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Sixth Newsletter of the Centre for Liberation Theologies

Dear Reader, Since the last newsletter, we have been on our summer break, but have stayed active in our work with the Centre for Liberation Theologies. Most importantly, we’ve been planning for the celebration of the 25th anniversary of the Centre. This celebration will involve a symposium with invited speakers, respondents, student presentations, and a small seminar. Information about this celebration, taking place December 9-10, 2013, is found in our newsletter. In this newsletter we report on our last Forum, which took place immediately before the summer break, with sociologist of Religion Prof. Sarah Bracke. Additionally, we announce our next Forum, taking place on Friday, September 20th with the Filipino theologian Dr. Rainier Ibana. We also continue to publish short essays on the future of liberation theology, in anticipation of our 25th anniversary celebration, which will center on this theme. In this newsletter, we include essays from Andre Willis and Nancy Bedford. Willis poses a threefold challenge to liberation theologies on the methodological, political, and existential levels. He asks: “How might we expand and enhance its dialectical method, augment and extend its approach to politics, and clarify the conceptions of freedom that have informed conventional liberation theologies?” Bedford challenges, in her essay, liberation theologies’ complicity with structures of injustice, In doing so, Bedford extends liberation theology past a discursive practice, and focuses on how it plays out as a lived reality. We also include two interviews in this issue. One is by Jon Sobrino, a theologian whose theology has been informed by the reality of poverty in Latin America, and who has also lived out his theology as a praxis within El Salvador. The other, from Charles H. Long, offers a perspective exterior to theology. As a historian of religion, Long is concerned with the meaning of religion in history and culture, and especially how it functions within the Black lived experience in the United States. Both provide fruitful challenges and insights into liberation theology, the former from an internal perspective and the latter from an external perspective. We hope you continue to follow our facebook page, as well as regularly check our website. We will continue to post important updates about Forums, other events, and our 25th anniversary celebration. And please don’t forget that, as always, we invited you to actively participate in this newsletter, and in the Centre in general, by sending us your comments and questions, and also your publications, reviews, etc. in the field of liberation theologies (clt@theo.kuleuven.be). Best wishes, Jacques Haers SJ, Kristien Justaert, Joe Drexler-Dreis

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Upcoming Activities Forums

- Friday, September 20th, 2pm, Romero Room, Dr. Ibana Rainier, “A Critique of Democracy and the Advent of Cyber Democracy as a New Form of participatory Democracy: Lessons from the Anti-‘Pork-Barrel’ Protest in the Phillippines”

- Thursday, October 24th, 8pm, Romero Room, Malik Muhammed, “A Theological Reflection on Post-Katrina New Orleans”

CLT 25th Anniversary Celebration This year the Centre celebrates our 25th anniversary. During December 9-10, 2013, we will celebrate this anniversary by inviting contemporary theologians to reflect on the significance of liberation theology today and outline the core concerns for the future. Some of the central issues we would like to discuss are: How might liberation theology open up the discontinuities and lacunas in traditional theology? Which mediations can liberation theologians use in order to respond to the problems that continue to confront marginalized populations? In what sense do the traditional concerns, methods, and concepts of liberation theology need to be continued, and where are innovations needed? These questions follow from the five main topics that the CLT focuses on in its research: liberation theologies, global issues (including environment, economy, politics, and globalization), migration, queer/feminist theologies, and the issue of (philosophical) mediations for liberation theologies. Five invited speakers will give lectures on December 9th. Respondents will follow each lecture. On December 10th, we will hold a seminar with the speakers, respondents, and others. Stay posted to updates on our website in order to apply for this seminar and for updates about the conference. The confirmed keynote speakers are: Maria Pilar Aquino, internationally known for her pioneering work in Latin American and U.S. Latina feminist theologies of liberation, researches liberation theologies, social ethics, and feminist theologies, with special interests in intercultural approaches, conflict transformation, and religious peacebuilding studies. She is professor of theology and religious studies at the University of San Diego. Monica A. Coleman is a philosophical theologian who works with a process metaphysic perspective and takes account of the black and womanist theological traditions. Her research interests include process theology, new movements in black and womanist theologies, African traditional religions (Yoruba-based traditions in the Americas), mental health and theology and religious pluralism. She is associate professor of constructive theology and African American religions at the Claremont School of theology. Farid Esack is a Muslim scholar and political activist who researches contemporary Islam, Qur’an Studies, Islam and liberation theology, and environmental justice and gender issues. He is the head of the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Johannesburg. Sylvia Marcos is a scholar committed to indigenous movements throughout the Americas and has proposed a new vision in the field of feminist critical epistemology, Mesoamerican religions, and women within indigenous movements, while promoting an antihegemonic-feminist practice, theory and hermeneutics.

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Ivan Petrella has focused on the future of liberation theologies and has written two books on the topic: Beyond Liberation Theology: A Polemic and The Future of Liberation Theology: An Argument and Manifesto.

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Reports on the Activities of the Centre Sarah Bracke (Harvard University and Ghent University): ‘In His Image' Looking for room for difference in the Christian tradition and Christian institutions in neo-liberal times (June 4, 2013)

All knowledges are situated, stated Bracke, citing Donna Haraway’s well-known article. Indeed, it is of crucial importance always to ask ourselves what the implicit (or explicit) norm is in the discourse we use. Or in Luce Irigaray’s words: ‘equal to whom?’ (responding to the claim that all people are equal). In trying to make explicit the norm, the underlying question always is: what happens to difference? Is it heard? Applied to our university, a Catholic institution, we can say: An important critique of the university’s ‘ivory tower’-logic (paternalist dynamics) comes from the (neo-)liberal side. Under neoliberal influence (and by that Bracke means the invasion of the university by the market economy and market logic), knowledge as disinterest and disinvestment becomes knowledge as interest, as investment, as social relevance. Neoliberalism in fact contains the promise in itself of breaking with the former white male scholar-hegemony, and therefore to allow ‘difference’. But the question remains: what kind of difference are we talking about? It may be that in a neoliberal logic, all people are equal, but we can state that in neoliberal times, difference becomes a play of niches (cf. Jean Baudrillard’s analysis of consumer society and processes of commodification). Difference becomes diversity – an ‘easy’ version of difference, because the norm is re-inscribed again, forcing everything into a pre-given format of competition, production, debt and profit. The political has been erased in favor of the economic. As a consequence, academic freedom doesn’t survive in a neoliberal context because difference becomes domesticated. Christianity, however, offers us some clues that may help us to think difference again, to re-insert it in the university and use it to save us from a neoliberal logic. This is a huge task for Christian theologians nowadays. Bracke points at the importance of the concept of incarnation, which helps us to think difference not in an abstract, but in an embodied way, but also mentions the ‘image ban’ in the Muslim and Jewish-Christian tradition: God’s transcendence keeps open a space for difference. In the discussion, several questions about the concrete tactics for such a revolt were raised. We have to fight to make room for difference on multiple levels, Bracke argues. The capitalist

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logic is all-encompassing, so sometimes we will be forced to act in contradictory ways, e.g. in the use of quotas in order to appoint more women at universities: it is not our aim to force people to hire women, it is our aim to change the way we are thinking. In other words: feminism is not only about women, it is about the struggle against all forms of oppression and exclusion.

