How About a 'Theology of Liberty'? Rather than of "Liberation"?
Author: Jim Guirard
Source: Religious Freedom Alert -- September 1987
"We will find our greatest success to the extent that we inculcate Marxism as a kind of religion: Religious men and women are easy to convert and win, and so will easily accept our thinking if we wrap it up in a kind of religious terminology." -- V.I. Lenin
Three outlandish but little-publicized events in Cuba and Nicaragua promise to reignite -- as well they should! -- the controversy over whether Christianity and Marxism-Leninism are in any way compatible.
- In Havana, the book "Castro on Religion" has been released. In it, the Cuban dictator claims (a) that he is a Christian, (b) that he believes in "most of the Ten Commandments," and (c) that Ernesto "Che" Guevara should now be canonized. Castro says of the atheist and violence-prone Guevara, "I have never met a man of so great sanctity."
- In Managua, following Fidel Castro's lead, a major propaganda campaign has been launched by the so-called popular church of the Sandinistas, depicting Guevara as a latter-day, martyred Jesus Christ. Guevara, atheist though he probably was, is pictured on poster nailed to a cross, no less!
- Also in Managua, another major book -- "Sandinism, Marxism and Christianity in the New Nicaragua" -- has been released which argues that the late Nicaraguan national hero Augusto Sandino was (whether or not he knew it) a "Marxist-Christian." Written by an Italian Marxist professor Giulio Girardi, the 457-page book is lauded by Sandinista Minister of Culture Ernesto Cardenal as being "highly subversive for the Western Christian world because it says that Christianity and revolution are the same thing."
- to Christianize the tyrannical Castro,
- to internationalize the nationalist Sandino, and
- to canonize the atheist-terrorist Guevara.
While each of these Castroite propaganda ploys seems too preposterous to be taken seriously, each is in fact part of a deadly serious effort by institutional "Marxism" (aided and abetted by many well-intentioned but naive "activist" Christians) to blend two inherently incompatible ideologies into one.
The resulting hybrid -- or, rather, the resulting heresy -- has become known as the "Theology of Liberation" or as "Christian-Marxism."
A Threat to the Faith
Both the attempted remaking of the staunchly nationalist Sandino into a Marxist internationalist and the proposed canonization of the atheist-terrorist Guevara reveal the outrageous extremes to which Marxist-Leninism will go to corrupt and to co-opt the Christian religion.
Both reveal, also, the need for true Christians and true democrats to understand, for once and for all, the magnitude of the fraud being perpetrated upon them in the names of "class struggle," of "revolution" and of a so-called "preferential option for the poor."
Whatever might be the honest intentions of the movement's chief Latin American proponents (such as the Roman Catholic priests Gustavo Gutierrez of Peru and Leonard Boff of Brazil) the framework of "Marxist analysis" in which they set forth their ideas leaves these ideas wide open to corruption and co-option by Marxism-Leninism itself.
The "liberationist" plowshares they wish to place into hate hands of the poor and the oppressed are being turned, instead, into revolutionary swords by a materialist ideology whose system of "analysis" is rooted not in notions of Christian love and of reconciliation but in loudly proclaimed principles of class hatred and violence.
Since this "Theology of Liberation" movement is primarily a phenomenon of Latin America and since its subversive effects are directed primarily at the Roman Catholic Church to which most Latin Americans belong, we must examine what Pope John Paul II and the Vatican are saying about this matter. Are they acquiescing in the notion that the world views of Jesus Christ and of Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin are somehow compatible?
The answer is an emphatic "No." The record clearly demonstrates that for many years, Pope John Paul II has been deeply troubled over what he feels are plainly heretical aspects of the so-called "Theology of Liberation." He has charged that the Marxist-oriented movement contains "errors which directly threaten the truths of the faith regarding the eternal destiny of the individual person."
"Myth of Revolution"
In April 1986, the Vatican's Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith issued a major pronouncement, entitled "Instruction on Christian Freedom and Liberation," which strongly echoes the same criticism. In its condemnation of the Marxist theories of class struggle embraced by most "liberation" theologists, the Vatican document is emphatically critical:
"The action which she (the Church) sanctions is not the struggle of one class against another in order to eliminate the foe. She does not proceed from a mistaken acceptance of an alleged law of history" -- i.e., the Church rejects Marxism's so called "law" of dialectical materialism.
And as to the related subject of "revolution," the Vatican document states in part, "...Those who discredit the path of reform and favor the myth of revolution not only foster the illusion that the abolition of an evil situation is in itself sufficient to create a humane society; they also encourage the setting up of totalitarian regimes."
Examples of this abound. Witness Afghanistan, Poland, Cambodia, Vietnam, Cuba, Ethiopia, Angola, and Nicaragua. How happy has been their Marxist "liberation"? How "preferential" are the options which are offered by the "people's democracies" into which the people of these tortured lands have been delivered by the likes of Stalin, Castro, Mengistu, Qadhafi, Ho Chi Minh, Brezhnev, and alas, Ortega?
Stark Contrast
The fact that "liberation theology" is so warmly embraced by the high priests of dialectical materialism in Moscow, Havana and Managua gives credence to the Pope's concerns. This factor alone should prompt true Christians and civil libertarians to wonder whether the movement has anything more to do with theology than Communist-inspired "wars of liberation" have to do with liberty -- very little, indeed.
