What is liberation theology?

Tony Campolo offers a helpful answer to that question here:

Tony Campolo
What is Liberation Theology?

With all the upset over Jeremiah Wright and his so-called Liberation Theology, many have been asking what Liberation Theology is all about. Well, it is not very complicated! It is the simple belief that in the struggles of poor and oppressed people against their powerful and rich oppressors, God sides with the oppressed against the oppressors.

Those who adhere to Liberation Theology point out that all through the Bible we find that God always champions the cause of those who are poor and beaten down as they struggle for dignity, freedom and economic justice. When the children of Israel cry out for help as they suffer the agonies of their enslavement under Pharaoh, God hears their cry and joins them in their fight for freedom. God sides with the Jews as they seek deliverance from Egyptian domination.

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Quote of the Week

"The essence of Christianity is not so much to defend a dogmatic theology as it is to serve with a living Jesus who is waiting to be embraced by those in need."

Tony Campolo

Quote of the Week

"Those churches in Northern Ireland that set Catholics against Protestants and Protestants against Catholics, churches in America that teach a prosperity theology that contradicts everything that Jesus taught us about wealth, the "official religion" of some churches in Third World countries that legitimates the oppression of the weak by supporting regimes of ungodly power, and all of the churches everywhere that foster racism, sexism, homophobia, nationalistic chauvinism, and militarism--all are evidence that even those institutions which God intended to be agents of deliverance can become instruments of the Evil One."

Tony Campolo in Revolution and Renewal