Lilian Calles Barger. The World Come of Age

The World Come of Age: An Intellectual History of Liberation Theology “explores how the first generation of liberation theologians built their ideas and recast the relationship between politics and religion” (5). Lilian Calles Barger’s focus is on the ways that liberation theologians understood and transformed the relationship between religion and politics. This goal reflects, and reinforces, her very broad definition of liberation theology far beyond its usual identification as a movement that began within Latin American Catholicism in the wake of the Vatican II reforms. Self-identified liberation theologians later emerged within the Catholic Church in Asia and in Africa and also in some Protestant churches. Some African American and feminist theologians in the U.S. also identify as such. While the theologians themselves usually have a clear definition of their project, the term “liberation theology” is not always well defined. For example, many social scientists and historians use it as an umbrella term for progressive Catholicism in general, including not only theology but also pastoral reforms, social movements, and political critiques. Barger offers an even broader definition, using “liberation theology” to describe almost every progressive Christian movement in the U.S. in the last century, as well as many forms of intellectual radicalism and liberalism with tenuous (at best) links to religion. This expansive definition is both the book’s main weakness and a source of its main usefulness.

Christianity · Liberation theology · Political science · Political theology · Politics · Protestantism · Sociology · Theology · Communism, Protests, Social Movements · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · Law · Philosophy · Religious studies · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies