Holy/Unholy Alliances: Taking Sides in the Struggle for Justice in Latin America

Holy/Unholy Alliances: Taking Sides in the Struggle for Justice in Latin America
Raimundo César Barreto Jr.

The intent of this paper is to honor the life and work of Glen Stassen by looking at him as a tactical ally for public ethics in Latin America – more particularly in Brazil.

As a white North American evangelical, Glen engaged the world as a Christian ethicist from a particular location. He was faithful to the way of Jesus and careful in his treatment of the biblical witness. He resisted the temptation of the privatization of Christian ethics imposed on it by secularization. And he resisted any authoritarian version of Christian ethics that did not take seriously the plurality of voices in the public sphere.

Glen could be found in the Revolution of Candles that contributed to the fall of the Berlin Wall, in the Civil Rights Movement, and in the anti-nuclear movements. As the Director of the Baptist World Alliance’s Division on Freedom and Justice, I shared his involvement in peace processes in Burma/Myanmar, Northeast India and other places. He worked in the Baptist World Alliance’s Commissions on Peace and on Baptist-Muslim Relations. He presented papers and engaged Baptist peacemakers, pastors and scholars from different parts of the world. His incarnational approach to Christian ethics respected the historical nature of Christian responses to particular challenges. He offered himself as a partner and an ally to Christians seeking to effectively witness in different contexts.

Sadly, Glen’s approach to Christian ethics has not been engaged by many Christians in Latin America, particularly in Brazil. In this essay, I want to review some of the responses offered by Latin American Protestants to the question that drove Glen’s concern for Christian ethics: “How do we find the solid ground for an ethic that is

 neither authoritarian nor merely pri-vatistic?”¹

In the past four decades, Latin America produced a very influential public theology: liberation theology. Different versions of liberation theology have influenced Christian thought in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean and North America, particularly among minority groups.

In addition to some Protestant antecedents, liberation theology was for the most part developed by and among Catholic theologians in Latin American countries. Jose Miguez Bonino, Rubem Alves, Elza Tamez and Julio de Santana represent minority Protestant voices among the leading Latin American liberation theologians. But most Protestant – especially evangelical – Christians still emphasize individualistic and privatis-tic approaches to Christian theology and ethics.

In the case of Brazil, Paulo de Góes and Rubem Alves denounce the individualistic nature of the dominant kind of Protestantism in that country.² That approach to ethics emphasizes rules and norms regarding individual or personal behavior of the believer, and neglects the need for effective Christian witness and response to the social maladies affecting the larger Brazilian society. Those maladies systematically privilege a small elite to the exclusion or mar-ginalization of many on the basis of social class, race, gender and sexual orientation.

Glen Stassen advanced the call for a public Christian ethics which effec

 tively “witness[es] to the sovereignty of God or the Lordship of Christ through all of life.”³ Glen was not satisfied with witness that does not take risks. Instead, he moved beyond an ethic of ideals and found a voice in the midst of many other public voices. He called us to critically engage ideologies in the public arena, making “tactical alliances” with other languages spoken in public discourse in the context where Christian ethics “makes its witness.”⁴

In his introduction to Yoder’s The War of the Lamb, Glen says, “We need to understand and assess society’s languages in order to develop antibodies against being manipulated into supporting unjust ideologies of the powers and authorities.”⁵ In my view, Glen’s Christocentric, incarnational ethics can help evangelicals in Brazil critically and faithfully respond to the challenges they are forced to face.

Latin American liberation theologians have long argued for the historicity of God’s action in the world. Glen’s incarnational ethics, instead of affirming principles or ideals, emphasizes the incarnated work of God in a particular context. Glen advocates that it is wrong to make God into an infinite, universal abstraction. For him, God gets very particular. Thus, for him biblical faith affirms God’s disclosure in specific historical drama, particularly in the Exodus and the drama of Jesus. This approach resonates with the historical approach taken by many theologians and ethicists in Latin America.

Glen’s approach to Christian ethics, like that of many Christians in Latin America, is one that takes sides with the marginalized and the oppressed against “ideologies of greed and domination.” It is in this context that Glen warns us against approaches to public ethics and theology which

actually lead to “unholy alliances” with such ideologies.

