Liberation Theology and Praxis in Contemporary Latin America

• Foreword: Theology in the Footsteps of the Martyrs
  Martha Zechmeister CJ

• Introduction: As it was in the Beginning?
  Pablo Bradbury and Niall Geraghty

• 1 Conflict and Ecclesiology: Obedience, Institutionality and People of God in the Movement of Priests for the Third World
  Pablo Bradbury

• 2 Legacies of the “Bridge-man”: Catholic Accompaniment, Inter-class Relations and the Classification of Surplus in Montevideo
  Patrick O’Hare

• 3 Orlando Fals-Borda’s Participatory Action Research: At and Beyond the Crossroads of Camilo Torres’s Neo-socialism and Liberation Theology
  Juan Mario Díaz-Arévalo

• 4 The Impact of Liberation Theology in the Latin American Built Environment
  Fernando Luiz Lara

• 5 When Liberation Theology Met Human Rights
  Anna Grimaldi

• 6 “Women, The Key to Liberation?”: A Feminist Theology of Liberation at the Catholic Women’s Conference at Puebla
  Natalie Gasparowicz

• 7 Towards the Possibility of an Ecofeminist Political Theology: The Case of Collective Con-spirando
  Ely Orrego-Torres

• Afterword: Contemporary Witnesses to Life and Liberation: The Persistent Reality of Latin American Martyrdom as an Ever-Evolving Challenge to Liberation Theologies Today
  Elizabeth O’Donnell Gandolfo

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Pablo Bradbury (Editor)

Pablo Bradbury holds a PhD in History from the University of Liverpool, with a thesis on the emergence and mobilisation of liberation Christianity in Argentina and in particular its political responses to state terrorism. His research more broadly focuses on left-wing political cultures and social movements during Latin America’s Cold War, exploring religion, international solidarity and strategies for resisting state repression. He currently teaches at the University of Greenwich.

Niall H.D. Geraghty (Editor)

Niall H.D. Geraghty is Associate Professor in Latin American Cultural Studies at University College London. Niall’s first book was The Polyphonic Machine: Capitalism, Political Violence, and Resistance in Contemporary Argentine Literature (University of Pittsburgh Press: 2019). He has published articles and book chapters on literature and film from Latin America, with a particular interest in memory, urban culture, and religion in the region. He is currently working on a project involving a radical re-examination of the work of Argentine artist León Ferrari (1920–2013) which also explores the interrelations between politics and religion in twentieth-century Argentina, and the potential correlations between contemporary philosophy and liberation theology.

This important contribution is a welcome reminder of the enduring importance of Liberation Theology, for which we have to congratulate the authors and editors. Studies on topics ranging from an ethnography of waste-pickers to architecture, to human rights, to the methodology of participatory research, and the more theological spheres of ecofeminism, demonstrate its continued relevance and the need to include this book in courses on Latin American thought well beyond the study of religion alone.

—David Lehmann, Emeritus Professor of Social Science, University of Cambridge, UK

The book … assumes great relevance with the shifting landscape of the Catholic Church under Pope Francis… It presents a compelling case for (the Church’s) ongoing evolution, demonstrating how it intersects with contemporary struggles for justice, gender equality, environmental activism and human rights. Through a series of interdisciplinary contributions, the book highlights the enduring relevance of liberation theology’s core concerns… An essential read for scholars of religion, history and Latin American studies, as well as for activists, and policymakers seeking to understand the enduring impact of liberationist thought.

—Stefan van der Hoek, Research Associate, Research Center for Religion and Education (RCRE), Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Germany.

ReVista: Harvard Review of Latin America

Not only [is] the publication … profoundly timely, but it also underscores the central arguments of [liberation movements]. … It considers the clerical-centric character of liberation theology, its insights in the social sciences and arts, and its engagement with human rights, ecology, class, and even architecture. Running through the essays is the fundamental question of praxis as integral to a living liberationist perspective.

—Gavin O’Toole, Latin American Review of Books, UK

Latin American Review of Books

Subject: Languages, Cultures and Societies, Latin American and Caribbean Studies

BISAC codes: HIS024000, REL067120

Thema codes: NHK, QRVG

Keywords: Catholic Church, Christianity, Cold War, ecology, human rights, liberationist, lived experience, political, religious practice, social movement, south america, theologian

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