Liberation theology emerged gradually in the period following the Second Vatican Council. At that Council there were present, as influences on the conciliar process, a wide variety of theologies- Neo-Scholastic, Neopatristic, anthropologico-transcendental (alias Karl Rahner), as well as the inter-related theologies of the ‘signs of the times’ and of ‘earthly realities’, the latter soon to be dubbed ‘secularisation-theology’ and chiefly worked out, like its brother movement, by the French. As succeeding events have demonstrated, the resultant compound was unstable. So far as the Americas were concerned although ‘CELAM’, the Latin American Episcopal Council, had functioned since 19S6, the Latin American influence at Vatican II, whether of bishops or theologians was negligible, with the exception of one or two individual voices like the Brazilian Helder Camara, archbishop of Recife, who contributed to the making of the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modem World.

Very different, during the Council’s closing sessions, was the state of affairs in Latin America itself. There a veritable theological ferment was brewing, as became clear from four meetings of theologians held at, successively, Petrdpolis (Brazil), Havana (Cuba), Bogota (Colombia) and Cuernavaca (Mexico) in the course of 1964-1965. What transpired from these pan-Latin American theological assemblies was the need for a new theology whose nature would be determined by, first, the conciliar ‘renewal’, but also by, secondly, confrontation with the often cruel human reality of that continent.

In 19821 drove with friends from the city of Puebla to Mexico City by the rather hazardous route between the volcanoes Ixtaccihuatl and Popocatepetl. That is the route which Cortés and his followers travelled in 1519. From the top, they caught Europe’s first glimpse of the Aztec capital, glistening below. Bernal Diaz, in his eyewitness chronicle, describes their amazement at its size and beauty. Now you cannot see the city, but only the pulsating orange-brown glow of its pollution. What was more interesting to me was that in order to find the right track to the pass, we had stopped in a village to ask the way, and had been guided by indians speaking the Spanish of Cervantes, rich in forms and courtesies quite unused in modem Spanish.

In 1990 I spent a weekend in Sucre, the historical capital of Bolivia, a beautiful university city in the Andes. I was attending a national charismatic conference, which had borrowed a military academy during the summer holiday. In the evening there was a big Mass in the Cathedral, presided over by the newly appointed Bishop, a Spaniard. The next morning the Feast of the Epiphany, I stumbled out of bed to celebrate Mass at six with the (enclosed) Carmelite sisters in their 17th century Carmel. To my amazement, the church was full, mostly of indians , in multi-coloured costume; the sisters in their choir made sprightly song with the help of a number of Spanish and Andean instruments, and every time they did so, a small indian girl, quite unprompted, danced with delight in front of the image of Our Lady.

More than in the case of any other school of theology, it is important to assess liberation theology in its social context. Liberation theology not only asserts a necessary correlation between belief and action; its adherents are also normally active in work with poor communities or one of the many church-linked sectoral support organisations. Liberation theology has also acquired wide influence within the magisterium of the Latin American church: the meeting of the General Conference of Latin American bishops (CEL AM) in Medellin (1968) and Puebla (1979) adopted key concepts, and for the past twenty years a liberationist outlook has shaped the thinking of the Brazilian bishops’ conference, the largest on the continent.

The impact of liberation theology in the Latin American church has been profound, though not universal. Where its ideas have been adopted, the church, from being in alliance with the elites and out of touch with the and a new following among the poor, and is treated with a new seriousness by non-Christian radicals. Bishops, who formerly entered the political arena mainly to defend their privileges, now commonly champion the rights of workers, the landless, indigenous peoples and other oppressed groups There has been an explosion of creativity, not only in theology, but in church structure, pastoral practice and liturgy. Liberation theology’s influence has spread beyond Latin America, stimulating similar contextual theologies in other parts of the Third World, and securing recognition of one of its key concepts, the ‘preferential option for the poor’, as an essential element of papal social teaching and a permanent question for Christians in the affluent world.

When Gustavo Gutik published his Teologia de Liberation. Perspectivas in 1971, he can hardly have imagined the significance his work would take on in the following decades. The very title has become embedded in the language of a whole generation of theology students as a rough description of a school of thought, or a movement, that reaches from the Philippines and Korea, through Asia and Africa, to Latin America. For some people, the question of liberation theology has become the yardstick against which all other theological approaches are to be measured, and the movement to which one’s response is the indicator of the seriousness of one’s Christian commitment.

As a university chaplain, I have found that the appeal of liberation theology to students has contributed greatly to the formation of the community I save. Its prophetic voice appeals strongly to compassionate men and women who are trying to give a Christian expression to their own concerns about poverty, violence and exptaitation.In my own ten years of involvement with British solidarity organisations and human rights groups focussed on Central America, particularly Nicaragua and El Salvador, I have seen the flood of books by liberation theologians since 1971 eagerly read by colleagues, Christian and non-Christian alike.