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Albert Nolan’s ‘Spirituality of Radical Freedom’: A Biblical

Spirituality of Liberation in post-apartheid South Africa
Holger Szesnat
ERMC June 2008 Weekend
Short session (40 minutes)

1 Introduction
When the staff team talked about what we might offer by way of contributions to the theme
of world church and spirituality, I wondered what I might want to do in this regard. My own
theology is fundamentally shaped by the lived experience of different forms of liberation
theologies, so it seemed to make sense to talk about that – in part also because the link
between theology and spirituality, between prayer and action, has long been a concern for
my own, personal life and faith practice: that is, I have struggled for a long time, and
continue to struggle, with getting this right, both theologically and in terms of personal
practice. Of course the reason why this is central for me is my own life experience – so
you may not have the same perception. Still, this connection between prayer and action,
spirituality and resistance, is something worth exploring here, I think. But: how do I go
about it?

What I decided to do in the end in this short session is to offer an introduction to some of
the writings of Albert Nolan, with a particular focus on how he understands ‘spirituality’. It is
not that he is the only liberation theologian who has written on spirituality – one could point
out others, especially among the Latin Americans, like Jon Sobrino (1988; 1996), Segundo
Galilea (1985; 1989), or of course the ‘grandfather’ of liberation theology, Gustavo
Gutiérrez (1984). I am pretty sure that Albert Nolan would be somewhat embarrassed if
one were to tell him of this focus on his published work: he is by no means a very ‘public
theologian’ in the sense that he is a man ‘behind the scenes’, at the grassroots.

But: the reason why I specifically chose Nolan’s writings is because in contrast to most
other liberation theologians, he has written material for both his own context (South Africa),
and for ‘outsiders’: he has tried to communicate across a broad spectrum. In part this is
because he tries very hard to do what any true liberation theologian does: work at different
levels, with different kinds of people. He is equally at home in an academic context as he
is on the streets.

Another reason why Nolan makes a good example to use here is that most liberation
theologians do not see it as their role to try to explain their work to people outside their
context: it is hard enough, and often dangerous enough, to try to do this work where it
takes place. What we get to read in our bookshops and libraries is only the tip of the
iceberg, only a small part of what really happens – the bits where someone has actually
found the time to write things down which try to address matters in a more systematic
manner. Most liberation-theological work happens at other levels and never gets
published.

In a way, Nolan is no different – during the late 1980s when the apartheid state extended
detention without trial to a virtually unlimited period, Nolan spent quite some time ‘on the
run’, ‘underground’, to avoid getting detained. Being a priest, and being white, did not
necessarily protect you from the apartheid system. Some of Nolan’s work (such as God in
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South Africa) comes precisely from that context. But: Albert Nolan is able to connect with
different kinds of people in different contexts, and that makes him easier to use here, in
this very different context in the UK.

Finally, I also want to focus on him because he has been publishing for the past 30 years,
and in what he has written, he mirrors certain developments in liberation theology during
this period – and that makes him a good example to use here.

2 The Great Fallacy

I chose to focus on the theme of liberation theology and spirituality because most people
who know little about liberation theology (and those who say they know a lot, but who are
critical of it) suggest that liberation theology does not have a spirituality as such: the most
common misconception is that liberation theology is so ‘materialistic’ that it does not
concern itself with ‘spiritual things’. This common fallacy is useful starting point for us
because liberation theology, with all its internal differences (there is no such thing as just
one liberation theology – there are multiple theologies), would tend to agree on one
starting point: namely that the basic assumption upon which this argument hinges, is
fatally flawed. For the assumption that is made by those who argue that liberation theology
does not seem to concern itself with spirituality is that there is a very real, and indeed valid
dualism in the way in which we approach the world: a dualism of material world versus
spiritual world. It is this dualism which liberation theology attacks.

Robert McAfee Brown wrote a useful little book just about this. He calls this common
dualist assumption “the great fallacy” (1988). He argues that we have invented a mode of
living, a way of understanding the world and ourselves, which has become so powerful, so
all-encompassing, that it is difficult for us even think outside of those categories. This
dualist perspective of life is so pervasive that we project it onto everything, including what
we see in other cultures, and historical communities. For example, we tend to divide life
into separate areas, such as:

sacred vs. secular; prayer vs. politics; faith vs. works; church vs. world; theory vs.
practice; soul vs. body; person vs. community; spirit vs. flesh; body vs. spirit; holy
vs. profane; spiritual vs. material; contemplation vs. action; evangelism vs. social
action (cf. Brown 1988, pp. 25-26).

