Tuesday, August 7, 2012

LGBT and Liberation Theology


I have recently read a response from a defender of LGBT committed relationships in which he referred to Liberation Theology as the most adequate response to the their situations.  This is my response:

From Gutierrez in “We drink from our own wells”:  “For those who are located within a particular spiritual tradition, entry into the experience of the LGBT means taking that tradition with them. . . . Advantage must rather be taken of that tradition in order to enrich the contemporary spiritual experience of the LGBT.  The refusal thus to enrich the LGBT would betray a kind of avarice in the area of spirituality.  Furthermore, such avarice turns against the distrustful owner: their spiritual riches spoil and lose their value when kept “under the mattress.”

The faith and hope in the God of life that provide a shelter in the situation of death and struggle for life in which the LGBT and the oppressed of Latin American are now living—they are the well from which we must drink if we want to be faithful to Jesus.”

I have substituted LGBT for the word “LGBT” to throw into sharp relief what Gutierrez is saying.  Far from abandoning tradition, he drinks from the well of tradition.  You seem to drinking from the well of accommodation to the pains and misery of the LGBT and importing that into your research seeking to justify their claims.  What is at issue is that obedience to the plain teaching of scripture and tradition brings life, and the refutation of the plain teaching of scripture and tradition is ultimately a ministry of death.

I have long agreed with the central tenet of Latin American Liberation Theology.  In the words of Obispo Adrian Caceres, “Learn to read the bible with the eyes los pobres.”  That did not mean that one abandoned either scripture or tradition, far from it, and it terms of basic morality there was no departure from scripture and tradition, and no demythologization of scripture and tradition in dealing with the death dealing immorality in the experience of the poor, or for that matter of the LGBT.  If in your attempt to apply your heuristic / hermeneutic questions you end up rejecting tradition in favor of your reworking of tradition you are making an error.  For Liberation Theology experience was not a substitute for scripture and tradition.

No comments: