Christians for Socialism (Spanish : Cristianos por el socialismo; CpS) is a worldwide political and cultural movement focused on social inequality and economic injustice, [1] inspired by liberation theology. [2] The movement was founded in 1971 and was active in Chile until 1973. The movement was widely supported in Chile by those who supported Allende's government, as Allende offered to work with the Church in setting up his Socialist structure. [3] The movement disbanded following the 1973 military coup in which Allende's government was overthrown.
Having begun in Chile in April 1971, [4] Christians for Socialism first gained notoriety when a collection of eighty Chilean priests, known as the "Group of 80", publicly declared their support of the construction of socialism along the lines being followed by then-President Salvador Allende. [5] [6] Allende had offered to work with the Catholic Church to structure the socialist government in Chile. [7] The Secretariat of Christians for Socialism was formally established in September 1973. The group was predominantly composed of Roman Catholic members of the Christian left who were inspired and spurred on by the Second Vatican Council. [8]
CpS was founded to counteract a presumption that Christian institutions were inherently opposed to socialism. While its founders found aspects of socialist programs that they wished to critique, they wanted to do so as insiders within the socialist movement, rather than as adversaries. [9] From their beginnings as supporters of Allende, [10] CpS has been associated with firm support for socialist leaders. [11] Accordingly, CpS leaders cultivated strong ties with Cuban revolutionary leader Fidel Castro. [12] During Castro's 1972 visit in Chile, 120 Chilean Catholic priests had friendly meetings with Castro, as well as Archbishop Raul Silva Henriquez. [13] CpS was intended as a movement of active political involvement and participation, [14] and involved discussions bringing together current political events and church documents in light of each other. [15] CpS inspired a series of social programs in the public sector.[ citation needed ] Priests in CpS led union units and organized peasant federations. [16]
In Chile the immediate antecedent to CpS was the Iglesia Joven movement. [17] In Italy, many of the young people who had been involved in the Italian student and worker protests of 1968 joined the movement, and the Christian Associations of Italian Workers (ACLI) was very supportive.
López Trujillo, the General Secretary of the Latin American Episcopal Conference at the time, considers Giulio Girardi a major leader of CpS. [18] Another prominent leader was the Salesian priest Lidia Menapace, who was also a significant figure in the Italian Catholic resistance during World War II. In Spain, Alfonso Carlos Comín was a key leader in establishing the movement. The theologian Gustavo Gutiérrez was also a member [19] and led sessions at all the major conferences. [15]
A number of important gatherings have been held under the auspices of Christians for Socialism. In 1972, 400 members met for a week at a textile union hall, urging "class struggle [as] the only valid course to necessary social change in Latin America." [20] CpS brought together similar Latin American movements in the Latin American Meeting of Christians for Socialism 1974 in Santiago, Chile.
In 1975, the Christians for Socialism conference in Detroit, Michigan, formally introduced liberation theology to the United States. [15] This event was a significant convergence where black, feminist, and third-world anti-imperialist movements joined together and recognized each other as peers in the same process of liberation, while also strongly critiquing one another. [21] A detailed account of the meeting was published. [22]
Christians for Socialism groups sprung up in France, Italy, and West Germany. [23] In Germany, CpS was a radical rival to Enlightenment liberalism and "German idealism's aspirations to freedom". [23]
López Trujillo has critiqued CpS for holding an understanding of liberation too strongly influenced by Marxist political theory rather than the integral Christian liberation stance espoused by the Latin American Episcopal Conference. [18] It has been said[ by whom? ] that for some members of Christians for Socialism, there is "no salvation incarnate outside of class struggle." [24]
In May 1972, there was opposition to CpS by the Conference of Latin American Bishops' Department of Social Action, due to concerns that the April 1972 CpS meeting was Marxist manipulation of churchgoers to further the CpS agenda. [25] Left-leaning priests from Brazil and Bolivia were supportive but unable to participate in gatherings due to severe police control. [26] CpS was short-lived in Chile, due to strong resistance from the Episcopal Conference of Chile under the direction of its secretary general, bishop Carlos Oviedo Cavada. [27] In their letter condemning the movement, the bishops there argued that while the church speaks to "politics insofar as it underlies every social reality", it should not be involved in "partisan activity". [28] Chilean clergy involved in the movement were banned from political participation altogether in April 1973. [29]
The movement was suppressed by the Chilean military dictatorship after the coup of 1973. [15] The persecution of the regime led to many key leaders fleeing Chile. [30] Father Pablo Richard , one of the most active members of CpS, left Chile at this time. [31] Many of the grassroots members of CpS, especially those in poorer areas faced imprisonment, torture and death at the hands of the Pinochet regime. [32] In addition to the actions taken against members of CpS by the Pinochet regime, a public condemnation of CpS was issued by the Church, following the coup. [33]
Liberation theology is a theological approach emphasizing the "liberation of the oppressed". It engages in socio-economic analyses, with social concern for the poor and political liberation for oppressed peoples and addresses other forms of perceived inequality.
