KC (16) Creeping Liberation Theology

In the second appendix of Kingdom Conspiracy by Scot McKnight examines the influence of liberation theology on evangelicalism.

I see two major themes among those who want kingdom to be a living theology. Those two themes are, first, a culture-transformation kingdom vision and, second, a social and liberation kingdom vision.

This conversation must begin with the transformation understanding of the kingdom because this view is the heritage of North American (and European) Christian thinking.

The major problem in this approach— often the transformationalist can be found reframing and reducing and reforming the kingdom vision of the Bible to make it fit culture. In the second theme of social liberation, the kingdom gets quickly connected to activism for justice and peace, and therefore it often gets tightly webbed into economic theories that need to be implemented at the political level in order to institutionalize what is perceived to be the “kingdom” vision.

Liberation theology is now growing in corners of North American and European Christianity in unnoticed ways and with implications that are far-reaching, and it is revolutionizing as well what the word “kingdom” means.

Kingdom theology, shaped as it is now by these two major streams of thought— the transformation and liberation approaches— has become a combination of good people doing good things in the public sector and an activistic striving to undo injustices and establish justice against the oppressive systemic forces of, most especially, capitalism and colonialism.

This liberation theology approach to the kingdom focuses on social justice and peace through the liberation of the oppressed, in a variety of contexts. This stream, I think, has overflowed its banks and is flooding the church of the United States with a highly politicized framework for understanding the Christian life. More and more people today perceive the Christian calling to be fundamentally about relief of the poor and release of the oppressed, and this is largely enacted in the public sector where the primary energy is spent on political power and social activism. An increasing number of white evangelicals are in the grip of this vision...

I shall contend that this stream, if it stays within the banks, has much to offer the church and society. But if it runs loose, it floods the other streams, colonizes the kingdom into little more than political action devoid of the gospel of the kingdom itself, and thereby strips the church of its calling in this world.

Liberation theology’s kingdom theology has been embraced by the surging growth of progressive Christians, including blocs and blocs of (often young) evangelicals, and it is now the default definition of kingdom for the majority.

Contemporary kingdom theology tends mostly to be liberation theology articulated by white people on behalf of the oppressed and poor and marginalized, who (by the way) more often than not have themselves moved beyond anything whites have to offer.

Contemporary kingdom theology tends mostly to be liberation theology articulated by white people on behalf of the oppressed and poor and marginalized, who (by the way) more often than not have themselves moved beyond anything whites have to offer. The transformation approach pointed to a biblical reality: the cosmic reign of God. Walter Rauschenbusch represents those who expanded salvation to the social. Liberation theology has made salvation almost entirely social. This is not a slippery slope, nor is it a “give’em an inch and they’ll take a mile.” The social is profoundly important to the Bible’s sense of kingdom, but the social dimension of salvation has become a totalizing force in much kingdom thinking today. Progressive kingdom theology has become too often an emasculated kingdom of those whose theology is framed to make reparations for past injustices. As such it functions as little more than the puppeting echoes of progressive Western liberalism and politics with a thin veneer of soteriology slathered on top of what is little more than a feeble attempt to salve a guilty conscience over a sinful history. Many evangelicals and progressives today are steamed up about their opportunity to change the world and to be significant and to do something important. For all the “good” this movement can do and is doing, I contend that, far more important, it is largely a shame-based movement masking a shallow gospel and an inept grasp of what kingdom means in the Bible. One wonders at times if kingdom theology for many is religious language used to baptize what to most other observers is merely good actions done by decent people for the common good. Is kingdom language, then, the attempt to make something wholly secular somehow sacred?