From Liberalism to Liberation: A Proposal for Change to the Future Church

A Position Paper from The Liberation Theology Study Group of Rochester, New York
Preliminary Draft Rev 2.0

For: The Vestry of Christ Church Rochester, New York,

By: The Liberation Theology Study Group Of Rochester, New York January 20, 2014 Martin Luther King, Jr. Day (Last Updated Feb 4, 2014)

Acknowledgements The authors wish to thanks Sr Margie Henninger1 and Fr. Jim Callan of Spiritus Christi Church2 for their suggestion of a drop-in center as a solution to bridging the social gap between service providers and recipients. The authors would also like to thank Matt Townsend, communications missioner for the Episcopal Diocese of Rochester3 to his advice, encouragement and burden sharing, as well as the inspiration of the Rev. Ruth Ferguson, rector of Christ Church Rochester. Background and Introduction The Liberation Theology Study Group of Rochester, New York was formed in the early spring of 2013 not only to study the primary and secondary literature of Liberation Theology but also to serve as a spiritual incubator to facilitate projects in the community motivated by the spirit and purpose of liberation theology. The group is a mixture of the religiously affiliated together with atheists, anarchists and community activists. We include parishioners of Christ Church (Rochester), St. Pauls Episcopal Church, Christ Church (Pittsford), St. Josephs House of Hospitality (Catholic Worker), The Flying Squirrel Community Space, as well as local filmmakers and photographers. We include the ill, physicians, the unemployed/underemployed, tenured professors, students, ex-offenders, bankers, homemakers, those suffering from cognitive/behavioral disorders, psychologists and psychiatrists, engineers and clergy. The Liberation Theology Study Group was made an official part of the curriculum of the Rochester Free School in 2013. In other words, we constitute the People of God2, and as such we try to envision what the future church needs to be- NOT by the careful pragmatic positioning of oneself in line with existing trends of money and power, nor by the continuation of Liberal Progressive activism which treats the poor as objects for the largess of the prosperous, but by the creation of zones, institutions and communities in which the poor are the subjects of their own destinies who voice their own concerns and control their own fates, rather than being the objects of the desires and management decisions of the prosperous and powerful. The basic principles of Liberation Theology and how they can be implemented within the context of ANY outreach project is the subject of this position paper.

1 2 3

http://www.spirituschristi.org/spirituschristi.org/About_Us_files/History%20of%20Spiritus%20Christi%20Church.pdf

http://www.episcopalrochester.org/Parish%20&%20Diocesan%20Administration/diocese-staff.html

Liberal Christianity So Far The current way in which Liberal Christianity engages with the disadvantaged in their urban communities is by means of various soup kitchens and other such charitable distribution operations. These operations typically consist of three distinct groups: the Board of Directors, the Volunteers, and finally the Customers. Interestingly, the board often consists of fairly wealthy donors, while the volunteers consist of the reasonably comfortable and upwardly mobile middle class i.e. the typical parishioner of the liberal Christian church. And finally the customers are the poor, unemployed or underemployed, disadvantaged, marginalized, drug- and alcohol-dependent and mentally ill who actually live in close proximity to church in subsidized housing, unlike the board members or volunteers who have other options. It is therefore no surprise that the organizational; structure of liberal charitable operations reflects the predominant hierarchical organization of most private and public institutions in the USA. The gap between the affluent board members and the middle class volunteers on the one hand, and the charity customers on the other hand, is socially wide, impermeable and is structurally enforced. A recent mini-retreat4put on for the A Meal and More5 board and volunteers by long-time Rochester social gospel practitioners Fr. Jim Callan and Sr. Margie Henninger of Spiritus Christi offered a forum for the A Meal And More board and volunteers to express their feelings about what they were doing and the people they were serving. The overwhelming sense expressed by both the board and the volunteers was the palpable social and communication gap between themselves and their customers, including their discomfort over the state of dress and hygiene of the customers, as well as the personal experience of the trauma of petty theft, presumably perpetrated by the customers on the volunteers. The board was also very gracious and generous in its appreciation for the skills and perseverance of the volunteers and staff, and as well as being rightfully proud of the number of customers served. These very same sentiments were expressed by participants in the Liberation Theology Study Group and in most other casual conversations on the subject in either religious or secular contexts. This should be of no surprise in that this is the way liberal Christianity, and indeed the liberal secular political sphere, operates today. By their own metrics liberal churches report the numbers of poor being served is steadily increasing, as is the number of women in positions of power in the church, the economy and politics. The success of liberal Christianity and politics can also be measured by advances in social equality of sexual minorities, including laws against discrimination, marriage equality and the open participation as bishops and clergy in the church. The metric of racial equality also show a progressively improving trend, with the increasing presence of racial minorities, historically structurally disenfranchised by the national disgrace of slavery and the Indian Wars, now
44 th

