Liberation Theology

Arising out recent class discussion topics touching on the ideas of James Cone’s ideas on Liberation Theology and the relationship between the Cross and the Lynching Tree, our group decided to focus the topic of our presentation around Liberation Theology. However, in order to create a counter argument to stimulate further discourse, we introduced the Theology of Prosperity, as an opposing theological concept, to our presentation. Hence, we came up with the topic of Liberation Theology vs. Theology of Prosperity.

Firstly, it was necessary to give the class a concise definition of these broad theories, and follow these definitions with general background explanation on the idea behind the respective theologies. The definitions that we used to introduce the different ideas were; ‘Liberation Theology: A form of Christian theology that emphasizes social and political liberation as the anticipation of ultimate salvation.’ And, ‘Theology of Prosperity: A religious belief that wealth is a divine reward for a person's faith in god.’ After having defined the concepts of discussion in our own terms, we proceeded to explain each idea separately, incorporating questions respective to the specific topics, and finished by introducing questions comparing and contrasting these two theories and discussing their nature in full, including the showing of a short video clip of a sermon by Reverend Jeremiah Wright.

The ideal behind the idea of Liberation Theology maintains a liberation from a socially, politically, or economically oppressed position through their infallible faith. In that way it maintains an aspect of malleability by means that Liberation Theology can be founded in a number of different social communities in various locations ...

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...ed amount of class time, this information would have taken away from the comparative nature of the presentation, and, in stead, turned it into a mere explanation. The integration of more media support concerning each individual theology would have been an improvement to our presentation, as well. Perhaps this would have given the discussion a stronger foundation of discussion.

Overall, as a group, and as far as the class feedback dictated, our presentation went quite well. The discussion was interesting, and engaging. There was vigorous participation from most members of the class concerning Liberation Theology and Theology of Prosperity. However, the most successful aspect of our presentation, we feel, was the fact that we were able to get the ideas behind these two theologies across to the class, and relate them both to African Americans and biblical culture.