Posted by
Bob B on Friday, August 15, 2008 11:56:22 AM
Have you wondered what is Liberation Theology anyway? I had never heard of it before Barack Obama introduced America to Rev Jeremiah Wright. In my naiveté I even wondered if it had been a development of the Rev JW. Not so.
I turned to Wikipedia for help. I love Wikipedia but one has to read it with a grain of skepticism, more than a grain on ideological subjects. Here we discover the key is the concept that poverty is the source of sin thus theologians must be politically active, to eliminate poverty, hence sin. Sounds a bit Marxist and leaves unexplained how this accounts for preaching the likes of “white mans greed leaves a world in need” and other racially divisive screeds.
I was recently reading some papers by A.F. Hayek, author of The Road to Serfdom, when to my amazement I see Hayek defined it many years ago. Hayek can be tortuous to read so let me first interpret then give the full quote.
Interpretation
The ‘liberation’ is liberation from personal restraint. The restraint includes restraint from harboring and expressing hostility toward others who are not like yourself, as well as
liberation from various personal responsibilities.
The rational for calling it ‘theology’ is not explained by Hayek. An inference could be taken that it is because the idea was popularized at one time by a faction of the Catholic Church. It seems to me not to be theology at all.
After waxing eloquent about Rousseau, Foucault and Habermas ‘ Hayek says, quote:
“On a less sophisticated level the argument against alienation are the demands for liberation from the burdens of civilization including the burdens of disciplined work, responsibility, risk taking, saving, honesty, the honoring of promises, as well as the difficulties of curbing by general rules one’s natural reactions of hostility to strangers and solidarity with those who are not like oneself, an ever more severe threat to political liberty. Thus the notion of liberation, although allegedly new is actually archaic in its demand for release from traditional morals.
Those who champion such liberty would destroy the basis of freedom, and permit men to do what would irreparably break down those conditions that make civilization possible. One example appears in so called ‘Liberation Theology’, especially within the Roman Catholic Church in South America.”
A. F. Hayek, in The Fatal Conceit
So there you have it, freedom from personal responsibilities and sanction to be racist, according to Hayek. All that’s left is to consider how Wright’s specifically Black Liberation Theology fits into the picture. And then consider implications of Barack Obama’s devotion to it.