen in attempts to reduce or eliminate social injustice, discrimination, and poverty. One of the founding members of the movement, Father Gustavo Gutiérrez Merino (a Peruvian theologian and Dominican priest) said true liberation has the following dimensions:

• It addresses the elimination of the immediate causes of poverty and injustice with the goal of political and social liberation, 
• It involves the the emancipation of the poor, the marginalized, or the oppressed and the removal of obstacles limiting their ability to develop with dignity 
• It involves liberation from selfishness and sin as well as a re-establishment of a relationship with God and with other people. 

Civil wars and political unrest in Latin America in the 1970s and 1980s led to the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of people, including priests. One of these priests was the Archbishop Oscar Romero, who was killed in 1980 by a Salvadoran death squad, shortly after he asked the soldiers to stop killing each other. Romero was canonized in 2018 by Pope Francis.^[1].

Although begun as a moral reaction against the poverty caused by social injustice in that part of the world, today liberation theology is an international movement that encompasses many churches and denominations, such as Jewish liberation or Black liberation philosophy. Liberation theologians discuss theology from the point of view of the poor and the oppressed, and some interpret the scriptures as a call to action against poverty and injustice. In Europe and North America, feminist theology has emerged from liberation theology as a movement to bring social justice to women.

Liberation theology influences Pope Francis’ philosophy from the Vatican today, as demonstrated by his pointed critiques of economic exploitation. In Pope Francis’ first apostolic exhortation, Evangelii gaudium (The Joy of the Gospel), he said, “Today we also have to say ‘Thou shalt not’ to an economy of exclusion and inequality. Such an economy kills.” ^[2]