Liberation Theology in Late Modernity: An Argument for a Symbolic Approach

Over the past twenty years, many Latin American liberation theologians concede a loss of initiative in shaping their societies. While insisting that God acts in history on the basis of a "preferential option for the poor," they admit it has made little practical difference. I attribute this loss to a lack of fit between the apparently empirical proposition that God is a being who has and acts upon personal preferences and the "cultural physics," so to speak, of late modern social change. I detail this view in terms of three cultural dynamics of modernization: historical consciousness, evolutionary explanation, and inter-religious contact. Liberation theologians may reply that the lack of fit is perennial, but always trivial in the face of inhuman suffering. Their argument is religiously potent, but does not satisfy metaphysical doubt regarding the divine option for the poor. Treating God's option for the poor as, instead, a symbolic engagement with ultimacy increases the likelihood that the lack of fit is a creative tension, rather than a fatal mismatch. The article concludes by pointing toward how such an approach might proceed.