BLACK THEOLOGY OF LIBERATION (Guest Column)

This guest column is written by Robert Chapman, who is a retired U. S. intelligence officer.

In the early 1980s I gave a lecture on the Theology of Liberation – “the Liberation Theology” - at a prestigious northeastern college. The audience was senior citizens, many of them Irish Catholics, and on hearing the lecture, they rose in protest and reported their displeasure of me to the program director. They disputed vigorously that church leaders would preach a revolutionary doctrine. Thereafter, I let Liberation Theology just lay there. It was too hot for religious American lay people.

However, at least one American religious order, the Maryknoll, embraced Liberation Theology, and we read of their struggles and deaths in Central America in the conflict between revolutionaries and the governments of Guatemala, Nicaragua, El Salvador.

Many who studied the subject believe Liberation Theology began in 1961 when in an unprecedented act, the World Council of Churches (WCC) invited the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) to join the organization. Unknown to the WCC, the ROC was a KGB appendage, staffed by intelligence officers. I know this well because of my experience in Israel and Jerusalem.

The Soviets took advantage of the invitational opportunity and sent Metropolitan Nikodim (then of Leningrad), the ROC’s second ranking prelate, to the WCC assembly. He espoused a doctrine known as Liberation Theology which was eagerly accepted by Latin American priests and bishops. Its revolutionary philosophy soon became a vehicle for violent change in Latin America as well as Africa and Southeast Asia. Nikodim did not write the Liberation Theology but was its messenger. Its authors were most probably in Moscow headquarters.

The doctrine’s theme is Jesus Christ was a revolutionary whose purpose on earth was to liberate the masses from the economic slavery of capitalism. It states capitalism produces a “center” and a “periphery.” The center is filled with wealth, progress and riches which are enjoyed by a few. The periphery, the shadow of the center, is a barren wasteland of social imbalance, political tension, overwhelming poverty and out-and-out misery for the rest. The task, the theology states, is to continue Jesus’ task of destroying capitalism.

As liberation theology caught on with the Latin American Catholic clergy, Gustavo Gutierrez, a Peruvian Jesuit, wrote The Theology of Liberation which spread Nikodim’s doctrine everywhere as a bible for revolutionary change.

Gutierrez wrote, “Capitalism and its society are to be wiped out, eliminated by violent revolution. In its place there must be implanted a government with state ownership and management of all sources of goods and energy, education of transportation.”

Latin American masses blindly believed a man of God, and the doctrine spread and spread. In scarcely twenty years, Malachi Martin, the advisor to Popes John XIII and Paul VI, estimated two-thirds of the priests and nuns in Latin America and one-third of the bishops were Marxists who promoted liberation theology. Bishop Sergio Mendez Arceo of Cuernavaca declared, “The kingdom of heaven can come about in our day only through Marxism.”

The Vatican could not allow Latin America, its largest religious constituency, to become Marxist, and it’s highly probably for this reason it chose John Paul II, who resisted communism in Poland. A confrontation between Pope John Paul II and the bishops promoting the liberation theology took place at the Conference of American Bishops (CELAM 3) in Puebla, Mexico. So strong and deeply entrenched were the bishops, the meeting ended in a tie. The Pope kept Latin America within its constituency, and the bishops, priests and nuns continued with liberation theology.

A friend with strong connections to the Catholic Church recently traveled to Latin America and returned to say liberation theology remains alive and well.

It is from this background of Latin America’s liberation theology that James T. Cone, Distinguished Professor of Systematic Theology at Union Theological Seminary brought liberation theology to mostly liberal, dissatisfied American blacks. He is the author of numerous articles and books on the subject, including A Black Theology of Liberation.

In many ways his theology is more radical and extreme than the Latin American version as it is based not only on wealth but on color. He writes,

“It is evident, therefore, that this book is written primarily for the black community, not for whites. Whites may read it and to some degree render an intellectual analysis of it, but an authentic understanding is dependent of the blackness of their existence in the world. There will be no peace in America until whites begin to hate their whiteness, asking from the depths of their being: How can we become black?”

“My style of doing theology was influenced more by Malcolm X than by Martin Luther King.”

“If Jesus Christ is white and not black, he is an oppressor, and we must kill him. The appearance of black theology means that the black community is now ready to do something about the white Jesus, so that he cannot get in the way of our revolution.”

“The definition of Christ as black means that he represents the complete opposite of the values of white culture.”

“One of the tenets of black theology is that every American is responsible for the plight of the blacks.”

All of the above have a bearing on today’s presidential campaign. The foremost church, the religious spearhead which advances the Black Theology of Liberation, is the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago. It is the church where former Pastor Jeremiah Wright’s mentor is James Cone. It is also the church where Barack Obama and his wife attended for over 22 years. Can a man attend a church for 22 years and not be influenced by its doctrine?

Pastor Wright married Obama and his wife; he is Obama’s close friend and until recently was Obama’s campaign' spiritual advisor. He hastily resigned only because of public exposure of his unpatriotic remarks.

In Obama’s capacity as head of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, he promulgated a need for an “Educational Fund.” The reason, roughly, “You cannot release people from slavery without educating them to deal with the outside world.” He has since announced he will increase President Bush’s faith-based charities by $500 million annually to help poor children read.