We inhabit this fundamental dualism as an ideology that was developed in the modern
West, even though of course there are roots in earlier historical periods. Splitting body and
soul, for example, has very old roots in Greek philosophy. What is argued instead is that
life is a single reality. It is not that, say, body and soul are conflated. It is not that action
and prayer is the same thing. But it is not helpful to separate them, or to conceive of them
as fundamentally different. To give an example of the practice of ‘spiritual retreat’ and ‘life
in the world’, or prayer and action: the argument is not that it is wrong, for instance, to
spend some time ‘withdrawing’ from the world. What is wrong is to argue that it is in that
withdrawal that God is found, but not ‘in the world’. The point of a retreat is to focus on a
particular area of life in the world to give ourselves space to understand it, and in order to
return to it. Prayer and radical social action are one integrated reality. (As the provocative
French Reformed theologian, Georges Casalis, once put it: “intercessory prayer is part of
the class struggle”.)

So, in spite of all of the various differences among liberation theologies, what undergirds
all of it is the realisation that this modern dualism has produced a flawed idea and practice
of spirituality (cf. Risley 1983). Spirituality is not ‘other-worldliness’ in the sense that it is a
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counter-part to the material world. Spirituality is ‘other-worldly’ only in the sense that it can
become (as Nolan would argue) something that puts the right perspective on our view of
the world: that is, turning it upside down.

3 What is Liberation Theology?

But perhaps I have been getting ahead of myself. What is liberation theology anyway?

It is very, very difficult indeed to summarise this in a few words. LT starts out with its
context: the realisation of the desperate state of the poor and oppressed. It takes this
starting point seriously, and begins with social analysis: theology, in this way, takes its
starting point by taking the context of lived experiences seriously, rather than beginning
with doctrinal propositions that are then applied to ‘cases’. It is not understood as
universal: it is always theology-in-context; relevant and true for that situation, that moment.
LT is, then, critical reflection on liberative practise. It sees faith and justice as inseparable;
it speaks of God’s option for the poor, that the church needs to take seriously; it speaks of
the epistemological privilege of the poor: the poor can see things better than the rich, to
put it simply. LT happens at least three levels: not just as academic theology (that’s the
least important part), but also at grassroots, and in the ‘intermediate’ stage of the ‘pastoral
agents’ (Boff and Boff 1987).

Nolan has not, to my knowledge, called himself a liberation theology – he does not use this
term. In part, this is because he simply resists labels. But what he actually does is in fact a
form of liberation theology.

4 Albert Nolan’s Path

Albert Nolan is a Dominican priest. Born in South Africa in 1934, with parents of English
origins, he felt called to become a priest at an early age, and entered the Dominican order
after reading Thomas Merton (Nolan 2001a). Judging by his early life, his order thought of
him as a future academic; they sent him to Rome to get a doctorate, and afterwards to the
South African university town, Stellenbosch, to train young Dominicans. During that time,
he says, he gradually began to change: having grown up in an ordinary white family, he
ministry increasingly got him in touch with black South Africans, and when he was elected
to serve as Vicar General (superior) of his order in 1976, he had begun to move, without
using the term, a form of liberation theology in South Africa.

4.1 Jesus before Christianity (1976)

His first book appeared that year, Jesus before Christianity, and this became a little
bestseller; to date, more than 150.000 copies have been sold, and the book has been
translated into nine languages – quite something for a book in the ‘religious market’ that is
neither fundamentalist christian nor fundamentalist anti-religion. Like all his other books,
this is written not as an academic book as such: he does not expect an academic reader.
The nearest example I can think of is, in the old Protestant tradition, an adult catechism:
not in the form of providing ‘question and answer’ (Luther, Heidelberg catechism, etc.), but
in the form of a reasoned argument. It is not a simple (or simplistic) book, and it demands
attention; it is not a pamphlet for the grassroots – it addresses an ‘intermediate’ level.

