Chomsky on Liberation Theology

Liberation Hermeneutics

Much contemporary theology seems to start from the challenge of the nonbeliever. He questions our religious world and faces it with a demand for profound purification and renewal… However, the challenge in a continent like Latin America does not come primarily from the man who does not believe, but from the man who is not a man, who is not recognized as such by the existing social order: he is in the ranks of the poor, the exploited; he is the man, who scarcely knows that he is a man. His challenge is not aimed first at our religious world, but at our economic, social, political, and cultural world; therefore, it is an appeal for a revolutionary transformation of the very bases of a dehumanizing society. The question is not therefore how to speak of God in an adult world, but how to proclaim Him as a Father in a world that is not human.

“Liberation, Theology, and Proclamation,” in C. Geffre and G. Gutierrez, eds, (1974) The Mystical and Political Dimensions of the Christian Faith, 69.