The Centre for Liberation Theologies participates in the KU Leuven Metaforum on Sustainability The CLT is an active participant in the KU Leuven Metaforum on Sustainability, an interdisciplinary effort tapping into the academic and managerial resources of the KU Leuven and the climate-neutral transition project of the city of Leuven. The goal is to promote a more sustainable university from the point of view of climate change and environmental challenges. The workgroup has produced (in Flemish) a report analysing current KU Leuven CO2 emissions and is now developing proposals to improve KU Leuven sustainability. More information can be found on the website of the Metaforum (http://www.kuleuven.be/metaforum/page.php?FILE=wg&LAN=N&ID=23). The four main coordinators of this Metaforum are the professors Filip Volckaert (a specialist in maritime ecology), Peter Tom Jones (an engineer, research manager on Industrial ecology), Joost Duflou (a specialist in Industrial management, transport and infrastructure), and Jacques Haers. In the coming months several workshops will be organized and a final report with recommendations will be published.

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1000 Words on the Future of Liberation Theologies The Future of Liberation Theology Andre C. Willis Andre C. Willis is Visiting Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Brown University (USA). Generally speaking, the courageous insights and characteristic emphases of liberation theologians of all faiths—that God works in history on behalf of those who disproportionately suffer from socio-economic injustice and that religion can be a source for revolutionary praxis—rely on the methodology of dialectical materialism (Hegel), a political critique of liberal capitalism (Marx), and a belief in the inseparability of material and spiritual freedom. The late 1960’s challenge of Latin American liberation theologians (e.g., Gutierrez) against Catholic theo-hegemony and the confrontation of Black theologians with the canonical thinking of the US academy (e.g. Cone) have inspired creative theological reflection, encouraged religious activism, and stimulated theo-political discourse throughout the global landscape. At the level of structural social change, however, the effects of liberation theology have been negligible. This is likely due to a confluence of the Roman Catholic Church’s suppression of liberation theology that aimed to frighten its devotees, the spread of representative democracy throughout the globe that gradually silenced concerns of the new citizens, the expansion of wealth in South and North America that muted the aims of liberation theology, and the unprecedented spread of consumerist culture that steadily distracted theo-politically engaged citizens. These forces decimated the radical theo-political energies that funded the impulse behind liberation theology. Given our current global crisis, the ability to reclaim the dynamism and restore the vitality of political/liberation theology is crucial. In the face of the increasing concentration of wealth in the hands of global elites, rising unemployment rates in “developed” economies, co-optation of government by business interests and austerity measures, and the sharp increase in surveillance of private citizens under the guise of terrorist threats, the voices of informed liberation theologians could play an important role. This is not to call for a backward-looking attempt to retrieve and recover a revisionist or romanticized version of liberation theology. It is, rather, a plea to engage the most useful insights of liberation theology in order to provide new tools to reduce suffering in our local political contexts. At its broadest, we might characterize the contemporary global crisis as the end of democracy (e.g. Detroit, Greece) and the commencement of a police/surveillance state. What are the benefits and drawbacks of a reconsideration of liberation theology in this context? The future of liberation theology—its ability to address the current global crisis—likely depends on its response to challenges at the (1) methodological, (2) political, and (3) existential levels. How might we expand and enhance its dialectical method, augment and extend its approach to politics, and clarify the conceptions of freedom that have informed conventional liberation theologies? (1) On my reading, Giorgio Agamben’s The Kingdom and the Glory: For a Theological Genealogy of Economy and Government (2011) delivers a fecund methodological challenge to liberation theology. Agamben pushes past Hegel’s dialectical method, the essential engine for the notion of historical progress at the core of liberation theology, and thereby updates standard approaches to political theology. Instead of moving through a negation of a moment and its subsequent preservation in a new alternative (capitalism - socialism), Agamben seems to recognize—as Cornel West argued thirty years ago—that the process of determinate negation “subscribes to the idea that only one genuinely new alternative emerges from the class of contradictory elements within a specific dialectical configuration” (West,

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1982, p. 100-101). Agamben contends that power functions in a duplex modus where government is always a double machine and history is the site of a delicate choreography between its mutual components. In this way he problematizes the temporal elements of dialectical materialism and offers grounds for a revised method of political theology. He writes:

The activity of government is, at the same time, providence, which thinks and orders the good of everybody, and destiny, which distributes the good to individuals, constraining them to the chain of causes and effects. In this way, what on one level—that of fate and individuals—appears as incomprehensible and unjust, receives on another level its intelligibility and justification. In other words, the governmental machine functions like an incessant theodicy, in which the Kingdom of providence legitimates and founds the Government of fate, and the latter guarantees the order that the former has established and renders it operative. (129)

Liberation theology should expand its critical and hermeneutical method to include Agamben’s approach. (2) A political challenge for resuscitating the best of liberation theology might be taken from Chantal Mouffe’s recent work, On The Political (2005). Mouffe upgrades the classical Marxist views of class struggle and the dialectical motion of history by paying close attention to the pluralism in Western societies and noting the affective, cultural, and moral aspects of the liberal mode of engaging dissent. Building on the work of Jacques Rancière (Disagreement, 1998) and Colin Crouch (Post-Democracy, 2004) Mouffe works from the notion of the “post-political” and assesses the ideology of our commitment to consensus in public deliberation that aims for the reconciliation of conflicting interests. She contends that the obsessive quest for universal reconciliation comports with and has been the source of an ideology of repression. Dissent—in the post-political moment—is framed in moral terms (i.e. not “right” or “left” but “wrong”) and government has become, in large part, sophisticated machinery that constructs its challengers as enemies and narrates its critics as demons. The evisceration of the political character of all dissent into strict moral (and theological) categories and the demonization of dissenters undermines both social equality and personal liberty. She writes:

The typical liberal understanding of pluralism is that we live in a world in which there are indeed many perspectives and values and that, owing to empirical limitations, we will never be able to adopt them all, but that, when put together, they constitute an harmonious and non-conflictual ensemble. This is why this type of liberalism must negate the political in its antagonistic dimension. (10)

Liberation theology could radically augment its political approach by working from the idea of the post-political/post-democratic. Among other things, this would allow it to anticipate its marginalization, and, following Mouffe’s analysis, strive for agonistic democracy and an ethos of contestation in the public sphere. (3) An existential challenge to liberation theology is reflected in the aesthetic-political sensibilities of Peter Sloterdijk. In his book Zorn und Zeit (2006) , Sloterdijk offers a path to rage that liberation theologians might consider. He distinguishes between eros (appetite) and thymos (pride) to argue that our appetites have been overwhelmed with commodity consumption and our pride has been deflated by the moral traditions of psychoanalysis and Christianity. Sloterdijk argues that this has largely undermined our political energies. The contemporary task is to reanimate political energies via the development of an economy of self-assertion, what he calls a theory of thymos. According to Sloterdijk, this discursive effort requires that we distance ourselves from Freudian conceptions of the human being that privilege libido, capitalist economic thinking that relies on debt, and Christian moral thought that emphasizes guilt. “The task is thus to regain a psychology of self-confidence,” and:

Most important, we need to distance ourselves from the blatant ideology that results from the Christian anthropology according to which the human being

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is a sinner, an animal that is sick with pride, one that can only be saved through faithful humility. (18)

Liberation theologians should assess the relative merits of Sloterdijk’s challenge. The theistic sources of dependence that thwart the self-confidence requisite for collective political work must be engaged. These psychological features and their existential dimensions open new theological workers to the broad spectrums of the political and extend the dynamic web of the significance for religion. These reflections are, by necessity, preliminary. The future of liberation theology may also depend on its taking on an explicit ecological dimension, among other things. There are also criticisms of the work of Agamben, Mouffe, and Sloterdijk that can be made. My hope is that others might pursue this work as they consider the variety of paths for new work in liberation theology. Creative and constructive work that reconsiders theological method, new global political contexts, and existential dimensions of the lives of struggling agents worldwide can help re-shape radical theologies that aim to reduce suffering and inspire collective and visionary work that will improve the future. Musings on the Future of Liberation Theologies Nancy Elizabeth Bedford (Chicago-Buenos Aires) Nancy Elizabeth Bedford, Dr. theol. (Tübingen, 1994), was born in Comodoro Rivadavia, Argentina. She is currently Georgia Harkness Professor of Theology at Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary (Evanston) and Profesora Extraordinaria No Residente at Instituto Universitario ISEDET (Buenos Aires). She has written over 60 book chapters and journal articles, which have appeared in five languages, and edited or written seven books. She is a member of Reba Place Church (Mennonite) in Evanston, is married, and has three school-age daughters. In the biblical narratives, “liberation” is another way of speaking of God’s good work of transformation and salvation in the world. This not only holds for the paradigmatic Exodus story, but also for New Testament understandings of Jesus Christ, who is described as becoming one of us and giving himself to set us free from the slavery imposed by the dominant system (Gal. 1:3). The Spirit of God, present and working constantly in the world according to the patterns materialized by Jesus, is likewise none other than the Spirit of liberation and of freedom (2 Cor. 3:17). Wherever and however God is acting to liberate and make whole, there one should find a theology of liberation trying to reflect upon and make sense of God’s commitment to creation and of the ways in which we as human beings can participate and contribute to God’s work of transformation, healing and renewal. Sometimes God acts in unexpected ways and in scenarios that are outside the categories with which Christian theology is most comfortable. God as Liberator is not limited to working through adherents to the Christian faith. At the same time, even as it is expressed in multiple ways and contexts, God’s compassionate character is constant as the One committed to our future, having promised us the renewal of all things and indeed a new heaven and a new earth in which justice and peace will prevail. In this sense, the future of God is the future of liberation theology, and whenever theology is attentive to the workings of God in the world, it will be attuned to the many dimensions for which we use the shorthand term “liberation.” Nevertheless, given the ambiguity of all human endeavors, theology not least, following God’s way of liberation is no simple matter. As Juan Luis Segundo wisely commented in the first years of Latin American liberation theology, there is no theology of liberation without the

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liberation of theology. In order for liberation theologies to be faithful to their calling they have to discern constantly whether or not they actually serve to liberate rather than to enslave. Good intentions are insufficient: we need to evaluate the material consequences of theological discourse and praxis. For instance, we may find in some circles a theological anthropology of “complementary” relations between men and women that results in the justification of gender power asymmetries and the exclusion of women from particular ministries to which God is calling them. Even if such a doctrinal discourse is wound together with ideas about “liberation,” it does more harm than good. A true theology of liberation, seeking liberation from sexism, would likely move toward ideas of “mutuality” in human relations and away from “complementarity,” learning to leave behind discourses and practices that lead to gender-based discrimination and indeed to gender violence. This practice of realizing theology’s (often inadvertent) complicities with injustice and the willingness to be converted, continually turning away from such complicities, is one of the keys to a healthy future for liberation theologies. It requires self-awareness, humility, and rootedness in concrete communities of faith and practice where the consequences (both negative and positive) of theological ideas can be seen clearly. Theology is never merely discursive, but always also has to do with a way of life and with a particular path. That path can veer off in hurtful directions, as the history of theology and of the church illustrates. The point is that without the commitment to the “discernment of spirits” (1 John 4:1) and to a continual re-evaluation not only of the content, but also of the consequences in a given context of a particular theology, there can be neither “liberation theology” nor “liberation of theology.” By definition, a true theology of liberation is flexible, fluid, open: always permeable to the winds of the Spirit and therefore always also questioning hegemonic common sense, both in the dominant culture and in itself. As a result of its commitment to incarnation in a particular context, there is no one singular liberation theology, but rather many theologies that share common elements and convictions, which are expressed in a multiplicity of ways. Among their shared characteristics is the capacity to be aware of the place and time in which they emerge and a firm commitment to dealing with their historical reality. At the same time, they do not make the mistake of thinking that the place where they stand now or their particular historical perspective is the “ending point” or sum of all reality. In practical terms, this means developing a capacity to understand sin and injustice at its intersections (gender injustice including sexism and homophobia, racism, structural poverty, ecocide, colonialism, instrumental reason, militarism, violence as a method of conflict resolution, and so on), not according to only one singular lens to be pitted against others. In other words, liberation theologies are moving away from a hierarchical understanding of injustice, as if only classism (or racism or sexism or anthropocentrism or coloniality) were the basic sin and all others a mere superstructure to be resolved once the “base” is firm. Injustice is more intractable and more complex than any simple base-superstructure understanding would allow for. Confronting it requires theology to be able to account for complexity and intersectionality. Despite the apparent intractability of injustice, another characteristic that liberation theologies have in common is the confidence that God’s Spirit works from the bottom up and turns the world “upside down,” calling us in faith to do the same (Acts 17,6). This allows for the capacity to imagine God’s activity both in history and beyond it, and opens up space for transformative hope. I like to think of this as the pneumatological audacity of liberation theologies: the ability to imagine new possibilities and to put them into practice, sometimes in very small ways, but doggedly continuing by the Spirit along the path of Jesus. Theology done in this perspective serves as an instrument of empowerment for the people engaged in its tasks: it contributes to the construction of subjectivities and to the strengthening of communities of faith committed to transformation. One manifestation of a theology of liberation in my particular context is what I call “theology in migration.” By this I mean both a theology developed by migrants and sensitive to their

