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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 February 2024
So concluded Fergus Kerr in an editorial comment published by New Blackfriars last year. His remark leads us to consider what form a British liberation theology might take, and what obstacles lie in the way of its progress.
The question of a British version of the theology of liberation has received some attention in recent years. Two important public lectures considered it, Charles Elliott’s Heslington Lecture of January 1985, and the more well-known Hibbert lecture given by the Anglican Bishop of Durham, David Jenkins, in April of that year. David Jenkins’ lecture pointed out that the task would not be an easy one—certainly not a simple matter of translation from a third-world context to a first-world one:
British essays in liberation theology would not be mere echoes or reflections of liberation theology elsewhere. As I learnt from my contacts with some of those who developed liberation theology in Latin America and South East Asia, it would not be in the spirit of liberation theology if it were. As an article published in the Philippines in Manila in 1971 puts it, ‘the question is not “how can we adapt theology to our needs?”, but rather, “how can our needs create a theology which is our own?” ‘. Liberation theology rises out of the particular needs of a particular country for hope in relation to justice, peace and love.
As we shall see, there are some questions to be asked concerning Jenkins’ reluctance to envisage too close a parallel between a third-world and a first-world version of liberation theology.
1 New Blackfriars, July-August 1987 (Vol. 68, No. 807), p. 319Google Scholar.
2 ‘Is there a Liberation Theology for the UK?’
3 ‘The God of Freedom and the Freedom of God’.
4 Ibid., p.9.
5 See, for example, The Kingdom of God and North‐East England, ed. Dunn, J.D.G., (SCM 1986)Google Scholar, produced by the North‐East Ecumenical Group, which looks at instances of rural and small town deprivation, for instance in a number of steel and mining towns which have now lost their main source of income and employment.
6 Published by Church House Publishing, London, in 1985.
7 Epworth Press, 1982.
8 Smith, Austin, Passion for the Inner City (Sheed and Ward, London, 1983), p. 81Google Scholar.
9 See the account by K.L. Inglis in The Churches and the Working Classes in Victorian England, particularly the introductory chapter.
10 Published by Pelican, 1970. The quotation is on page 274.
11 Quoted in Austin Smith, op. cit., p. 87.
12 It would be more of a factor with the Victorian Church than in the modern era, but then again the roots of many modern problems lie in the Victorian era.
13 See note 6.
14 Faith in the City, p. 31 (para 2:18).
15 Ibid., p. 53 (para 3:13).
16 Page 55 (para 3:16).
17 Page 181 (para 8:55).
18 Pages 220–221 (paras 9:90–91).
19 Page 257 (para 10:98).
20 See, for instance, the comments in 6:83 on resistance by residential colleges to the development of non‐residential courses (page 129).
21 Page 64 (para 3:34).
22 See the comments in 3:11 (page 51).
23 See the observations of Michael Paget‐Wilkes in his Poverty, Revolution and the Church (Paternoster Press, Exeter, 1981)Google Scholar.
24 See Anthony Archer's The Two Catholic Churches (SCM, London 1986)Google Scholar.
25 See the account of base communities in Leonardo Boff's Ecclesiogenesis (Collins 1986)Google Scholar.
26 Ernesto Cardenal, in his The Gospel in Soltiname, (Orbis, New York, 1976Google Scholar‐, 4 vols.), provides a collection of truly grassroots reflections on Christianity.
27 The title of a book by David Sheppard, the current Anglican bishop of Liverpool.
28 This is the way George Casalis uses th term ‘Fourth World’ in his contribution to Doing Theology in a Divided World (edd. Torres, Fabella, Orbis, 1985), p. 114Google Scholar.
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