The central idea of the book is simple: it is a return to the historical Jesus as scholarship in
the 1960s and 1970s, in Nolan’s view, constructed his historical figure – before the church
tried to make him look as something else. As such, the book is a classic example of what
liberation theology at the time tried to do: in the immediate aftermath of Gustavo Gutiérrez’
classic book, A Theology of Liberation, which put LT on the international theological ‘map’
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(Gutiérrez 1972, 1973), LT was challenged to offer specifically biblical perspectives (which
Gutiérrez had not done explicitly): in the first phase of LT, this took the form of looking at
the historical Jesus. What Nolan tried to do with this book was something along those
lines: he took a liberation theological line (again, without using the word) in presenting a
Jesus of and among the poor. Yet this is not classic LT in another sense: Nolan does not
mention South Africa at all in the book. The context indirectly affects what he writes here,
and everyone in theological education in South Africa at the time recognised what was
going on here, but it is not said explicitly.

After his election as the leader of the Dominicans in Southern Africa, Nolan began to focus
his own work on grassroots theology: first as national chaplain to the Young Christian
Students organisation, a Catholic school and university association, and then as one of the
facilitators behind the influential, and ecumenical, Institute for Contextual Theology. In
1983, the global Dominican community elected him as the Master-General, the leader of
all Dominicans, but in an unprecedented move, Nolan decline and asked to be allowed to
return to South Africa.

4.2 Biblical Spirituality (1982)

[omit]

4.3 Spiritual Growth and the Option for the Poor (1984)
In 1984, Albert Nolan gave a talk at the Catholic Institute for International Relations (CIIR),
which has since been reprinted under different headings and in different contexts, but
essentially the same text. The original title seems the best, though: Spiritual Growth and
the Option for the Poor. Here he explicitly connects the classic LT theme of the option for
the poor with the classic theme of spirituality: spiritual growth.

“In our service of the poor, there is a real development that goes through stages in
very much the same way as the stages of prayer. For example, some of us know
quite a bit about the stages of humility which St. Bernard talks about, or the stages
of love and charity that we read about in our spiritual books. Now I am suggesting
that in our commitment to the poor there is a parallel spiritual experience that also
goes through different stages.”

Nolan outlines four stages that he regards as important. Everyone, he says, is somewhere
on this scheme: not that it should be understood rigidly, or necessarily in a linear fashion.
But nevertheless, there are four aspects to how the church and those who work within it
relate to the poor (note how he implicitly indicates that he, and the people he addresses,
are not the poor!): these four stages are compassion; structural change; humility; and
solidarity. None of them ‘supersede’ the other: the build on each other; they are all
necessary. Compassion is necessary from a human point of view; the recognition that
welfare and charity is not enough will eventually lead to righteous anger and the insight
that structural change is necessary to change the life of the poor; humility is the insight that
the poor and oppressed will in fact effect their own liberation (it is not ‘us’ non-poor that will
do that ‘for them’, it is not a matter of ‘helping them’), and we can learn from the poor; and
finally solidarity is the recognition that the poor are human, too, and that it is fundamental
solidarity, not nostalgia and romanticism that effects real change. “Real solidarity begins
when it is no longer a matter of we and they.”

4.4 God in South Africa (1988)

In 1987/88, during the State of Emergency in the apartheid state, literally thousands of
people (estimates suggest about 20.000) were detained without trial for days, weeks,
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months, even years. Many activists went ‘on the run’ to avoid this, and for several months,
so did Albert Nolan. During this time, he completed his new book, God in South Africa.
Again, this is not an ‘academic book’: it is ‘intermediate-level’ contextual theology, written
for the moment, yet addressing in a systematic fashion what he thought needed to be said
at that very moment. It was, in many ways, an elaboration of the Kairos Document, from
his perspective. He works through classic themes, starting with ‘what is gospel’ (what is
good news) today in South Africa, for the poor and oppressed? What is sin in the Bible
(addressing the issue of structural sin). He talks about reading the signs of the time,
unmasking “the system”; sin, guilt, and salvation in the Bible and South Africa. He talks
about the challenge that this poses, the struggle this involves, signs of hope, and what role
the church can play in all this. On the whole, a fascinating, provocative, attempt to do
theology-in-context: radically, unapologetically, for that moment, for that time. I have heard
him say that if nobody read this book ten years later, that would not matter: he was writing
for this moment, for this time.

(In 1990, the Catholic theological faculty of the Swiss University of Fribourg included him
among a list of five people to be honoured with an honorary doctorate, but, together with
the US-American Roman Catholic Archbishop of Milwaukee, Rembert Weakland, this was
vetoed by the Vatican – as is usual in these cases, without official reasons.)