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experiences, and a theology itself able to manifest epistemological fluidity and “migrate” as necessary as it traverses the way of Jesus in new terrain. I currently live in the United States, a country with more than eleven million undocumented migrants, many of whom are forced to live in the shadows even as the service economy and agriculture depends on their labor. These immigrants live in more than one world culturally and as intercultural subjects have deep insight into the human experience. They carry on their bodies the marks of globalized capitalism, with its demand for young, able, mobile, cheap and expendable workers. Many of these migrants are people of deep faith, and indeed many of them thirst for theological education and the empowerment it brings, both at the level of local church life and in more public settings. Their reality pushes me as a theologian continually to remember that theology should be supple and responsive to the needs on the ground: theologia semper migranda. God is the One who liberates, but God does not liberate in isolation, without engaging God’s good creation. Liberation theology in its various forms is a human endeavor that tries to be faithful to God’s character manifested as the God who liberates, transforms and creates anew. Any theology, whatever its name, that hews closely to God’s character should be informed and formed by God’s commitment to liberation. We speak of “liberation” theologies (and not simply of “theologies”) not least to remind ourselves of the compassionate God of whom we speak, in whom we live and have our being, and who is our future.

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Interviews: Jon Sobrino and Charles H. Long Jon Sobrino Jon Sobrino can be counted as one of the theologians who are now considered as formative for what has come to be called “liberation theology.” Sobrino is a Jesuit theologian who has lived in El Salvador for over fifty years, where he teaches at Universidad Centroamericana “José Simeón Cañas” (UCA). Sobrino’s work is characterized by his commitment to, and solidarity with, marginalized and oppressed peoples, especially in El Salvador and Latin America. In 1989, the Salvadoran army murdered the six Jesuits Sobrino lived with, along with their housekeeper and 15-year old daughter. Sobrino escaped being assassinated because he was out of the country on a speaking engagement. This event has influenced much of Sobrino’s subsequent work. He is the author of many books, including Jesus the Liberator, Christ the Liberator, Christology at the Crossroads, The True Church and the Poor, Spirituality of Liberation, The Principle of Mercy: Taking the Crucified People from the Cross, and No Salvation Outside the Poor: Prophetic-Utopian Essays. CLT: How did you become interested in liberation theology? Preliminary remark. I never thought that “liberation theology” is a “thing in itself,” with limits determined enough to distinguish it from other theologies. That would make it a system of theology among others, that was born, grew, and decreased to its disappearance. This brings me to answer the question. I am 74 years old. Until 1974 I was totally unaware of “that thing” called liberation theology. In 1974 I definitively came to El Salvador, where I was assigned to teach theology. To stay current, and because of the good things I had heard, I read Gustavo Gutiérrez, Leonardo Boff, Juan Luis Segundo, Porfirio Miranda…. And I was very close to Ignacio Ellacuría and his theological thought. During several years we gave various courses together. From what I learned in those years, much of it was novel, and it struck me and I thought it was very useful for teaching theology in El Salvador. But these ideas were not carrying the label “liberation.” Ellacuría talked rather of “Latin American” theology. From what I was learning of the theologians who were already counted as “liberation theologians,” from what I had learned in Europe, especially Rahner and Moltmann, and as I listened to Ellacuría more and more, this is what was shaping the content of my theological thinking: There is a reality of sin, which has structural causes and kills a majority of the population, and an evident need to overcome this situation of death. Without doing this task, theology was neither human nor Christian. From here I re-thought the reign of God—as justice and fellowship—as the core of Jesus of Nazareth. I re-thought the historical Jesus, and the following of him, including centrally his compassion towards the poor, the announcement of good news to the oppressed and the denunciation of the oppressors. I insisted that for this he died on a cross, and I insisted that the risen Christ is a crucified Christ. The resurrection of Jesus was the reaction of God against the victimizers who killed the innocent. From the love of the crucified and from his rehabilitation on the part of God emerges hope. God is the God of life in a struggle against the idols that demand death for survival. What I discovered before, however, were “the poor”, massive and materially poor, oppressed and repressed, despised and ignored. And, paradoxically, I discovered as well that they have hope and the capacity to save us. And here a word forced itself upon me, a word that I hadn’t studied in Europe: “liberating them” from oppression was a human and evangelical must, something centrally important to for faith to being human. It dawned on me that speaking about a theology that centers on “liberation” made sense. And the unshakeable conviction that this theology was necessary was born.

