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The Cambridge Companion to Liberation Theology. Edited by Christopher Rowland. Cambridge Companions to Religion. Pp. xviii + 260. Index and Select Bibliography. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. ISBN 0-52146144-8 (hardback): 0-521-46707 -1 (paperback).
Any theology is fundamentally about God and God's love. Gustavo Gutierrez asks how one can talk about these 'in a reality characterized by the premature and unjust death of many people.' What does such discourse mean in a country where hundreds of thousands of peasants, whose ancestors had farmed the land for generations, have been driven off due to international demand for economic growth to service foreign debt? How does one proclaim God's fatherhood in an inhumane world, or tell a non-person that she or he is God's child?
After a chapter on the general nature of liberation theology, the reader is introduced to liberation theology in Asia, black theology, land feminist theology. Part Two explores aspects of liberation theology, with sections on base ecclesial communities, making the Bible relevant to the poor, and the unfinished agenda of liberation and reconstruction. Analysis and criticism are the agenda for Part Three, which relates liberation...