4.5 Jesus Today (2007)

In 2006, Nolan finished writing Jesus Today: A Spirituality of Radical Freedom; the book
appeared in print the following year. Contextual as always, Nolan describes what has
changed since his previous book, just eight years before: the end of apartheid being the
most prominent theme. But Nolan is also beginning to take on board other developments,
from feminist perspectives to archaeology, from cosmology to the environmental crisis.
The early years in a post-apartheid system have been difficult. Poverty continues to be a
huge issue, and HIV / AIDS is not just a social time-bomb, but already an enormous
problem in the present generation. In that context, he argues for a new spirituality which
connects personal and social liberation: “what we now see [in South Africa] is how the
gains we have made can be undermined by a lack of personal inner freedom”. The result
is a book that aims “to look more specifically at what Jesus might mean to you and me and
our contemporaries in the twenty-first century” (2006, pp. xiii-xiv).

The style of the book is radically different from God in South Africa. He seems to be writing
for a much broader audience now: whereas God in South Africa was addressed solely at
the people of the struggle against the apartheid system, writing a kind of systematic
exploration of key theological concepts reflecting on the practice of struggle, he now writes
in a way that is perhaps much more accessible to a global audience. But the important
thing is that he remains as contextual as before: Jesus Today addresses contextual
concerns just as God in South Africa did. It is just that the context he writes in has
changed.

4.5.1 The Signs of the Times

The fact that he remains committed to a contextual-theological approach, a liberation-
theological approach, is evident in the first chapter, entitled “The Signs of the Times”. This
is a classic liberation-theological approach: he starts with social analysis. Where are we?
What is our situation? This is important, he argues, in order to allow God to challenge us
(1). And so he proceeds to offer a brief analysis in four steps, four at first sight quite
disparate parts:
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Firstly, postmodernism as the end of modernist certainties, which is accompanied by deep
insecurity. In part, this is because modernism did not ‘deliver’: the Nazis, the Second
World War, and so on, are all part of the modernist world – they are not prevented by it,
they are the result of it. Fundamentalism, the flip-side of the coin of modernism, not
surprisingly offers an attractive alternative for some. Underlying all of this, he argues, is a
hunger for spirituality, however flippant and undirected. There is a hunger for healing in
this regard, too, something that is particularly strong, hardly surprisingly, in Africa (3-14).
Much of this is hardly novel, and Nolan does not claim that it is. One could even argue that
some of this seems remote from Nolan’s South African context. But this is arguably only
partially so: while he no doubt has a broader audience in mind, he still argues, in the first
instance, with a young (and usually black, urban) South African generation in view.

The second part of his analysis describes “the crisis of individualism”, and this is where he
begins to diverge from standard analyses of ‘the postmodern condition’. Nolan argues that
“If Freedom and happiness are equated with independence and self-sufficiency” (15), we
are heading for trouble: the “cultivation of the ego” ultimately leads to “narcissistic
individualism [which] is psychologically, socially, politically, economically, spiritually, and
ecologically destructive” (16). As a result, a spiritual search that is based on this self-
centredness leads to an individualistic spirituality, disconnected from others. (In contrast,
the growth of both Christianity and Islam in Africa is often community driven and
community-based (17).) The very individuality that celebrates individual freedom now
threatens the destruction of both society and the environment (19). Yet this cult of the ego
does not relate to what Nolan calls the ‘true self’: “It is an illusion that I am a separate,
independent, isolated, and autonomous individual. I am in fact part of an immense
universe in which everything is interdependent and intimately interconnected.” (24).

The third part of Nolan’s analysis concerns a side of globalization that is frequently
omitted: “in the midst of the most intolerable suffering, we have been moving forward to
overcome some of it and hopefully in the future much more of it” (27). This section insists
that we need to celebrate ways in which past (and in many places: still present) structures,
both social and ideological, have been overcome and changed: the political sense that real
changes to the systems of power and dominations are possible, however difficult; and the
theological sense that injustice is not simply God’s will. Social revolutions often soon
resulted in new dictatorships, but they showed that “structures of power can be changed”
(28). The possibility for real democracy and human rights, the fight against racism,
colonialism, and indeed patriarchy: these are signs of hope, something that Nolan is keen
to stress. In particular, it is the fact that is the voices of the marginalised can be heard in
this (29). At the same time, those signs of hope compete with the power of globalization
and empire, something that Nolan closely associates with the United States. Yet it is
precisely the power of the empire and its arrogance that leads to its own destruction, and
he describes signs of this, such as the World Social Forum, a global association of NGOs.