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And I’ll tell one more step. In El Salvador, in the roughly twenty years from 1977 to 1989, there occurred something new that changed our lives: the massive and cruel reality of Jesuanic martyrs.1 This issue was not sufficiently treated in conventional liberation theology. Thus, in 1993, I wrote a programmatic text: “De una teología sólo de la liberation a una teología del martirio” (“From a Theology Merely of Liberation to a Theology of Martyrdom”). Since then “Jesuanic martyrs” and “crucified people” have been central to my theology. This is how I started, and without looking for it they started to call me a “liberation theologian.” (In a Salvadoran newspaper, in 1975, there appeared sharp attacks against liberation theology, which in those days were usual. To my surprise, I was among the liberation theologians.) The conclusion is that I never started by wanting to be a “liberation theologian.” I think that I haven’t ever given a course on “liberation theology,” although in many courses and books I’ve maintained the ideas that I mentioned earlier. I think that the fundamental intuitions that generated liberation theology are still very useful today, and more useful than those of conventional theologies. And it must not be forgotten that, whatever liberation theology is, it was born in Latin America, a continent of the poor. It is from these reflections that one must understand my brief responses to the following questions. CLT: There has recently been a focus on “the future of liberation theology.” Unfortunately, this can sometimes leave the impression that the realities that Latin American liberation theologians focused on in the 20th century are somehow no longer relevant. As liberation theology continues to mature, what elements and emphases developed in the 20th century should be carried forward? It’s stupid to think that poverty, oppression, imperialism, death, and on the other hand, the struggle for life, hope, compassion, generosity, and the generosity of martyrs have disappeared or have ceased to be real and central. And it would be even more stupid to think that what we have said is no longer critical. The forms change, for example in the murders on the one hand, and the organization of the poor on the other. But the necessity of life and the nearness of death have not disappeared. That other theologies form in the twenty-first century is normal, and in large part it’s necessary. But that the new theologies forget the roots of the liberation theology of the twentieth century and the reality of martyrdom is at least impoverishing. And the worst of all cases is falling into a bourgeois theology. Of the new issues that have appeared, I find extremely important, and in need to be urgently taken up, the issues of the indigenous world and women. They express today the world of the poor and the conventional liberation theology…. About the mother earth, Leonard Boff speaks very well. I don’t have anything important to say about this… CLT: You were one of the theologians who has formed and who continues to form the trajectory of liberation theology. In the contemporary pastoral and theological contexts, how should the notion of “liberation” be interpreted?

1 Ed. note: Sobrino defines the “Jesuanic” conception of martyrdom: “The violent death of many Christians,

especially in the Third World, has led to a rethinking of the meaning of martyrdom. Martyrs are those who

follow Jesus in the things that matter, live in dedication to the cause of Jesus, and die for the same reason that

Jesus died. They are ‘Jesuanic’ martyrs” (Jon Sobrino, Witnesses to the Kingdom: The Martyrs of El Salvador

and the Crucified Peoples, trans. Margaret Wilde [Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2003], 122).

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Starting with common sense and without excessive sophistication. And it is necessary to remember that for liberation theology the most real and radical context is neither the “pastoral” nor the “theological,” but rather the historical reality itself (Ignacio Ellacuría) and the spiritual experience (Gustavo Gutiérrez). The biggest problem I see is to ignore these two things and to expect to do liberation theology today taking into account only, or principally, the concepts of preceding liberation theologies. In other words: I don’t have prescriptions for today. But it is good to take into account two things: (1) To reflect on what liberation theology has produced (the symbol may well be Monseñor Romero, and the work and fate of the Salvadoran martyrs) and what it continues producing (the symbol could be Pedro Casaldáliga, his defense of the indigenous, his critique of the institutional church, and the risks with which he lives. (2) To remember the epistemology of Ellacuría: reality is known—in this case oppression and liberation, suffering and hope—in the disposition of taking charge of these realities in a praxis (en la disposición a encargarse de ellas en una praxis), to carry these realities (a cargar con ellas)—running risks and the persecution that reality generates—and shouldering the weight of these realities (dejándose cargar por ellas)—accepting gratefully the kindness, generosity, and solidarity that there is in reality, and above all in the underside of history. CLT: How does the approach of liberation theology in Latin America connect with or relate to indigenous people and their desire to regenerate their non-Christian cosmologies and epistemologies? Or can it? I think we’re learning. There are good theologians doing this work. Personally, I have nothing to add. CLT: How do you see Pope Francis’ relationship with liberation theology and the preferential option for the poor? What is the significance of this relationship for liberation theology? Pope Francis has spoken well on the issue of poverty, and also against capitalism and against the criminal indifference of the world of abundance. From the theoretical point of view we should have to wait for an encyclical to explain it. From the practical point of view, we will have to wait for the naming of bishops and cardinals very different from the current ones, who make an option for the poor and take the risks this requires. Without taking risks, there is no option for the poor. That, at least in Latin America, a significant shift be made in the formation in seminaries…. And that he canonizes the Latin American church Fathers: Don Helder Camara, Monseñor Romero, Leonidas Proaño, his compatriot Angelelli, and others. And that he canonizes non-bishops: the four North American nuns assassinated in El Salvador, so many indigenous women…. The number and the names will have to be thought of in the best way. But the important thing is to render appreciation and homage to a poor Christian continent of martyrs, and to do the same with other poor continents. Personally, the most important thing is not to look for a relationship between the Pope and liberation theology. The important thing is that Pope Francis performs in actu the liberation of the poor. That he takes risks for it, and challenges the powerful of this world. CLT: What does it mean to do liberation theology in a Western European context? With whom and with what should theologians who strive to be liberation theologians in such a context connect to? In the first place, it’s necessary to leave Europe. It’s necessary to see, touch, smell the reality of Africa…. It’s necessary to be open to that which shakes and changes people. Also that they convert. From that experience they will do theology in a different manner than they do it now. I have seen this in excellent Spanish theologians.

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CLT: Several doctoral students in our Faculty are working on the theme of love within theology. If theology arises as a response to reality, as opposed to a reflection on concepts, as so many liberation theologians have affirmed, to what must a theology of love respond? Love must be above all compassion, along the lines of Metz towards the poor, those who do not take life for granted. And in our real world, that compassion should also be justice. And given the primacy of love-compassion-justice, theology should be “intellectus amoris.” So I wrote many years ago.

Translated by Joe Drexler-Dreis Charles H. Long Charles H. Long was a professor at the University of Chicago, and also taught at the

University of North Carolina, Duke University, Syracuse University and the University of

California—Santa Barbara, in the United States. In Chicago, he helped found the first

curriculum for the study of religion in the College of the University. He consciously defines

himself as a historian of religion and not as a theologian, focusing in his work on the meaning

of religion in history and culture, and more specifically on African religions, religion in

America and methodology for the study of religion. For Long, the whole field of theology is

related to a discourse and logic that presupposes premature norms. This also entails any form

of liberation theology. Still, we believe that liberation theology could benefit from Long’s

analyses in a twofold manner: (1) as a form of self-critique and (2) as a tool of discernment, a

mediation that helps us to trace logics of oppression in history and culture. Significations.

Signs, Symbols and Images in the Interpretation of Religion, which captures much of Long’s

thought, is well worth reading in this regard.

CLT: You position yourself firmly within religious studies, or as a historian of

religion (Religionswissenschaft), rather than describing yourself as a

theologian. Why is this distinction important for you? What and who have

influenced this position?

To be precise I am a Historian of Religion (Religionswissenschaft). In graduate school I

studied a great deal of Christian theology and I am quite conversant with its history and aims.