“Only by showing how a more historically located and realistic understanding of Jesus opposes some ideologies and affirms connecting with some other strands in public ethics, such as covenant, community, common good, and human rights, can we articulate the Lordship of Christ through all of life. But the challenge is to get free from unholy alliances with ideologies of greed and domination.”⁶

According to Luis Rivera-Pagan, the history of Christianity in the Americas began with an act of expropriation, a political and religious conquest, which he properly called “a violent evangelism.”⁷ This was one of the initial unholy alliances in the history of Christianity in Latin America. The pain of that suffering is still felt particularly by the native peoples.

Enrique Dussel has shown that the invasion and conquest of the Americas has intensified over the past centuries, taking the form of a hegemonic globalization. According to Dussel, modernity—the first world-system ever in the planet history – was born along with “the myth of a special kind of sacrificial violence which eventually eclipsed whatever was non-European.” ⁸ This myth of sacrificial violence, which justifies the suffering of some people on behalf of the happiness of others, can be associated with a certain kind of Christian theology, and has contributed to the marginalization and exclusion of millions in Latin America.

In his analysis of the current global situation, Richard Falk calls attention to the connection between forced poverty and racism as the outcome of a dehumanizing global order:

“We live in a world that is one-fifth rich and four-fifths poor; the rich are segregated into the rich countries and the poor into the poor countries; the rich are predominantly lighter skinned and the poor darker skinned; most of the poor live in ‘homelands’ that are physically remote, often separated by oceans and great distances

 from the rich. Migration on any great scale is impermissible. There is no systematic redistribution of income. While there is ethnic strife among the well-to-do, the strife is more vicious and destructive among the poor.”⁹

African descendants and the indigenous Latin American peoples are among the poorest among the poor. In Brazil, a study conducted between 1999 and 2001 showed that 63 percent of the poor in Brazil are black and 61.2 percent of the black population is poor or indigent.¹⁰ The authors of the study reached the inescapable conclusion that to be born mulatto or black significantly increases the likelihood of a Brazilian being poor.¹¹

The control of oligarchies, disregard for the poor and systemic violation of human rights continue to impact the lives of many in Latin America. In response to this history of more than five centuries, which formed structures that protect the privilege of a few and the exclusion and the suffering of many, in the past two decades, different Latin American countries have made attempts to promote democratic models. They seek to advance popular participation and economic programs with the intent of at least reducing the levels of extreme poverty, infant deaths and other related problems. Brazil has developed one of the most successful initiatives, the Zero Hunger Program. It has also developed programs of affirmative action in the attempt to correct the correlation of race and poverty noted above. On top of that, greater attention to issues such as violence against women and children and equal marriage can be noticed in public debates.

All these things take place at the same time in which Latin America also experiences great religious effervescence. In fact, Latin America has long been a very religious continent. In 1910, 95 percent of the Latin American population was Christian – only one percent of it was non-Catholic. The continent is no less religious these days, but the scenario has become more pluralistic

 with the emergence of evangelicals and Pentecostals in the past 50 years. As Wesley Gramberg-Michaelson has noted, “by 2010, Latin America was home to nearly 550 million Christians, and 20 percent were from non-Catholic expressions of Christian faith. These are growing at three times the rate of Catholic growth.”¹²

That considerable growth has led to greater participation of evangelicals and Pentecostals in public life, as sociologists such as Paul Freston have noted.¹³ Such a sudden move from the private realm to participation in the public square has provoked some contrasts. Whereas Protestant groups more identified with the cause of the poor seem to be able to ally themselves with other social movements without losing the distinctiveness of their own voices, those groups which have suddenly moved from a previously “apolitical” attitude of non-participation in the public square tend to hold to a perspective of dominance and conquest of the public space.

This has produced a predominant mentality of Christianizing the political realm, which mainly implies the election of evangelical/Pentecostal representatives to political offices and the promotion of particular agendas which are important for these churches on issues such as abortion and equal marriage. An ostensive discourse against the LGBT communities and against people of other religions, particularly Afro-Brazilian religions such as Candomble and Umbanda, has elevated tensions among these communities and evangelical churches.