The fourth step in his analysis of the signs of the times concerns “science after Einstein”.
Nolan describes the “scientific mentality of the past” (36) as mechanistic, centred on
supposed facts, and, ultimately, without God. It was part of the modernist dualism that I
talked about earlier. Yet since Einstein, there has been a quiet revolution in 20th century
science, developing a new cosmology, a new biology, the breakdown of a simplistic cause-
and-effect scheme and the development of complex system theory, and so on.

4.5.2 Jesus’ Spirituality

“It is in this context … that we are invited to consider anew and to take seriously the
spiritual wisdom of Jesus of Nazareth.” (46) Having outlined the signs of the times, Nolan
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considers Jesus’ spirituality: “What was the secret of his extraordinary life – and death?
What did he feel strongly about? What was so memorable about him? What made him so
deeply loved and admired by some and hated by others?” (47) It is in this section of the
book that we find, in a way, an updated version of both his previous major books: Jesus
before Christianity, and also God in South Africa. For in these three chapters he describes
‘what Jesus is all about’.

In the first chapter, he talks about Jesus’ revolution. While Jesus’ world was different from
ours (pre-modern, for starters), he was not a reformer, but a revolutionary in a particular
sense:
“He turned the world, both Jewish and Gentile, upside down… He did not simply
want to replace those presently in power with others who were not yet in power. He
was looking at something more radical than that. He took the values of his time, in
all their variety, and turned them on their heads. He was busy with a social
revolution, rather than a political one, a social revolution that called for a deep
spiritual conversion. [Yes,] Jesus … was hoping for political liberation from Roman
oppression. But he saw himself as a prophet whose immediate mission was the
introduction of a social and spiritual revolution. The dismantling of the structures of
[Roman] power would follow later.” (50)

What was subversive about Jesus was that he turned the world (his and ours) and its
values upside down. The Sermon on the Mount (Mt) / Field (Lk) is the simplest example for
this. To bless your enemies is a fundamental revolution. Perhaps even more so in the
blessing of the poor: it does not mean that it is good to be desperately poor. Rather, what
Jesus says to his audience (the poor!) is this: “You should regard yourselves as fortunate
that you are not among the rich and the wealthy” because it is the rich “who are going to
find it very difficult to live in the world of the future (the kingdom of God) where everything
will be shared. The rich will find it very difficult to share.” (51) This is Jesus’ revolution. He
treats people with equal dignity, regardless of who they are: outcasts, prostitutes, beggars,
children, women (52-53). He tells parables: subversive stories which undermine the values
of the world. The kingdom of God is a ‘place’ that is in this sense fundamentally different
from our world: it is an “upside-down kingdom” (56); Jesus is an “upside down Messiah”
(59), as illustrated by his upside down self-reference as a servant, not a master: think of
the foot washing in John 13. Reversing the fundamental understanding of victim and victor,
namely that the victim of this world is the victor of the kingdom of God is a function of his
death on the cross. Put differently, Jesus saw things God’s way: that is how things are “the
right side up” (61).

The second chapter about Jesus describes him as “a prophet and a mystic”: in this
combination, Nolan understands Jesus’ in line with the classic prophets of the Hebrew
Scriptures: “in its basic inspiration … Jesus’ spirituality was like that of the Hebrew
prophets” (63). Like the prophets of old, Jesus speaks out and speaks truth to power; he
reads the signs of the times; he acts as God’s messenger. But he is able to do this, Nolan
says, because “Jesus was first and foremost a contemplative” (68): that is how Nolan
reads the ‘un-told’ pre-history of Jesus, as he ‘grew in wisdom and stature’, as Lk puts it
(Lk 2:52); but also the classic temptation scenes. Nolan describes Jesus as a mystic
because he models union with God in a unique way, singularly characterized by his ‘abba
experience’, the experience of God in terms of a loving father /son or parent / child
relationship (70). “If we find it difficult to take Jesus seriously”, Nolan writes, “and to live as
he lived, then it is because we have not yet experienced God as our abba. The experience
of God as his abba was the source of Jesus’ wisdom, his clarity, his confidence, and his
radical freedom.” (71). The holistic union of being a prophet and a mysticism, then, is what
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Nolan describes as the mystico-prophetic tradition, which does away with the ‘great fallacy’
which separates the spiritual from the political (72).

