“You Possess The Land That Belongs To All Salvadorans”
Archbishop Óscar Romero and Ordinary Violence
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 20459674 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Matthew Philipp Whelan (0000-0001-6152-659X, Department of Religion Baylor University One Bear Place #97284 Waco TX 76798‐7284 USA, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2019 |
| Volume | 35 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 638-662 |
| Publication date | 2019-10-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Modern Theology (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0266-7177 • E-ISSN: 1468-0025 |
| Publisher | Wiley (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1111/moth.12478 |
| OpenAlex | W2914005845 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 3 |
The essay focuses on the notion of ordinary violence in the homiletical and literary corpus of Archbishop Óscar Romero of El Salvador. Focusing especially on the reality of landlessness, I attend to Romero’s characterization of the inability of people to access land and livelihood as itself a form of violence, which he understands to be an attack upon the dignity of those deprived of what they need to survive and to flourish. The essay then turns to the assumptions about the world that make the perception of ordinary violence possible, arguing that such violence assumes and elaborates upon the theological grammar of creation as a common gift. I proceed to sketch the moral and theological landscape opened up by this belief about creation, suggesting some of the possibilities it generates for moral description and agency. For instance, Romero’s understanding of ordinary violence considerably complicates commonplace conceptions of thievery—a complexity especially evident in his claim that some Salvadoran oligarchs are like thieves because they take the land that belongs to all
Archbishop · Dignity · Epistemology · Political science · Sketch · Sociology · Theology · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Law · Mathematics · Philosophy · Religion and Society Interactions
| Citations per year | 0.75 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2022 - 2025 (4) |
| Highly cited | No |