Salvador Guillermo Allende Gossens was a socialist politician who served as the 28th president of Chile from 1970 until his death in 1973. As a democratic socialist committed to democracy, he has been described as the first Marxist to be elected president in a liberal democracy in Latin America.
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Christian socialism is a religious and political philosophy that blends Christianity and socialism, endorsing socialist economics on the basis of the Bible and the teachings of Jesus. Many Christian socialists believe capitalism to be idolatrous and rooted in the sin of greed. Christian socialists identify the cause of social inequality to be the greed that they associate with capitalism. Christian socialism became a major movement in the United Kingdom beginning in the 19th century. The Christian Socialist Movement, known as Christians on the Left since 2013, is one formal group, as well as a faction of the Labour Party.
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Salvador Allende was the president of Chile from 1970 until his suicide in 1973, and head of the Popular Unity government; he was a Socialist and Marxist elected to the national presidency of a liberal democracy in Latin America. In August 1973 the Chilean Senate declared the Allende administration to be "unlawful," Allende's presidency was ended by a military coup before the end of his term. During Allende's three years, Chile gradually transitioned into a socialist state.
Gustavo Gutiérrez Merino is a Peruvian philosopher, Catholic theologian, and Dominican priest, regarded as one of the founders of Latin American liberation theology. He currently holds the John Cardinal O'Hara Professorship of Theology at the University of Notre Dame, and has previously been a visiting professor at many major universities in North America and Europe.
Based in Bogotá (Colombia), the Latin American and Caribbean Episcopal Council, better known as CELAM, is a council of the Roman Catholic bishops of Latin America, created in 1955 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
The Second Episcopal Conference of Latin America was a bishops' conference held in 1968 in Medellín, Colombia, as a follow-up to the Second Vatican Council which it adapted in a creative way to the Latin American context. It took as the theme for its 16 documents “The Church in the Present Transformation of Latin America in the Light of the Council", with a focus on the poor and oppressed in society. It recognized that “the social situation demands an efficacious presence of the Church that goes beyond the promotion of personal holiness by preaching and the sacraments.” The bishops agreed that the church should take "a preferential option for the poor" and gave their approval to Christian "base communities" in which the poor might learn to read by reading the Bible. The goal of the bishops was to liberate the people from the "institutionalized violence" of poverty. They maintained that poverty and hunger were preventable.
The Catholic Church in Chile is part of the worldwide Catholic Church, under the spiritual leadership of the Pope, the curia in Rome, and the Episcopal Conference of Chile.
A base community is a relatively autonomous Christian religious group that operates according to a particular model of community, worship, and Bible study. The 1968 Medellín, Colombia, meeting of Latin American Council of Bishops played a major role in popularizing them under the name basic ecclesial communities. These are small groups, originating in the Catholic Church in Latin America, who meet to reflect upon scripture and apply its lessons to their situation.
The option for the poor, or the preferential option for the poor, is a principle of Catholic social teaching, explicitly articulated in the latter half of the 20th century. The concept was first articulated within Latin American liberation theology, and was championed by many Latin American Christian democratic parties at the time. It is also a theological emphasis in Methodism.
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Hugo Assmann (1933–2008) was a Brazilian Catholic theologian who helped develop the ideas surrounding liberation theology following the Second Vatican Council. He was a firebrand critic of the conservative values held by the Catholic orthodoxy, and believed firmly that the role of the Church should be to alleviate the suffering of the global poor. A prolific advocate for liberation theology, Assmann's work and participation in the movement forced him to move between numerous countries throughout Latin America throughout the course of his life.
Latin American liberation theology is a synthesis of Christian theology and Marxian socio-economic analyses, that emphasizes "social concern for the poor and political liberation for oppressed peoples". Beginning in the 1960s after the Second Vatican Council, liberation theology became the political praxis of Latin American theologians such as Gustavo Gutiérrez, Leonardo Boff, and Jesuits Juan Luis Segundo and Jon Sobrino, who popularized the phrase "preferential option for the poor". It arose principally as a moral reaction to the poverty and social injustice in the region, which Cepal, a leftist think tank, deemed the most unequal in the world.
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