Finally, Jesus’ spirituality is one of healing: healing in a holistic sense, involving the
spiritual and the physical in inseparable union. Moving beyond guilt and blame to
unconditional forgiveness, healing body and soul not because they are separate but
because they belong together; restoring / healing relationships.

I am running out of time, inevitably. So far, I have summarised just the first two parts of out
of four, about half the book. Nolan goes on to discusses practical consequences for our
own spirituality today: the headings give an impression: “in silence and in solitude”;
“getting to know oneself”; “with a grateful heart”; “like a little child”; “letting go”. Much of this
is particularly addressed, I would personally stress, not to the poor, but the rich, like us,
who can afford to buy and read his book (because in real terms, that is the difference
between poverty and wealth). All of this culminates in the final section of the book, where
Nolan connects our spirituality with that of Jesus – again using Nolan’s chapter headings:
“one with God”; “one with ourselves”; “one with other human beings”; “one with the
universe”; and “radically free”.

What we see in this is much that is born out of classic 20th century Catholic spirituality. Yet
it is deeply rooted in the struggle for justice. The two belong together, cannot be
separated, Nolan would argue, because that is who and how Jesus was: radically free. It is
in the sense of all the above that he uses that much misused term, freedom.

Let me end with some excerpts from a lengthy interview Albert Nolan gave to a US
American Catholic radio station in 2007 (Nolan 2007).

First of all, I wanted to emphasize that if Jesus’ spirituality is going to be in any way
described or categorized, then I would call it spirituality of freedom. I think that is a
characteristic of the spirituality throughout. Jesus was an amazingly free person and
what he was bringing was not new constraints and so forth, not new prohibitions, et
cetera, but freedom.
That, I think, is very important to say today, on the one hand, because many people
look at Christianity and the church and see it as something that constrains, it
prevents people from being free, it prevents people from doing things, and is
generally restrictive and I think that’s a mistake. Christianity is not supposed to be
like that and Jesus was not like that.
So that’s the reason why the word “freedom” is there. But then, I also added
“radical” because I wanted to point out that it wasn’t really freedom in quite the
same way as many people use that word, and it wasn’t a superficial kind of freedom
from the law or something like that, or the different kinds of freedom that I described
in the last chapter as not what Jesus was about.
I called the kind of freedom that Jesus was about “radical” and it goes right down to
the roots of the person, and that was Jesus’ freedom. I could have called it “inner
freedom” I suppose, but I wanted to make sure that people understood it as both
inner and outer freedom, a really radical freedom.
In other words, the kind of freedom that people are striving for, I criticize. I say
Jesus would not have had that kind of freedom because it’s not radical enough. It’s
not as if one is saying that people are asking for a radical freedom and Jesus gives
a little bit of it as superficial freedom. I’m saying Jesus’ freedom is far deeper, far
more profound, far more radical.
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5 In Conclusion
It does not matter whether you agree with the details of Albert Nolan’s analysis – I don’t
either. Liberation theology is just as much a matter of discussion and debate and
conflicting views as everything else is – and that is good. What I would hope you take
away from this short, whirlwind tour of one example of spirituality and liberation are two
things. (1) The concrete connections of everything: fighting the great fallacy, the false
dualism of life. (2) Take the world into your prayer, take your prayer into the world. Don’t
separate the two. Be concrete in your prayer: bring your social analysis into your prayer. In
fact: do your social analysis in the first place! Don’t just pray “for the poor”: think about
what it is that is going on. Poverty is a scandal, not just something to feel bad about. Think
about it, talk about it, pray about it, and do something about it in the world. But: because
this is ultimately, in the long run, extraordinarily depressing: as Albert would say, “don’t
forget to remember good things”, the signs of hope.

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Galilea, Segundo (1989). The Way of Living Faith. London: Collins.
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Gutiérrez, Gustavo (1984). We Drink from Our Own Wells: The Spiritual Journey of a People. Maryknoll:
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Haight, Roger (1985). Liberationist Spirituality. In. An Alternative Vision: An Interpretation of Liberation
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Leech, Kenneth (1995). Spirituality and Liberation. In: Peter Byrne & J. L. Houlden (eds). Companion
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Linden, Ian (n.d.). Lay Spirituality in a Post-Modern World. <http://www.sedos.org/english/linden2.htm>.
(Accessed 3 June 2008).
Nolan, Albert (1976). Jesus before Christianity: The Gospel of Liberation. London: Darton, Longman and
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