Sooner or later, it must dawn on the well-meaning but deluded devotees of so-called "Christian-Marxism" that this is as self-contradictory a concept as can be concocted by the mind of man -- an oxymoron of the first order. They must surely come to realize that the differences between the God-centered theology of Jesus Christ and the materialistic ideology of Karl Marx are as fundamental as they are irreversible.
On the one hand, Christianity defines man as an essentially spiritual being whose material existence, however real, is of only transitory significance. It announces that the essence of each individual is an immortal soul, created in the spiritual image of God. It says that this personal soul has the capacity to receive eternal salvation (i.e., liberation from the wages of sin) from that just and merciful God -- in the person, and according to the word of Jesus Christ.
But in stark contrast, Marxism insists that man is a purely material creature -- and, therefore, far more significant in his collective and imminent interests than in his individual rights or his God-given personality. It denies flatly that man has an immortal soul. It militates against the notion of an eternal and personal God.
By this standard, Marxist "salvation" is here and now, period. All allegiance is owed to the party and the state. Completely absent are what the American Constitution and the Vatican Document refer to as mankind's "unalienable rights." As the Cuban Constitution sets forth the unambiguous rule: "It is illegal and punished by law to oppose one's faith or religious belief to the Revolution." In other words, the unending "Revolution" (as defined by the Communist Party) is the one and only deity.
To pretend that their can ever be a proper and moral cohabitation between such sharply conflicting visions of the nature and ultimate destiny of man is patent nonsense at best, outrageous heresy at worst. To believe that "Marxist analysis" can be used to promote the Kingdom of Christ is as preposterous as to rely upon "Nazi analysis" to promote human rights.
The Dignity of Man
Fortunately, both the Pope and the Vatican document set forth a proper and moral alternative for activist Christians who feel a special concern and wish to promote a "special option" for the poor and oppressed. They offer an alternative which is both Christian and civil libertarian, one which is not vulnerable to the siren song of an atheist ideology seeking world domination through class warfare.
Though neither the Pope nor the Vatican uses the term as such, the Christ centered socio-religious alternative they envision might best be called a "Theology of Liberty." It is an option founded on human rights and on Christian, rather than Marxist, "analysis." As the Vatican standard clearly proclaims: "There can be no true liberation if from the very beginning in the rights of Liberty are not respected."
In other words, "liberation" without liberty is nothing but a cynical lie in the socio-political arena and nothing but a damnable heresy in its theological pretenses. .
As a careful reading of the Vatican document and of Pope John Paul's earlier pronouncements indicate, this new "Theology of Liberty" must be centered first and foremost upon a basic reverence for the dignity of man in his and eternal dimensions. Underpinning these concerns must be the basic freedoms of religion, of religious education, and of religious dissemination.
Then, vis-a-vis man's social, economic and political dimensions it must rest on a truly comprehensive list of human rights and civil liberties (namely, the Vatican's "unalienable...rights of freedom") which are the bane of all inhumane, anti-social systems of repression -- whether fascist-right or fascist-left.
"Useful Idiocy"
As history demonstrates, it is only where the common people enjoy the freedoms of speech, press, assembly, religion, privacy, property, information, independent unionism, judicial due process, artistic expression, and multi-party political options do they possess the power to demand from their leaders those political, economic and social "preferences" which work against widespread poverty, oppressions, and human indignity.
Those Marxists and their collaborators (innocent and otherwise) who have made cynical science of promoting political "liberation" without liberty should not now be given carte blanche to promote an equally fraudulent "theology" which places God and matters of the soul forever on a back burner -- or in the oven for incineration.
Presumably, such materialistic enmity toward the spiritual side of man would prevail until the godless state of determines that it has brought about a worldly "people's paradise." This is most certainly not what Jesus Christ preached. But it is precisely what the militantly atheist Karl Marx preached. And it is precisely what the cynical Lenin hoped that so many "useful idiots" in the West might be counted on to accept.
While we should keep our minds open to new and valid avenues to social justice, we must not prop them so wide open that our brains -- and in this case our souls and our God-given "Rights of Liberty"-- fall out onto the floor, or worse. This would, indeed, be our fate if we were mindless enough to fall for the multiple fraud by which the Moscow-Havana-Managua axis is so cynically attempting:
As Heaven is the antithesis of Hell and liberty the antithesis of slavery, let us not permit our churches and our religious concepts -- Christian, Jewish, Moslem or otherwise -- to be co-opted and remade into the image of their most deadly enemy, dialectical materialism.
And finally, let us pray to Christ -- since He and His "Christianity" are at the very center of this dispute -- that He not permit our "useful idiocy" to be as great as Lenin, Castro, Ortega and their kind might have hoped.
JIM GUIRARD -- TrueSpeak Institute 703-768-0957 Justcauses@aol.com
Jim Guirard is a Washington-area lawyer, writer and lecturer. During 1981 he was National Affairs Director of the American Security Council Foundation, Coalition for Peace Through Strength and is currently a Board member of both the Committee for a Free Afghanistan and the Central America Working Group. Previously, he served as Administrative Assistant to US Senators Allen Ellender and Russell Long of Louisiana.