Brazil is still a young democracy. The Brazilian Republic emerged in 1889 through a military coup d’état against the monarch. It took more than 20 years for Brazil to elect its first civilian president. Throughout the 20th century the country alternated periods of elected governments with coups and dictatorships. The last military dictatorship lasted 21 years and ended in 1985. Since then, Brazil has had seven consecutive presidential elections, experiencing one of the

most stable periods of its history.

Nevertheless, when tensions are elevated, soon one can hear voices calling for order, which means military intervention. Brazil has just had its tightest presidential election, which led to the reelection of Dilma Rousseff of the Workers’ Party with a little more than 51 percent of the valid votes. In the days following the election, some middle and upper class citizens dissatisfied with the results of the election took the streets of Sao Paulo to call for the President’s impeachment. Some of them held signs calling for the return of the military to bring order back. Thus, Brazilian democracy is being tested, and although it is so far showing progress, its progress and success cannot be taken for granted.

Boaventura Sousa Santos has noted that the model of democracy which became hegemonic by the end of the two world wars implied a restriction in the ample forms of participation and of sovereignty, favoring “a consensus about the electoral procedure in the formation of governments.”¹⁴

He also discusses the issue of compatibility or incompatibility between democracy and capitalism. According to him, if the tension between capitalism and democracy bends in favor of democracy, it ends up putting limits to property and results in redistributive gains for the disfavored social sectors.¹⁵ Is not this the democratic model being advanced in countries such as Brazil, Bolivia, Uruguay and Ecuador? As Sousa Santos points out, in the context of this debate the discussion turns to democratic alternatives to the liberal model: participative democracy, popular democracy and developmentalist democracy, among others.

“Although neoliberal globalization – the current version of global capitalism – is by far the dominant form of globalization, it is not the only one. Parallel to it and, to a great extent, as a reaction to it, another globalization is emerging. It consists of transna-tional networks and alliances among social movements, social struggles,

 and non-governmental organizations. From the four corners of the globe, all these initiatives have mobilized to fight against the social exclusion, destruction of the environment and biodiversity, unemployment, human rights violations, pandemics, and inter-ethnic hatreds, directly or indirectly caused by neoliberal globaliza-tion.”¹⁶

This kind of political project involves popular mobilization and mass movements through consensual social control ‘from below’ rather than by coercive means ‘from above.’¹⁷ If Sousa Santos is correct, in order for the present politico-economic order to be democratized and reach a balance of power that will allow for real competitiveness, grassroots movements that promote alternative models to the current course of capitalist globalization must be strengthened through the creation of larger social networks. Those networks can produce an antithetical force, capable of putting limits to the power of predatory globalization.

The need for deepening the roots and understanding of democracy in the continent calls for Latin American Christians to develop sound public theologies which can equip them to speak in the plural public square, out of the particularity of their own religious traditions.

Evangelicals and Public Ethics

The privatization of faith identified in the 1970s by Rubem Alves no longer seems to be the major challenge faced by Brazilian Protestants. In fact, since the 1950s one can observe a consciousness rising among some Brazilian Protestants concerning their involvement in the social, political and economic problems of Brazilian society. At least since 1955, a small Protestant movement began to take a stand in the struggle against poverty and social injustice in the country. As I have documented elsewhere, the emergence of a dynamic Christian Student Movement among young Brazilian Protestants and the foundation of the Sector of Social Responsibility of the Church played

 an important role in this move toward a greater Protestant involvement with the social problems surrounding the Christian communities in Brazil.¹⁸

Those movements, though, happened at the margins of ecumenical Protestantism, and did not find institutional space to survive the repression faced within the churches, and the crack down from the military regime after the 1964 military coup d’état.

In the 1970s, however, another small group of Protestants, now within evangelical circles, in an attempt to offer an evangelical response to the effervescence of liberation theology, took seriously the challenge of responding to the demands brought by the historical, political and social contexts in which they were inserted. Although Brazilians such as Robinson Cavalcanti and Waldir Steuernagel were among the founders of this movement known as Teologia de la Mision Integral de la Iglesia, its main theological articulators were Rene Padilla from Argentina, Orlando Costas from Puerto Rico and Samuel Escobar from Peru.

