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The option for the poor in South Africa

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 April 2024

Albert Nolan OP
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‘This phrase (the option for the poor) burst upon the ecclesiastical scene only a few years ago. Since then it has become the most controversial religious term since the Reformers’ cry, “salvation by faith alone’’.’

These are the opening words of Donal Dorr’s recent book on the option for the poor and Vatican social teaching. He is not exaggerating. I should say that the challenge to the church, to almost all our churches, represented by this term ‘option for the poor’ goes far beyond anything envisaged by the Reformers. It challenges both Catholic and Protestant, and it challenges us in a very fundamental way.

Here, I should like to do little more than open up the debate about the option for the poor in South Africa. The question has been raised here and there in a variety of forms, mostly without the term ‘option for the poor’; but in South Africa there has been no systematic Christian practice based upon it and not much research and reflection around this controversial phrase. My intention, then, is to open up the specific approach implied in this new theological term for further research, reflection, debate and practice.

There is a great deal of confusion and misunderstanding about the meaning of the phrase itself, and even a measure of deliberate distortion of its meaning. Hence, in the first place, it will be necessary to state quite clearly what we are talking about and even more importantly what we are not talking about.

Type
Research Article
Information
New Blackfriars , Volume 67 , Issue 787 , January 1986 , pp. 5 - 15
Copyright
Copyright © 1986 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers

References

* A version of this, with minor differences, appears in the Festschrift Resistance and Hope, published by David Philip (Pty) Ltd, Werdmuller Centre, Main Road, Claremont 7700. RSA.

1 Dorr, D., Option for the Poor: A Hundred Years of Vatican Social Teaching (Maryknoll, New York, 1983)Google Scholar.

2 Ibid., p. 243.

3 For the latest account of the Latin American debate on the meaning of the option for the poor, see Gutierrer, G.. The Power of the Poor in History (Maryknoll, New York, 1983)Google Scholar.

4 See Nolan, A., Taking Sides (London, 1983)Google Scholar.

5 Quoted in Hanks, T.D., God So Loved the Third World (Maryknoll, New York, 1983), p. 6Google Scholar.

6 Croatto, J.S., Exodus: A Nermaneutics of freedom (Maryknoll, New York, 1981)Google Scholar. passim, and Fierro, A., The Militant Gospel: A Critical Introduction fo Political Theologies (Maryknoll, New York, 1977), pp. 140751Google Scholar.

7 Hanks, God So Loved, and Tamez, E., Bible of the Oppressed (Maryknoll, New York, 1982)Google Scholar.

8 Fierro, Militant Gospel, pp. 140–2; Croatto, Exodus, p. 20.

9 Tamez, Bible of the Oppressed, pp. 60–4.

10 Gottwald, N.K., The Tribes of Yahweh: A Sociology of the Religion of Liberafed Israel, 1250–1050 B.C.E. (Maryknoll, New York, 1979)Google Scholar.

11 Kegler, J., ‘The prophetic discourse and political praxis of Jeremiah: observations on Jer. 26 and 36’, in Schottrof, W. and Stegemann, W. (eds.), God of the Lowly, Socio‐Historical Interpretations of the Bible (Maryknoll, New York, 1984), pp. 49–54Google Scholar.

12 Anderson, B.W., The Living World of the Old Testament. 3rd ed. (Essex. England, 1978), pp. 399–400, 404–5, 418Google Scholar.

13 The most comprehensive, although not the most crucial, study of the spiritual poverty of this period available in English is Gelin, A., The Poor of Yahweh (Collegeville, Minnesota, 1964)Google Scholar.

14 Nolan, A., Jesus before Christianity: The Gospel of Liberation (London, 1977). pp. 92–100Google Scholar.

15 Ibid., pp. 31–6, 41.

16 Gutierrez, Power of the Poor, pp. 95, 116, 138, 140–2.

17 Quoted in ibid., p. 207.

18 See the interesting study of the meaning of words for poverty in the New Testament by Stegemann, W., The Gospel of the Poor (Philadelphia, 1984). pp. 13–21, 33–53Google Scholar.

19 Hanks, God So Loved. p. II; Gutierrez, G., A Theology of Liberation (Maryknoll, New York, 1973). pp. 290, 299–302Google Scholar.

20 See the interesting approach of G. Theissen to the spirituality of the Jesus movement: The First Followers of Jesus: A Sociological Analysis of the Earliest Christianity (London, 1978). pp. 99–110Google Scholar.

21 Tlhagale, B., ‘Transracial communication’, in Missionalia, 11, 3, pp. 113–23Google Scholar.

22 See the spiritual journey in Gutierrez, G., We Drink from Our Own Wells; The Spiritual Journey of a People (Maryknoll, New York, 1984)Google Scholar, passim.