I write because I am ticked-off. Not at the liberation theologies, which might be another story, but at our national media. Twenty years ago I was almost driven out of town because I gave a lecture on the liberation theology. Today, the same subject is an unmentioned but germane part of the presidential campaign and the media will not touch it with a ten foot pole. What has happened to the once mighty American press?

The Little Flowers of St. Ambrose

(Published as "Seniors beautify St. Ambrose Church with tender care," in The Catholic Voice, vol. 46, no. 14, August 4, 2008, http://www.catholicvoiceoakland.org/08-08-04/inthisissue2.htm.)

In the summer of 2006, I left my university teaching post in Nevada to join my husband in Berkeley. I made it a point to attend Mass at each of the city’s four Catholic churches in order to select one as my parish.

When I first visited St. Ambrose, I noticed its beautiful garden and clean facilities and thought to myself that the church must be blessed with an exceptionally able gardener as well as a conscientious janitor. Although it was the warmth of then-pastor Fr. George Alengadan that convinced me to choose St. Ambrose, the church’s appearance was an additional factor in its favor.

Several months passed. One Sunday at the end of Mass, Fr. George called four men and a woman to the front and introduced them to the congregation as the parish’s Maintenance Crew. Only then did I realize it was these parishioners, instead of hired help, who had kept the garden blooming and the church’s great hall clean. My astonishment was quickly overtaken by a sense of shame because the men and woman standing before us were all senior citizens in their golden years.

St. Ambrose’s Maintenance Crew is consistent with the results of a study done in 2000 which found that a small minority (less than 10%) of the population in North America accounted for most (nearly 75%) of the volunteer work. Moreover, the volunteers tended to be older folks: 35% of those who volunteered were between the ages of 45-54, 30% were between the ages of 55-64, and 23% were over 65. More interesting still is the finding that among those who volunteered, individuals with a religious affiliation gave more time on average than those who were not religious, at 168 volunteer hours vs. 149 volunteer hours a year.

At St. Ambrose, the volunteers on its Maintenance Crew come to the church every Tuesday morning to perform the following chores, most of which are quite physically demanding:

* Sweeping and mopping the floor of the great hall where Sunday pancake breakfasts, RCIA and other classes, assorted meetings, lunches, and festivities take place. The hall is capacious and can accommodate 300 to 400 people. The volunteers who sweep and mop the hall’s floor are Arnie Guasco, Selso Martinez, and Mel Schiavon.

* Gardening: St. Ambrose has a lovely garden with perennial flowers such as roses, as well as annuals such as miniature sunflowers. There are flowers blooming even in the midst of winter. We do not have a paid gardener; instead, all the planting, pruning, weeding, and watering are performed by volunteer Barbara Thomas-Lieberman, who is assisted by Ray Aguilera.

* Outside cleaning: St. Ambrose is situated at the intersection of tree-lined Gilman St. and Cornell St. The pedestrian pathways and the small parking lot on Gilman require regular sweeping, mainly by José Valdivia.

* Electrical work and repair: Retired professional electrician Jim Mullarkey undertakes all the electrical work and repair for the church and its adjacent rectory.

* Building repair, painting, and other odd jobs, such as repairing broken pews, are performed mainly by Mel Schiavon and Richard Vohs.

Put simply, the above tasks entail plain hard manual labor. But the members of the Maintenance Crew perform these chores willingly and cheerfully every week, without fail, despite their mature years. The oldest among them, at a glorious 85, is Selso, while Jim, in his early 60s, is the baby of the group. The others are Arnie, 81; Mel, 80; José, 76; Ray, 75; Barbara, 68; and Richard, 67.

This group of volunteers is remarkable for another reason. With the exception of Barbara and Arnie, who were, respectively, a corporate accountant and a sales manager before their retirement, all the volunteers had been blue-collar workers, not unlike the humble fishermen whom Jesus once called to be his apostles. Selso was a maintenance worker (otherwise called a janitor) at UC Berkeley; Mel was an iron worker, fitter, layout man and foreman at Herrick Corporation in Hayward; Richard had spent 40 years in the US Merchant Marine; Jim was an electrician; and José was a dishwasher and cook at Spenger’s Seafood Restaurant for 42 years.

St. Thérèse of Lisieux (1873-1897), better known as the Little Flower, is only one of three women on whom Vatican has bestowed the honorific title of Doctor of the Church. Unlike the Church’s other doctors, such as St. Thomas Aquinas, who are celebrated for their learned intellect and rich troves of writings, Thérèse is known for her simple but profound notion of the “Little Way.” By the example of how she lived her short life, she teaches that to serve God and attain holiness, it is not necessary to accomplish great works or heroic acts. In her autobiography she wrote, “Love proves itself by deeds, so how am I to show my love? Great deeds are forbidden me. The only way I can prove my love is by scattering flowers and these flowers are every little sacrifice, every glance and word, and the doing of the least actions for love."

And that is exactly what the little flowers of St. Ambrose’s Maintenance Crew do every Tuesday. By their example, I was inspired to join the team. Truly, it is in the smallest that we are refined.