Padilla diagnosed the situation in Latin American evangelicalism as being the problem of “a church without a theology.”¹⁹ For Padilla, Latin American evangelicalism has failed in regard to its responsibility to “reflect, from the perspective of God’s revelation, on the meaning that this revelation has here and now, vis-à-vis the obedience to Jesus Christ as Lord in this situation.”²⁰ These emerging evangelical voices called for the contextualization of the gospel in the Latin American context. The theological pillars of this contextual evangelicalism are: (1) The foundation of theology is the Word of God; (2) The context of theology is a concrete historical situation; and (3) The purpose of theology is obedience to the Lordship of Jesus Christ.²¹ With an evangelical and incarnational theological agenda, these Latin American evangelicals experienced an awakening concerning their responsibility towards the surrounding society.

In Brazil, military repression, along with the conservative turn in most Protestant denominations in Brazil,²² created a vacuum concerning the Protestant struggle for social justice in the late 1960s, although progress continued to be made among Catholics. With the dismantling of the progressive initiatives developed by ecumenical Protestants, the struggle for social justice was taken by the emergent liberation theology, mostly a Catholic movement.

The first Latin American Congress of Evangelization, known as CLADE I, took place in Bogotá, Colombia, in 1969.²³ That meeting gave birth to the elaboration of an evangelical response to the Latin American situa-tion.²⁴ This congress was the bedrock of the Latin American Theological Fellowship (FTL), which would develop a contextual evangelical theology in Latin America.²⁵

One of the main Latin American evangelical theologians addressing CLADE I was Samuel Escobar, a Peruvian missionary and scholar who had spent some years in Brazil²⁶ working among evangelical students. Among the 28 papers read at that congress, his address on the Social Responsibility of the Church received the most enthusiastic attention from the participants.²⁷ He argued passionately that both evangelization and social action are necessary for the Christian witness to the world. “There is sufficient basis in the history of the Church and in the teaching of the Word of God for us to categorically affirm that the concern with the social aspect of the Christian witness in the world does not imply the abandonment of the fundamental truths of the Gospel; on the contrary, it means to take to the last consequences the teachings regarding God, Jesus Christ, human existence, and the world, which form the basis of this Gospel…We sustain that an evangelization that does not take account of the social problems and that does not announce the salvation and sovereignty of Christ within the context in which those who listen to

 it live, is a defective evangelization, which betrays the biblical teaching and does not follow the model purposed by Jesus Christ, who sends the evangelist.”²⁸ [translation is mine]

Despite its external origins, CLADE I created the opportunity for those Latin American evangelical leaders who were concerned with the relationship between the evangelical faith and the Latin American social reality to come together and share their inquietudes. Thus, as David Stoll affirms, CLADE I was not a complete success for its North American organizers, since the Latin American evangelical leaders “discovered that they were all tired of North Americans telling them how to think.”²⁹ It issued “a call for Evangelicals to meet their social responsibilities, by contextual-izing their faith in the Latin American context of oppression.”³⁰

One year later, a group of Latin American evangelical leaders founded the Latin American Theological Fraternity (FTL), choosing Samuel Escobar as its first president.³¹ The purpose of these politically progressive evangelical thinkers was to create a forum where they could encourage a contextualized theological reflection in Latin America from a biblical and mission-oriented perspective. That kind of reflection was an attempt from those Latin American evangelicals – theologically conservative, but politically progressive – to respond to the challenges posed by the Latin American reality of poverty and injustice. Pledging to be both biblical and distinctively Latin American, they declared their intention “to pursue social issues without abandoning evangelism, deal with oppressive structures without endorsing violence, and bring left- and right-wing  Protestants back together again.”³²

While embracing much from what had been proposed by both liberation theology and ecumenical Protestantism concerning the social responsibility of the church, these radical evangelicals also were critical of both. In order to distinguish themselves from those two movements, they opted for the paradigm of con-textualization instead of the paradigm of liberation to speak about their theological action.³³

In spite of that emphasis on its distinctiveness, forums such as CLADE ended up opening spaces for conversations between different Protestant streams in Latin America. Speaking of CLADE III, Tomás Gutierrez says that it was a forum for all Protestant groups in Latin America, for conservatives and liberals, with more than a thousand representatives from the whole continent.³⁴ It created discussion groups around the debates that existed within Latin American Protestantism. One of these groups put together representatives of the ecumenical Latin American Council of Churches (CLAI) and of the conservative Latin American Evangelical Council (CONELA) to discuss face-to-face their proposals and differ-ences.³⁵