Held on October 28 , 2013 in the Guild Room of Christ Church Rochester for the Board of Directors and volunteers of A Meal and More soup kitchen 5 http://www.amealandmore.org/

showing increased membership on Boards of Directors and high-level positions within government and the military.

Yet with all the above mentioned progress, inexplicably the gap between the rich are the poor has never been wider (and in fact is the widest in the industrialized world), the social safety net built during the New Deal is being dismantled: unemployment benefits and food subsidies are being reduced, labor has been almost completely dismantled especially in the private sector, health care and education is the most expensive in the world. Rochester, New York, the home of Frederick Douglass and a major center of the abolitionist movement6, is one of the most racially segregated cities in the country (Gindy, 2008)7. Deregulation of financial markets, banking and public media, paired with the recent Supreme Court ruling that corporations are individuals and that money is speech, has made the voice of individuals and the underprivileged completely inaudible in the rapidly diminishing public sphere. Therefore, for all of its successes, Liberal Christianity and Politics also has failed the 99% in the most important economic and political ways. Liberation Theology offers a methodology to turn this around, and the principles that will be laid out in this position paper can be applied to specific small scale projects. An example of such a proposed project is laid out in the White Paper by the Liberation Theology Study Group of Rochester, New York titled: Proposal for a Womans Drop-In Center To Be Located at Christ Church Rochester, In the Heart of Downtown Rochester, New York.

Liberalism versus Liberation Liberalism treats the poor as the object of social action, and the affluent as the subjects/ initiators/ demanders of social action. That is, the affluent have the responsibility to help the poor. Liberalism invites the affluent to speak for the poor, to be the voice that the disenfranchised lack. Liberals act as the vanguard, the experts, the technocrats and the managers by which society identifies the needs of the marginalized and implements how the marginalized are to be managed. Liberalism identifies with the affluent and not the disadvantaged. Poverty, ignorance and powerlessness are viewed as objectively abnormal exceptional conditions, like any disease or technical problem, to be addressed by those in power. Poverty and disenfranchisement are viewed not as structurally necessary but as exceptions to the rule, as unfortunate unnecessary collateral
6

http://books.google.com/books?id=wSfTFjSw6RYC&pg=PA122&dq=The+Underground+Railroad+in+Rochester&hl= en&sa=X&ei=wqziUrPmPOm2sAT8iIGICg&ved=0CDcQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=The%20Underground%20Railroad% 20in%20Rochester&f=false 7 http://www.theatlanticcities.com/politics/2012/02/what-latest-data-city-segregation-doesnt-tell-us/1174/

