 |
 |
That’s the one, Tom. It was Archbishop Oscar Romero who said that and was gunned down for it while saying Mass in 1980. It was Gustavo Gutiérrez whose “A Theology of Liberation” really put it on the map. Pope John Paul II started to put to put the no-no on it, mainly the work of an authoritarian Cardinal Ratzinger, who is now Pope Benedict … so Catholicism also has a problem like Russian Orthodoxy does, though not nearly so bad, and the very positive thing you can say about the Catholic Church is that throughout most of the 20th century it has been strong on poverty and on challenging warmongering. The tragedy of the Russian Orthodox church is that during the decades of lying low under communism, it failed to develop its social teaching in the way that the Catholics managed to do. This is why although its deeper theology is, in my opinion, second to none in Christian tradition (and I say that as a Quaker) – it is a theology of Life and largely without the obsession with cosmic-child-abusing penal substitutionary atonement that we get in western Protestant traditions – it has remained deeply socially conservative, including a dogged insistence on being a “patriarchy”, which is another reason why the ministry of Pussy Riot is so powerful.
What has this to do with Crisis Forum? Post 9/11 and indeed, before that in the decolonising Shia Islamic world, religion has been moving back into centre change as a driver of socio-political transformation. My apologies to any who might find me over enthusiastic on this, but it is something that can no longer be ignored by scholars of social change and international relations the way it used to be up until about a decade ago. A short introduction to Catholic liberation theology (most of them are very turgid, as they’re too busy having to justify themselves in terms of Catholic expectations) is Boff & Boff. A book I often use, tying liberation theologies in with nonviolent political revolutions thought a little dated now is Johnson and (President) Jimmy Carter. To me, the most important work in applying the spirituality to tackling power is the late Walter Wink’s Engaging the Powers. It is the 3rd in his power triology, but Walter always recommended reading them backward, and it is this book that I use when teaching spiritual activism as a core text, along with Grof & Grof’s Spiritual Emergency (which lifts it all right outside a conventional religious context, with powerful contributions by psychiatrist R.D. Laing and Ram Dass – Timothy Leary’s partner in crime).
What exciting times, and talking of Flower Power, I see the singer Scott MacKenzie has just passed away (wear a flower in your hair).
Alastair
From: Discussion list for the Crisis Forum [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Barker, Tom
Sent: 20 August 2012 01:45
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: The Liberation Theology of Pussy Riot's Trial Statements
Thanks Alastair. These are excellent statements, and all the more poignant because they are widely applicable. Now 'liberation theology': was that the chap, perhaps the very Brazilian bishop who was later shot, who said something along the lines of, "When I help the poor they call me a saint. When I ask why they are poor they call me a communist"?
The Putins of this world are not only to be found in Russia. What we need now is 'liberation ecology'.
Tom
From: Discussion list for the Crisis Forum [[log in to unmask]] on behalf of Alastair McIntosh [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 20 August 2012 00:02
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: The Liberation Theology of Pussy Riot's Trial Statements
Dear Folks
Today my American colleague, Chris Reed who is president of Friends of Hudson, sent me these remarkable passages that he has extracted from the closing trial statements of Pussy Riot. I am sending them on to those of you, including CHE Network and Crisis Forum, who are concerned with issues of socio-ecological and spiritual activism in today’s world.
Chris also gives the links to their full statements, and I have to say that those of Masha and Nadia in particular are quite the most exceptional and conviction-packed treatises of liberation theology that I have seen for a very long time (I would define liberation theology that liberates the flow of life by liberating theology itself; specifically, Gustavo Gutierrez emphasises that “To Liberate = To Give Life” and speaks of “a radical aspiration for integral liberation”). I note that Masha cut her teeth in ecological activism, doing a kind of Tripping Up Trump by combating the desecration of protected nature by the rich.
The spiritual courage combined with astute theological cogency of these 3 Russian women has hardly featured in Western media reports. These have been more concerned with the more comfortable ground of tracing their musical than their theological influences. I urge all of you who might be interested in spiritual activism to have a read of their full statements, and tweet them or whatever you do. I am scheduled to broadcast Thought for the Day on BBC radio Scotland on Wednesday morning this week, and I have procured provisional approval from my editor, subject to what else happens in the news over the next 48 hours, to focus on PR’s punk theology.