I made a conscious decision not to become a theologian as part of my self-definition and the

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expression of my awareness of who I was within my own personal history in the nation and

culture of the United States of America. In my study of theology I was able to understand the

necessity for that form of Christian thought that is called theology. I felt that it arose out of

the peculiar historical situations of the first early centuries of the Christian Faith. It became

part and parcel of the formation of what became the West and possessed an important role in

this formation. I don’t think that all important religious thought and thinking should be

labeled “theology.” Traditions such as those of the Jews and the Muslims place great

emphasis on their Law and thus their modes of thinking are stylistically different from that of

Christianity. We might see the same in the case of the Buddhist Dharma and other forms of

thinking in the several traditions of the world. The West has for some time had the tendency

to think that if they possess or name a meaning then it is universal in its applicability so that

instead of coming to terms with the radically new, it can too easily be placed within a

category or classification that is already known.

Having been born and raised in the culture of the United States there are deeper reasons for

my avoidance of theology. For quite some time those in the United States who call

themselves Americans have had a love/hate relationship with their heritages in Europe. They

boast of their separation from that continent yet they have tended to imitate and envy

many of its modes and styles. To be sure, the early Americans were European settlers and

thus one can account for the European meanings. There is, of course, a great disjunction.

This is not the European-American’s land; they are not indigenous to the places they inhabit

as the Europeans. Americans are a people who were formed by migrations, conquest and

enslavements of peoples from various parts of the world. The indigenous and aboriginal

meanings of this Land have been suppressed and have played no significant role in the

foundations of the American state. Thus those elements that were significant for the

meaning of theology in Europe—an indigenous meaning of “the people,” a state church,

and/or a hierarchy that expressed the sovereignty of the land was not present. To

use Troeltsch’s language, America, from a religious perspective was not a church-type, but a

sect type, and as my teacher, Joachim Wach showed, later became a “denomination as the

religious body.” The issue was whether “theology” on the European model made or could

make sense if one attended to what was in fact the case. Theology in America has allowed

Americans to ignore the fundamental meanings that have to do with religion and to see

religion as primarily a private belief system. I feel that being a Historian of Religions enables

me to worry about other kinds of meanings and issues on the American scene and thus make

better exchanges and understanding of other human communities in the world.

CLT: How would you define liberation? Can theology be a part of the struggle for

this liberation?

I have read some liberation theology but since I am not a theologian I would not make any

sort of definitive meaning of it. It is a theological position that emphasizes the message of the

Christian Gospel as a message primarily for the oppressed and poor of the world. On the

second part of this question one must ask, if one is speaking of the Gospel, “What is liberation

for the Christian?” I leave this for the liberation theologians.

CLT: Much of your work focuses on how histories of cultural contact have led

to an obscuring of reality by religion. Do you see liberation theology to be able to

involve itself in the project of laying bare how religious concepts have in fact

concealed reality?

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I believe that the histories of contact have been obscured by theology, doctrines and belief

systems. Religion, as orientation, from my perspective delves precisely into these fissures and

contacts. I still hesitate to know what a liberation theology can or might do.

CLT: Can liberation theology, although it may have different goals, take a cue from what you do in your own work as a historian of religion? Using history as a mediation, you lay bare the problems of theology, doctrines and belief systems. From a theological perspective, I would say that you liberate God, or the symbol of God, in this way, that you make (implicit) statements about who God, or the symbol of God, is, or could be. But maybe I’m pushing you too far now…

As an academic I have no control over how any of my work is taken by others. Of course, if

others find a use for it, they are free to use it. I cannot determine the uses to which it is

put. What I have attempted to make clear is that though others have made use of my work

for whatever purposes they had at hand, they have then tended to interpret the aim of my

work was the same as their agenda. I find this to be endemic to a theological stylistics. The

most serious reviews of my work have tended to place me within their theological agendas.

CLT: Can liberation theology be part of the praxis of liberation while

remaining within the discipline of theology? Or, is theology as a discipline too

tightly bound to European colonization, and the West more broadly, from which

liberation is still required?

If you remember your history of the church and how the early church councils met and

argued over the right creeds. A certain exclusionary style got built into the modus vivendi of

this form of thought as it made its way into the various cultures. The Christian Faith got

involved with the fortunes of the empire and thus with worldly power. I am not saying that

this can or should be avoided, I am more interested in the concrete realities of persons and

cultures who respond and react as well as those who wield such powers that there are. The

questions you put to me are issues that theologians worry about and that is not what I do.

CLT: In your work you challenge religious studies to come to terms with, and

force the end of, the hegemony of Western Christian categories and thought

systems. How might liberation theology respond to this same challenge?

Now it is not Western Christian categories as such but how they are taken. They must be

seen in the context in which they appear with other notions, ideas, meanings and they must

not be taken as a priori norms. Christian meanings have great power but others respond to

other powerful meanings. The issue is what constitutes “what the situation is.” If “the

situation” is defined by only one party in their own terms, then you are not really aware of the

authentic meaning of the “situation.” There has been this amalgam in the modern period of

Christian meaning with the Enlightenment ‘sciences.” Either of these meanings in any formal

sense cannot be the norms for an authentic rendering of human life on our globe. While these

meanings are invaluable ingredients in any serious discussion they are not the a priori norms

for the definition of the situation nor its resolution.