Progressive evangelicals have reaffirmed the conviction present in both liberation theology and ecumenical Protestantism that praxis is the element by which the validity of any theological reflection is judged. As Samuel Escobar affirms, “The real test of the validity of all theological reflection comes when it has become specific by application, on the ethical level.”³⁶

Another leading voice in this evangelical movement, Orlando Costas acknowledged that liberation theology poses a tremendous challenge to contemporary theology. That challenge must be taken seriously in evangelical circles especially due to its “biblical contents.”³⁷ For Costas, liberation theology’s insistence on engaging the concrete historical situation is the greatest challenge for the

theology of mission, because biblical Christian faith has a historical character, being firmly rooted in a concrete historical situation.³⁸ According to him, although Jesus was not involved in political parties, he took a political position as he relativized the authority of the Empire.³⁹ On that basis, Costas criticized the role of the evangelical missionary enterprise as functioning to justify and cover for the domination of Latin American peoples.

“Not only does the theology of liberation challenge missionary theory and praxis to take seriously the political dimension of the missionary situation by evaluating its own political instance (its justification of the status quo through the policy of nonpolitical commitment), but also by insisting on the incarnational character of the gospel. If mission is to be faithful to the gospel it purports to communicate, it must be undergirded by a theology grounded on serious commitment to mankind in its many situ-ations.”⁴⁰

Such an incarnational mission-oriented theology must have at least three characteristics: (1) unfeigned love, which means being sincerely and completely committed to others; (2) faith that acts, which means a faith “unconditionally committed in praxis to everything that God is committed to;” and (3) creative hope, which implies that “our work for the kingdom should involve at once our creative involvement in the transformation of life and society and the annunciation of a new world as evidence (‘first fruits’) of the new age inaugurated by Jesus and as a guarantee of the promised future.”⁴¹ Perhaps there is no other Latin American theologian whose work and wording coincide as much with the emphases and concerns found in Stassen’s Christian ethics and his understanding of incarnational discipleship.

Considering that most Latin American evangelicals have been exposed exclusively to otherworldly oriented theology, holding an escapist missionary praxis, Costas proposes a

 radical experience of social conversion to Latin American evangelicalism. Believing that the biblical gospel in its origin was proclaimed and received at the peripheries of the world, Costas was convinced that it is only from that incarnated context that it can become prophetic and apostolic at the same time.

The theology provided by this movement has encouraged some Latin American evangelicals to a greater social commitment and action. However, because of concerns with defining an a priori biblical justification for their praxis, it still keeps many of these evangelicals tied to dogmatism, because they still depend on literalistic interpretations of the Scriptures. Too much time is spent on doctrinal quarrels, and praxis ends up becoming secondary.

In spite of their important contributions, these progressive evangelicals have not yet managed to impact the evangelical leadership involved in politics in places like Brazil. This evangelical movement is still searching for a theological language that can free it to realize all the transformative potential implicit in Padilla’s brilliant image of mission as taking places between times.⁴² Renewed theological language can enable Brazilian evangelicals to overcome biblical literalism and the doctrinal quandaries that have limited their actions.

Finally, this movement also lacks a broader and more elaborated theology of human rights, which can also enable its participants to fully advocate for the civil liberties of other minorities with whom evangelicals in Latin America have a difficult time relating. Glen Stassen’s emphasis on “historical drama” as a particular

 kind of narrative genre for theology might be a helpful resource for Latin American evangelicals to overcome some of the challenges they face in the process of searching for a broader and still distinctive language for a public ethics. Stassen’s transformative initiatives also offer a creative way of moving beyond legalistic approaches to the Bible. Furthermore, Glen’s strong commitment to a narrative of human rights, which strengthens and expands its biblical and experiential grounding can also be a good resource for Brazilian evangelicals engaging debates on human rights laws. The protection of the rights of some individuals and groups have historically antagonized most evangelicals.⁴³

