I Was Thinking Of Spending Lent

 on a series in which I critique one of the stands of one of the New Testament Scholars and Catholic theologians I've been reading a lot over the past two years,  Luke Timothy Johnson's long standing and, perhaps even obsessive rejection of and criticism of liberation theology.    

While I strongly agree with him when he focuses on the ways of "living Jesus," especially in his book of that name,  I have to say that his rejection of liberation theology is especially surprising in that he puts so much emphasis in that book on the continuation of prophesy in the church as the experience of the Living Jesus which is inevitably informed by the experiences of People in every moment since the beginning of his public ministry right down to the time we are living in.   The diversity of that prophesy depending on different experiences of life, of living in communities, in societies, in churches, in cultures and under legal structures will certainly bring about aspects of what that experience of Jesus which were different from those of the first century Mediterranean world.   

If such ever newer and different ways of understanding the Living Jesus were not happening and meant to inform those whose lives are radically different from those who Jesus, Paul, James etc. addressed you have to wonder why the subsequent two thousand years of human history happened.  

In one of the reviews of a book in which Luke Timothy Johnson develops his criticism of liberation theology,  his rejection based on what he says is the "elitism" of those of HIS FELLOW THEOLOGIANS who were educated and lived at least some of their lives as those who were not destitute, impoverished, working poor,  the reviewer.   Joseph Quinn Rabb asks a crucial question:

Constructing such a stark contrast requires some oversimplifications.  Johnson's default position strongly favors the traditional view and he is clearly suspicious of and uncomfortable with the "social gospel/liberation model,"  seeing it as "elitist" in its origins and alien to the ones it aims to liberate.  It is elitist because the authors who developed and explicated it were trained in universities and were not themselves abjectly poor (134-34).  I wonder, though, who among all of the authors of the hortatory literature he surveys throughout the centuries were uneducated and abjectly poor?

If I were questioning Luke Timothy Johnson,  who I deeply respect and rather like,  about this I would bring up his own description of how his partly scripturally based and former homophobic attitude and beliefs about LGBTQ+ People, their rights, their lives and the possibility of those of us living lives of both sanctity and integrity about who we are - INCLUDING HAVING LOVE WITHIN A SACRAMENTAL SEXUAL RELATIONSHIP - was informed by his personal experience of coming to know LGBTQ+ students and having his beloved daughter being a Lesbian in a stable, settled relationship producing a grandchild.   He, himself, admits that his developed belief based on that is not founded in his understanding of Scripture which he claims - against the reading of other scholars - doesn't support his new belief.   Why shouldn't those living under horrible, unjust, anti-egalitarian,  economic regimes and the legal and police and military that enforces those with the violence that all of those require develop theological positions and ideas based on their experience?   

It is one of the most basic aspects of Latin American, Black, Womenist, etc. liberation theologies that those whose liberation is the focus of that theology,  what they say about their experience of living is to be consulted and considered important in that theology.   

Given his critique of those theologians of Latin America,  many of whom have made common cause with those "uneducated and abjectly poor" People in their own societies - to the extent that many of them have knowingly made themselves targets along with those uneducated and abjectly poor People and many of them are, in fact,  martyrs and saints due to that martyrdom,  what does a straight, white male from the United States who has a career as a teacher at elite American schools,  not endangered by his own writing, have to say about that which even rises to the level of the kind of basic credibility he demands of them?   I will point out that many of those very theologians he makes that criticism of have a far closer and respectful relationship to the "uneducated and abjectly poor" than he would seem to have among the associates of his I've read and heard him talk about.  

Given the life of Jesus and those he addressed,  given the earliest experiences of the church,  such People have lives today which are a lot closer to the life Jesus and his followers led than that of a middle-class, white, male, straight Christian in the United States knows based on their experience and what they say might be suspected to have deeper relevance to the New Testament than what academic theologians write.  

As I said I have deep respect for much of Johnson's writing and speaking.  It's a novel concept to a lot of, especially, college-credentialed lefties and liberals,  but you don't have to agree with everything someone says and holds with to respect them and think the balance of their ideas are worth reading and engaging in.   You can even disagree strongly with someone and make the most exigent criticisms of what they think and still respect and like them.   THOUGH THERE ARE SOME THINGS ABOUT WHICH YOU MUST MAKE A BREAK.  

I had considered, instead of going through a book like Living Jesus (which I highly recommend) for Lent,  I had considered going through the American Black Liberation theologian James Cone's book which he said (at least at one point) presented his more developed theological position,  God of the Oppressed,  which I also recommend highly.   But I don't have the time for that, it would require me to type out many long passages from the book and right now I just simply don't have the time for that.   I hope to some time in the future. 

I will, though, share with you someone who I'm not sure would call herself a liberation theologian but who is still with us and who is the intellectual and academic equal of just about anyone,  someone I didn't become aware of until just recently,  Dr. Anthea Butler.  She is so good and I can't listen to her for long without finding dozens of things she says that I could follow up on.   If I was cursed to be 20 again,  I'd try to get into her classes.  

Here is a very good introduction to her,  an interview with Blake Chastain discussing her book White Evangelical Racism.  It is the best thing I've heard on the topic so far.  She knows the topic because she had a temporary sojourn into Evangelicalism, even attending one of the largest Evangelical seminaries,  before she returned to the Catholicism she was raised in (more on that at this link).   I have not read the book yet but I hope to get to it.   I think I will concentrate on what I find from her online, which is available with links this Lent.   One of the things I really, really like about her is that she understands that the issues she deals with are so important that making nice and polite is not an option,  she tells the harsh, terrible and blunt TRUTH.