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Book Reviews Beginning with this newsletter, we will be incorporating a series of literary reviews, in addition to reviews of works within the field of liberation theologies, broadly considered. In the literary reviews, we point to connections between new novels and liberation theology. Mia McKenzie. The Summer We Got Free (a novel). Oakland CA: BGD Press, 2012. by Kristien Justaert During the summer break, we do not always read ‘dry’ theological or other non-fiction works on liberation theology. Since being a liberation theologian is not a ‘job’ but a way of living, we cannot help but read novels from that perspective too! Indeed, The Summer We Got Free, the debut novel by Mia McKenzie (aka the founder of ‘Black Girl Dangerous’, a literary and activist blog, see blackgirldangerous.org) is, according to us, liberation theology. Reading this beautiful book about the transformation of a black family in the United States through first a trauma and then a healing encounter with an outsider (a woman who is significantly even more black: ‘Black as forever, Ava would say of her, years later. Black as always’, p. 17), I realized how stories, and art in general, are the real liberation theology: they are the praxis we reflect upon from a distance, they perform liberation – in the best case not only of the characters in the book (indeed, each character is somehow liberated from her or his traumatized identity), but also of the reader. It is easy to let oneself be carried away by the spirituality that breathes from these pages. Liberation does not come from the church that plays a great role in this book, but from a ‘queer’ side: from a woman who is ‘infinitely’ black, who turns out to be a lesbian, who shakes everyone’s foundations, but at the same time brings everyone back to who their ‘best selves’ are, loving each other the best they can, forming community in an honest way. This is a very interesting debut novel that shows us, in a performative way, how liberation theology can work. William David Hart. Afro-Eccentricity: Beyond the Standard Narrative of Black Religion. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2011. by Joe Drexler-Dreis In Afro-Eccentricity, William David Hart provides a wide-ranging critique of a perceived singularity of Blackamerican identity and Black Religion in the United States. A critical theorist of religion, Hart views the religious imagination as a socially constructed cultural artifact. The reality of god (I maintain Hart’s lowercase here) lies in the imaginary, as “god is wholly our concept” (ix). From this perspective, Hart focuses on Black Religion in the United States as a discursive artifact that came about in the 1960s and 70s. In his portrayal of Black Religion, Hart makes visible what exists outside the “Standard Narrative of Black Religion,” what he calls “Afro-Eccentricity.” Hart develops this concept as “a critical pun and a trope [a burlesque of the Afrocentric ideal] that mimics, underscores, and reminds us of the difference within the same, the manifold within the apparent uniformity of American black people” (2). Throughout the book, Hart mines the theoretical models that are able to reveal and accentuate Afro-Eccentricity. Thus, Hart’s book challenges essentialist notions of the black subject, especially as these notions are adhered to and propagated within religion and theology. In order to challenge the normativity of the Black Church and the Standard Narrative of Black Religion, Hart draws on a wide range of theorists and historians of religion. He devotes a chapter each to Charles H. Long, Paule Marshall’s Praisesong for the Widow, William R.

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Jones, Cornel West, and Theophus Smith. In broad terms, Hart sees Charles H. Long and William R. Jones to work outside the Standard Narrative of Black Religion, and West and Smith to work inside of it, although in creative ways. Paule Marshall’s novel falls somewhere in between. When Hart critically engages theorists of Black Religion or theologians, he does so through two major channels. The first is Long’s methodological challenge to those studying Black Religion. Long challenges theorists of religion to respond to these three realities: (i) Africa as historical reality and religious image that influences the process of orientation; (ii) the involuntary presence of the black community in America, and (iii) the experience and symbol of God in the religious experience of black people (65). Through Long’s model, Hart challenges the hegemony of Western Christian thought in theology and religious studies, including the Standard Narrative of Black Religion, which is of course situated within Western Christian thought. The second channel Hart uses is William R. Jones’ “threshold question” of “Is God a white racist?” Hart uses this question, rooted in the problem of theodicy but asked from outside the (oftentimes artificial) boundaries of the theological discipline, as the engine of his critique of all the theologians he engages. From a secular humanist perspective, Jones argues that the inordinate suffering of Black people, coupled with Black Theologians’ claims of God being for Blacks or for the oppressed presents a problem that Black theologians must address as a pre-theological challenge. One of the weaknesses of the book may be that Hart’s critiques of other scholars tend to overshadow, and stunt the development of, his own narrative of Afro-Eccentricity. But naming this as a weakness is also a bit unfair, as the method Hart takes on demands such continuous critique. In light of Long’s methodological challenge for those studying Black religion and Jones’ “threshold question” based in theodicy, Hart is able to show the need for Afro-Eccentricity by virtue of showing how sharply, and uncritically, the Standard Narrative is adhered to. Thus, while his critiques are at times overwhelming, they show how the barriers that theologians construct around their discipline often result in unreasonable and unsubstantiated claims. Rather than elaborate on the strengths of Hart’s book on a broad level, I will focus on the strengths of the project in relation to liberation theology. Although Hart is not a theologian, and to be fair to him one must not subsume his work into a theological reflection, Afro-Eccentricity is an important work for liberationist-oriented theologies. This is for at least three reasons. First, Hart’s concept of Afro-Eccentricity is in part actualized by a rejection of the focus on Christian identity. Whereas a focus on the black (Christian) religious life can lock one into the Standard Narrative of Black Religion, a focus on the lived experience of black religion and black life can open paths to Afro-Eccentricity. Second, Hart challenges liberation theologians to begin from a foundation that is both reasonable and sustainable. Primarily by renewing a focus on William R. Jones’ critique of Black Theology, Hart re-emphasizes the fundamental problem of making claims such as a “God of the Oppressed,” or even the “preferential option for the poor” without having an adequate theodicy to back them up. And third, via his engagement with Charles H. Long, Hart shows that, while imperial theologies are obviously linked to imperial interests, black theologies, and liberation theologies more broadly, are not necessarily de-linked from imperial interests. For this de-linking to occur, Hart implies that one must move out of the rigid and systematic disciplinary “rules” of theology. This leaves those who want to do liberationist-oriented theology with a strong challenge: How can we do (Christian) theology as a response to the relational modes that colonialism and imperialism engendered, while at the same time being conscious of western Christian theology’s formation within such relational modes?

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Research at the Faculty In previous newsletters, we have highlighted research at the Faculty that is going on that relates to the vision of the CLT. Here we include summaries of three Advanced Masters students’ research. Reading Meister Eckhart for contemporary theological anthropology: Toward the Inclusion of Intellectual Disability Advanced Masters research paper of Adanna James This research paper forms part of a response to reinterpret the tradition of theological anthropology through the appropriation of medieval mystic sources aimed at including intellectual disability. It comes on the heels of initial research that highlighted the implicit exclusion of persons with intellectual disabilities from modern theo-anthropological concepts owing to the privileging of the rational capacities of the intellect and will in our understandings of what it means to be human and to be created in the image of God. A very specific understanding of the rational capacities accounts for this exclusion. This research offers a contextualised reading of fourteenth century German mystic Meister Eckhart who imbibes particular understandings of his time that point to an understanding of the intellect as that which facilitates union with God, the will as already fulfilled by virtue of this union with God, and an understanding of the God/human relationship as the oneness of the soul and God implying an already attained union that defines the human being and awards him/her with her special divine status and thus dignity. While we highlight the problems such mystic thought holds for contemporary theo-anthropological models, specifically as it pertains to the role of the body in the God/human relationship and to the focus on unity as opposed to plurality based on the Godhead, we also maintain the possibilities such thought holds for a renewed understanding of relationality that focuses on unity and the importance of the soul as the locus for the divinity and thus dignity of the human being which ultimately does not discriminate on the basis of rational faculties. The Historical Root of the Concept of Integral Development in Populorum Profressio Advanced Masters project of Jude Iheanyi This project touches on issues within liberation theology, and is situated along the lines of history and theological ethics. It looks at the notion of integral development in the thought of Louis-Joseph Lebret, its relation to the development ethics of the church, and asks why this model has appeared as a tension in the social traditions of the church. After engaging in a detailed analysis of Lebret’s concept of integral development and its historical development, it focuses on the reception of the concept and the challenges to it. One challenge it considers is Gustavo Gutiérrez’s understanding of “liberation.” From Gutiérrez’s intervention, the project emphasizes the need to appreciate the dynamic interpretation of development within a specific context. Jude Iheanyi hopes to continue this research into the doctoral program. He proposes to examine the existing theological paradigms in development ethics in the church’s social traditions, which seek to account for the reality of poverty and propose a model of social reconstruction. Looking specifically at the “co-responsibility model,” Iheanyi wants to develop this as a normative motif for grass roots-level strategies of development. Beneath the Veils of Opulence and Maya: Jon Sobrino and Arthur Schopenhauer on Compassion