Public Theology

A more recent development in Brazil has been the emergence of an emphasis on public theology.⁴⁴ Since public theology originally emerged in the United States, enculturation and ownership by Brazilian communities are needed in order to be a genuine expression of Brazilian Christianity. This movement intends to develop a broad theological discourse that is accessible simultaneously to many different audiences—church, academy and larger society. It therefore takes the risk of neglecting the particularity and contextuality that are intrinsic to any theology. As Gustavo Gutierrez has put it, “Efforts to understand the faith, which we call theology are inextricably linked to issues that emerge from life and the challenges facing the Christian community as witness the kingdom of God. So theology is connected to the historical moment and the cultural world in which such issues arise (thus say that a theology is ‘contextual’ is strictly tautological: one way or another, all theology is contextual).”⁴⁵

Miguel de la Torre complements this concern by highlighting that “any theological discourse that ignores the peculiarity of minority and marginal voices silenced in the centers of power as well as the ‘struggle’ and the ‘everyday’ of marginalized people loses its

prophetic and transforming dimen-sion.”⁴⁶

The situation in Latin America today is no longer the same as 40 years ago when the first expressions of liberation theologies in Latin America emerged. However, despite the greater diversity and complexity of the Latin American scene, for most of the Latin American people domination and oppression are still terms that characterize the social situation in which they live. Therefore, they remain important for a Christian ethical thinking that seeks to respond to the real situation facing the vast majority of our people. Oppression – whether political, economic or social – is not fortuitous. It results from the operation of a system that pushes millions to the margins of society who come into being under a constant threat of violence in impoverished and often inhumane conditions.

Rudolf Von Sinner has been one of the leading theologians spearheading efforts to update theological language in the Brazilian context in order to strengthen the understanding of the public role of churches and religious communities in light of the significant changes that have occurred in that context in recent decades. Von Sinner proposes a Brazilian public theology that, while taking into account the contributions of liberation theology, seeks a more constructive and positive integration in public areas, going beyond the role of resistance exercised by liberation theology during the times of the Cold War and the military crackdown in order to more effectively engage diverse audiences: civil society, the university, the economy and politics.

In a context of democratic advances and strengthening of civil society that creates more spaces for the involvement of religious actors in the public sphere, von Sinner sees the constructive proposals of public theology as more appropriate to offer tools and language relevant to the issues, institutions and life processes under the current conditions of a global society. He says that liberation theology “has

prepared the foundation for a way of thinking that sustains and makes plausible the fundamental importance of the contextual aspect of theology, especially in view of its economic, political and social dimensions.”⁴⁷ Von Sinner demonstrates how the Latin American theology of liberation, classically formulated between the 1960s and 1970s, provided the basis for a significant awareness of the general character of contextual theology in contact with similar movements that originated in this period in various continents.⁴⁸ In his attempt to move beyond liberation theology, von Sinner suggests a broad definition of citizenship that includes the real possibility of access to rights and an attitude towards the constitutional state as such.⁴⁹ Citizenship issues need to be engaged in a concrete and decisive manner, both theologically and practically, inside and outside the churches.

Given the new possibilities for popular participation, von Sinner proposes the use of public theology, qualified as a theology of citizenship, as a terminology which is broader than liberation. This approach is “critical-constructive” rather than “conflicting,” being more dialogical, cooperative and constructive than theologies called particularists.⁵⁰

Rudof sees his theological project in continuity with the contributions made by liberation theology, while trying to overcome other aspects of it. Von Sinner recognizes that the term “public theology” cannot be specific enough to adequately meet the demands of the Brazilian context. However, its description as a theology of citizenship temporarily solves this problem, leaving open the possibility of new terminology, when the theme of citizenship is not as burning. Von Sinner offers a contribution which is more purposeful and which aims towards a construction process rooted in the Brazilian reality, in contrast to approaches described as “conflicting” which have not produced concrete historical projects in theology.

