Jesuit
Liberation Theology and the Proper Biblical Protestant Response
by
J. Parnell McCarter
Date 06/08/2020
We watch protests and riots
that have taken place since the George Floyd case in Minneapolis. We read articles like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_racial_violence_in_the_United_States
, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violence_against_LGBT_people
, and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violence_against_women
which list purported
violence systematically perpetrated by white Protestant Christian heterosexual
males who have led US society for much of its history. Is there a theology that propels these which
purports to be Christian? The answer is
‘yes’, and it is called Liberation Theology.
As noted
at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberation_theology
,
Liberation Theology is:
“a synthesis of Christian theology
and socio-economic
analyses, based on far-left politics,
particularly Marxism, that emphasizes "social concern
for the poor and political liberation for oppressed peoples."[1] In the 1950s and the 1960s,
liberation theology was the political praxis of Latin American theologians, such as Gustavo Gutiérrez,
Leonardo Boff, Juan Luis Segundo, and Jon Sobrino, who
popularized the phrase "preferential option
for the poor." The Latin American context also produced evangelical advocates of liberation theology,
such as Rubem Alves,[2][3] José Míguez Bonino, and C. René Padilla,
who in the 1970s called for integral mission, emphasizing evangelism and social responsibility.
Theologies of liberation have developed in other parts of the world such as black theology in the United States and South
Africa, Palestinian
liberation theology, Dalit theology in India, and Minjung theology in South Korea.”
The promotion of Liberation Theology is a critical
mission of the modern Jesuit Order such as described at https://www.oxfordhandbooks.com/view/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190639631.001.0001/oxfordhb-9780190639631-e-37
:
“The Jesuits
were important actors in the Catholic Church in the 1960s when changes in
Catholicism occurred before and after the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965).
The members of the Society of Jesus were active participants in movements
calling for the “inculturation” of Christianity and the “liberation theology”
coming from the Third World, two sides of the same process of globalization of
Catholicism. It is from this time onward that the center of gravity moved away
from Rome to South America, Asia, and Africa. The Jesuits also participated in
the transition from a triumphant church to a church based on service to the
poor. This is the social, cultural, and theological background in which the
future pope Francis, the first Jesuit pope, spent the early years of his
ecclesiastical career.”
Typical of this Jesuit Liberation Theology are the views
expressed in the article at https://dailytheology.org/2017/05/06/donald-trumps-jesuit-education/
of Jesuit Fordham
University:
“Texts that come from the traditions of
oppressed persons and groups of persons are perhaps the only light that can and should lead the way in efforts to build the Kingdom of
Heaven. We need womanist theology, black liberation theology, Latina/latino liberation theology, mujerista
theology, queer theology, and Asian liberation theology. These are the texts
that will unsettle. These are the texts that will disturb.”
This Theology thus demonizes
conservative white Protestant American heterosexual males who agree with Biblical
capitalism, and promotes a path of “salvation” out from under “our control”.
Jesuit Liberation
Theology, along with its purely secularist counterpart, has of course reached
far beyond the confines of Jesuit educational institutions. This theology and this philosophy has come to dominate every major institution in the USA,
including most of the professing Protestant Christian church. The latter has largely been coopted by
compromises like described at http://www.puritans.net/articles/ats.htm
, as well as simply drifting with the flow of society at large, rather than standing
up as the “pillar and ground of the truth” to which it is called (I Timothy
3:15). Ironically, money, power, and
peer pressure all lead in this direction for a movement that purports to stand
up for “the oppressed” but that in reality keeps the world under the oppression
of the world, the flesh, and the devil, who are the true enemies of mankind:
“And you hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses
and sins; Wherein in time past ye walked
according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of
the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience: Among whom also we all had our
conversation in times past in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of
the flesh and of the mind; and were by nature the children of wrath, even as
others.” (Ephesians 2:1-3)
Jesuit Liberation Theology rejects the Biblical
Protestant gospel and the Biblical reformed Christian faith (see http://www.puritans.net/the-biblical-gospel-which-is-the-only-way-of-salvation/
and such historic reformed confessional standards as the Westminster Confession
of Faith), and substitutes in their place a counterfeit worthy of the Man of
Sin, the Roman Catholic Pope (see www.historicism.net
). It promotes an un-Biblical egalitarianism (see
http://www.puritans.net/articles/egalitarianism.htm
) and propagates propagandistic lies, demonizing some for nefarious ends. It promotes a modern Babel like Rome always has,
and it instills unjustified hatred and envy.
Protestants today should pattern our own response
to this enormity after the conduct of our Protestant Reformation forefathers. At the personal level it means by God’s grace persevering
in the Biblical reformed Protestant faith. Politically, it means eschewing globalism and seeking
Biblical nationalism (see http://www.puritans.net/articles/nationalism.htm
and http://www.puritans.net/homelands/
). Ecclesiastically, it means joining
with churches which have remained truer to historic Biblical Protestant
standards.
We can be encouraged, for although there is
considerable darkness now, there is light to come (see http://www.historicism.net/aBrakel.htm
).