damage of an otherwise theoretically perfect system that only needs slight regulatory adjustment, or alternately, requires more radical deregulation, to totally eliminate all troublesome exceptions and remainders. Oddly enough, based on the themes of recent blockbuster films and books in contemporary public media, it is much easier to publically imagine an apocalyptic end-of-the-world scenario such as global warming, asteroid collision, alien invasion, nuclear holocaust or even zombie plagues than it is to envision even a slight reduction in the gap between the rich and the poor, or gun control or even a fully public, single-payer U.S. health system such as the ones that presently exists in Israel, Canada and Europe. The complete suppression of any practical possibility of public intervention in any reduction of disparity between the 1% and the 99% - or any possibility that the 99% can even be heard within the public sphere - perhaps needs to be considered as the primary basis for the structural inequality, disempowerment and alienation experienced by the powerless and disenfranchised. Liberation Theology proposes that the basis of this structural disenfranchisement is primarily spiritual and theological in nature. Liberal Christianity recognizes that The poor you will always have with you, and you can help them any time you want. But you will not always have me. Mark 14:7. In other words, the poor are unavoidable, perhaps even divinely sanctioned and theologically necessary. Theologically, this can be interpreted as proving that The Church has higher purposes other than helping the poor. A liberal Christian (along with conservatives and evangelicals) will say There, but for the Grace of God, go I. In other words because of Gods grace one is of the elect, one is saved from poverty. Poverty becomes a sign of the lack of divine grace, the mark of Cain, a divine banishment from the goodness and the love of God. Liberation Theology turns this perspective completely on its head. Characteristic hallmarks of Liberation Theology are: The poor and disenfranchised are made the subjects rather than the objects of social action. The poor and disenfranchised are given their own voice with which to identify and express their own needs, desires and concerns. The poor and disenfranchised must become their own leaders and must have the primary say in any decision to be done on their account, and not to be the passive, voiceless objects of Others decisions and desires concerning them. The poor and disenfranchised are the core concern of the Church, as expressed by Jesus through his sermon on the mount. They are The Treasure of the Church. Every individual Christian must self-identify with the fate of poor and disenfranchised, rather than identify with those more affluent then themselves. Only in this way will the political leverage of the presently voiceless disenfranchised increase enough to make the concerns of the 99% outweigh those of the 1%.

Liberation theology focuses on the social, economic, administrative and spiritual hidden structures that unconsciously create disenfranchisement and poverty and deals effectively with them from a Christian social gospel perspective. Prior examples include the work of Leo Tolstoy in Russia, Mahatma Gandhi in India and Angelina Grimk, William Lloyd Garrison, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Beecher Stowe, John Brown, Susan B. Anthony , Peter Maurin, Dorothy Day, the Berrigan Brothers and the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. in the USA.

The difference between Liberalism and Liberation is the difference between sympathy and empathy. The sympathy of liberalism can be compared with finding a person fallen to the bottom of a deep well, unable to escape. The Liberal/sympathetic person looks down upon the fallen from the top of the well and expresses her sympathy and may throw down food and other aids. On the other hand, the Liberator/empathetic person goes to the bottom of the well with the fallen victim, and helps that person from the same position as the fallen victim, adding their own voice to that of the victims and sharing in the victims fate. Liberalism promotes awareness of disenfranchisement while identifying with the enfranchised; liberation seeks solidarity with the disenfranchised and thus undermines the very structural basis of disenfranchisement. The purpose of adapting Liberation Theological practices within a Church context is NOT to switch the composition of any church from one social class to another, but rather to increase the size of the congregation to ALSO INCLUDE AND PROVIDE A VOICE to those who never had a voice of their own before, in any context. It is insufficient to simply have the existing church SPEAK FOR the voiceless, for this, as we now know, only structurally reinforces their voicelessness. Conclusion The purpose of this whitepaper was to help identify and sharpen the distinction between traditional Progressive Liberalism as practiced in the mainline liberal protestant churches and the principles of Liberation theology. They are often conflated but in fact they are quite distinct and many times at odds. It is also proposed that any proposed project based on Liberation Theology Principles be advertised as the expressed desire of The Church, both as the parish church, and the Diocese of Rochester- as a core mission coming out of the very heart of the Church and in fidelity to, and in fulfillment of, Christs teachings- and not as some individual or factional private enterprise, towards which the Church can easily disavow any commitment, support or responsibility.