There are challenges in the choice of citizenship as a key hermeneuti-cal term. Citizenship is a term that does not have adequate strength to challenge the status-quo. For some, citizenship is understood as a status granted by the nation-state, usually understood in terms of loyalty and civic responsibility.⁵¹ For others, “citizenship alienates and assimilates, ostracizes and equates.” Citizenship is argued on the basis of its own categories of exclusion. It is a highly complex category, consisting of both negative and positive content; both absence and presence, especially for members of countless people who are undocumented.⁵² Thus, this language seems to be insufficient to resolve the dilemmas of modernity’s inherent exclusion and its coloniality of power, which are the basis of the nation-state.”⁵³

In some circles, there seems to be a certain disdain for the idea that perhaps the leading public role of the church is to be a witness in solidarity with the oppressed. The dominant discourses in public theology state that it must go beyond the resistance proposed by certain prophetic theologies. On the other hand, there remains a great need for theology to adopt a posture of resistance and solidarity with the poor if it wants to challenge the dominant logic. But to challenge the status quo, theology needs to escape the logic of modern colonialism.

As Walter Mignolo suggests, one of the characteristics of the political and economic expansion of Western civilization is the manipulation and control of all spheres of knowledge. Therefore, rather than fitting the

dominant narrative, public theologies are challenged to propose alternative decolonizing narratives to unveil and show the unfeasibility of hegemony and homogeneity of the modern discourse that Mignolo calls “monoculture of the mind.”⁵⁴ The priority of theology is not its communicability to the dominant spheres of the economy, the state, the academy and the church, without challenging their structures. Rather, it is the rescuing of alternative narratives and marginal voices, silenced by the same monoculture, many sometimes with the help of theology itself.⁵⁵ This perspective accentuates the tension between witnessing and being effective in the public square which one sees in Glen’s ethics.

Resistance to the colonization of the mind is not simply a negative critical reaction to a process of domination. It also has a creative aspect, which can transform this process by reorganizing the creative forces of the multitude that sustain Empire, building new forms of community consciousness and alternatives to the dominant consciousness. A Latin American public theology cannot abdicate their conflicting character. The attempt to seek inclusiveness and responsiveness must not inhibit conflict, difference and tensions of social heterogeneity. No theological task is politically neutral or disengaged. Moving the theological discourse from the margins to the center risksremaining dependent on an epistemic privilege that contributes to mute populations and groups long not recognized.⁵⁶

Von Sinner succeeds in giving his public theology of citizenship a

practical and programmatic character, moving from strictly theological discourse to the demand of rights. But his public theology needs greater clarity on who are the subjects of the theological task and what is their social location in the matrices of power to avoid suppression of voices and interests of those who are made invisible by the dominant order. Public theologies emerging in contexts like Brazil need to prioritize local narratives and alternatives, in opposition to the universalizing discourse. In order to be in continuity with previous advances made in the context of liberation theology, public theology must restate the hermeneutical privilege of the poor / oppressed / marginalized / subaltern and create new spaces for doing theology. It needs to deal with the issue of the social location of theologians in the context of the matrices of power.

Theologies of liberation have fulfilled the fundamental role of bringing to the fore the theological production of different human groups from specific contexts of oppression. The question does not seem to be overcoming the hermeneutical key of liberation, but expanding it. Contrary to the opinion that liberation theology has died, in Latin America we say that it is not dead. It is being

 reshaped as new Christian expressions begin to respond to the challenges of inequality and injustice.

Since most of the fastest growing Christian communities are evangelical, charismatic or Pentecostals, the biblical, narrative, experiential and incarnational spirit of Glen Stassen’s Christian ethics can be an extremely helpful resource for the task of finding appropriate language for public ethics and theology which expands the contributions of liberation theology, radical evangelicalism and public theology in Brazil.  

Raimundo César Barreto Jr., assistant professor of world Christianity at Princeton Theological Seminary, is an ordained Baptist minister. Barreto earned his BTh degree from the Northern Brazil Baptist Theological Seminary and from the Superior School of Theology, in Brazil, his MDiv from McAfee School of Theology/ Mercer University, and his PhD from Princeton Theological Seminary. Prior to coming to Princeton Seminary, he taught at Brazil’s Northeastern Baptist Theological Seminary and at the Brazilian Baptist College. He also served as director of the Division of Freedom and Justice of the Baptist World Alliance (BWA). He first met Glen Stassen in 2004, during Glen’s visit to Bahia, Brazil. Glen lectured at a local Baptist seminary and Barreto translated Glen’s lecture on the 14 triads of the Sermon on the Mount. Barreto also worked on the translation of Glen’s book, Living the Sermon on the Mount, which will be out in 2015.

Footnotes found online.

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