Taken together with what has been happening with Islamic liberation theology in the Arab Spring, and some of the reflection that came out of Occupy at Westminster Abbey, I am wondering if we are at last starting to see an awakening of the receptivity towards power of the Spirit in confronting the world’s burning issues. Where to start? Try Luke’s or Mark’s gospel if the very thought doesn’t fill you with the Christian cringe. Or Jeremiah if you want a bit of fire. Read them as if in today’s world. See what you think, and read them through such eyes as those applied by Pussy Riot.
What a laugh! And these three women laughed as they were sentenced, because as they say, they had inner freedom.
Chris’s extracts with the links are below.
Alastair.
From: Christopher Reed [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 18 August 2012 14:23
To: Reed, Christopher H.
Subject: Pussy Riot, Closing Statements
Masha Alyokhina
Speaking about Putin, we first of all mean not Vladimir Putin, but Putin as a system created by him. The vertical power structure, where all governing is being carried out almost manually. And in this vertical power structure public opinion is completely disregarded.
Modern education institutions teach people from childhood to live automatically, do not introduce key issues appropriate to their age, foster cruelty and intolerance to dissent. From childhood a person forsakes his liberties.
Humility, one of Christian principal notions, is existentially understood not as a way of purification, empowerment and eventual deliverance of the human, but in contrast as a way of his enslavement.
"It is not for a good work that we stone you but for blasphemy" (John 10:33) It's interesting that it's this verse that Russian Orthodox Church uses to express its opinion about blasphemy.... Expressing this opinion Russian Orthodox Church refers to it as to a static religious truth. Gospel is no longer understood as revelation, which it was initially, but as a kind of solid block which can be torn up to quotations and tuck anywhere, into any document, used for any purpose. Russian Orthodox Church didn't even bother to examine the context in which the word 'blasphemy' is used, that in this case it is applied to Jesus Christ himself.
Nadia Tolokonnikova
Every day, more and more people realize that if this political system has ganged up to this extent against three girls for a 30-second performance in the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, it means the system is afraid of the truth and afraid of our sincerity and directness.
People can sense the truth. Truth really does have some kind of ontological, existential superiority over lies and this is written in the Bible, in the Old Testament in particular.
We are freer than the people sitting opposite us for the prosecution because we can say everything we like, and we do, but those people sitting there say only what political censorship allows them to say.
Stasis and the search for truth are always in opposition to one another and, in this case, at this trial, we can see people who are trying to find the truth and people who are trying to enslave those who want to find the truth.
Christ didn’t associate with prostitutes for nothing. He said, ‘I help those who have gone astray and forgive them’ but for some reason I can’t see any of that at our trial, which is taking place under the banner of Christianity. I think the prosecutor is defying Christianity.
Nadia Tolokonnikova, Full Text
Katja Samutsevich
The fact that Christ the Savior Cathedral had become a significant symbol in the political strategy of our powers that be was already clear to many thinking people when Vladimir Putin’s former KGB colleague Kirill Gundyaev took over as head of the Russian Orthodox Church. After this happened, Christ the Savior Cathedral began to be used openly as a flashy setting for the politics of the security services, which are the main source of power in Russia.
In our performance we dared, without the Patriarch’s blessing, to combine the visual image of Orthodox culture and protest culture, suggesting to smart people that Orthodox culture belongs not only to the Russian Orthodox Church, the Patriarch and Putin, that it might also take the side of civic rebellion and protest in Russia.
I now have mixed feelings about this trial. On the one hand, we now expect a guilty verdict. Compared to the judicial machine, we are nobodies, and we have lost. On the other hand, we have won. Now the whole world sees that the criminal case against us has been fabricated. The system cannot conceal the repressive nature of this trial. Once again, Russia looks different in the eyes of the world from the way Putin tries to present it at daily international meetings. All the steps toward a state governed by the rule of law that he promised have obviously not been made. And his statement that the court in our case will be objective and make a fair decision is another deception of the entire country and the international community.
Katja Samutsevich, Full Text
Christopher H. Reed
59 Main Street
Philmont, NY 12565
(518) 487-0577