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Advanced Masters project of Kyle Gregg When one reads Jon Sobrino's texts on compassion, one finds arguments therein which bear a semblance to those in Schopenhauer's essay, "On the Basis of Morals" and to others in Book IV of The World as Will and Representation. This semblance should come as no surprise given both thinkers’ unrivaled attempts to attribute a moral and – in Sobrino’s case – a theological significance to compassion. But what should surprise one is the absence of any reference to Schopenhauer in all of Sobrino’s texts. Normally, these are full of citations to other philosophers – e.g., Kant, Hegel and Feuerbach. And insofar as the purpose of these citations is to help the reader understand his arguments, one should ask why Sobrino has not yet included a reference to Schopenhauer in his quite woolly texts on compassion.

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From the Archives Here is the report from our archives of a Forum that took place on 23 February, 1995: “Fundamentalism in the Muslim Word: Africa, the Middle and Far East.” The realities that prof. dr. Emilio Platti o.p. and dr. Mohamed Ali spoke to in 1995 resonate strongly today with the “Arab Spring,” escalating conflicts in Egypt and Syria, and the seeming inability of the west to understand such conflicts or enter into them in non-imperial ways. In response to the recent rise in Muslim fundamentalism, as well as it being misunderstood and sensationalized in the west, Dr. Emilio Platti, professor of Islamic Studies (KU Leuven), and Dr. Mohamed Ali, a state diplomat of Ethiopia, spoke so that we could begin to understand the origins and meaning of fundamentalism. Platti explained that while today’s Islamic fundamentalism entails various factors, a theological interpretation and explanation is essential for understanding this fundamentalism. The movement to fundaments embraces that to be Muslim, like the etymology of the word, is to submit. Yet this submission only makes sense in light of hoekm, that is where God is the ultimate authority, and where accountability and justice are demanded of us. Given the injustices inflicted upon the Muslim world through colonialism and post-colonial contacts with the west, and given that western democracy undermines and subverts God as sovereign authority, returning to the fundaments will undoubtedly remain suspicious of the west, indeed cannot but be a rejection of the west and its ways. If God is the ultimate and only sovereign, hoekm, humans are not free to decide how they are to live. To submit, to be Muslim, requires a way of life which entails accountability and justice. There is no doubt that the universal message of the Koran, not so unlike the Jewish and Christian holy scriptures, is about a way of life which is in harmony with God, and warrants a returning to the fundaments by “Jihad” (struggle). Yet Platti contends that the shape of recent fundamentalism conflates these positive, indeed essential, elements of Islam with the forced imposition of the Muslim way of life. He believes that this conflation is particularly flawed insofar as one cultural system is taken as absolutely normative, that there is only one way of life that is in conformity with God’s hoekm. He asks whether it is not mistaken to identify the universal message of the Koran with one particular cultural way of living. Can the imposition of one way of life really allow the message of the Koran to be heard? Surely the Muslim world should not give up its struggle for identity, for accountability and justice under God, but must it no also guard against an ideology which forgets the accountability and justice, the hoekm, that was the source of its struggles? When reflecting upon the recent growth of fundamentalism in the Muslim world and the pressures to impose shari, Mohamed Ali, himself a Muslim, focused upon various political and socio-economic factors at play. He pointed out that there is no doubt that this growth and these pressures stem from a kind of identity crisis, yet he also noted that the debate concerning the relationship of religion and state is neither new nor easily resolved. The confusing and often violent emergence from colonialism, the search for identity in nationalism and/or pan-nationalism, the socio-economic transformation of modernizations, and the struggles of political power have all created an unclear yet tense arena wherein the identity crisis must be worked out. Ali used Egypt as an example of how emergence from colonialism, socio-economic transformations, struggle for power, and the search for cultural identity have unfolded in confusing and violent terms. Because religion is such a central and influential element of Islamic culture, it should not be surprising that it stands at the heart of the tensions and struggles for modern statehood. (Indeed, has not a similar struggle between state and religion also been crucial in the history of Europe as well?) If now, after almost fifty years of “independence,” poverty continues to grow, new and seemingly irresolvable social problems

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arise, and western democracies are self-absorbed in decadence, then frustrations and hopelessness for the future leave people only the past – a sense of wanting “to go back” to the “Golden Age of Islam.” Given the socio-economic situation in most of the Muslim world, this desire to return to the fundaments is quite understandable, yet Ali warns that we must also watch for those who use and manipulate this for their own ends. He believes that Islam, in its religious and cultural dimensions, is used to promote ideologies, is sued to gain or retain power, not to rectify injustices, but protect established wealth and power. If Islam can be used to opiate the masses, sever them from other peoples and their ideas, fool them into relinquishing their “mundane” hopes and desires, who stands to gain? Ali pointed out that while the ways of the west cannot simply be adopted, and that the Muslim world must find its own identity, this cannot be achieved by looking backward. In the end, the only hope for the Muslim world lies in looking forward. While Ali was certainly critical of ideological abuses in the Muslim world, he reminded us that the west is not immune to ideologies and “backward” remedies to its ills. Indeed, though taking different forms, the problems underlying fundamentalism might well be global. Here in Belgium, for example, consider Vlaams Blok: the use of propaganda (“our own first”); control of education (“appropriate” readings of history in schools); women’s place at home; foreigners unwelcome; maintain our own culture; etc. Responses to failures in a society can be strong, but must we not take care that ideologies, and their use of “looking backward,” do not cover over the problems?