Queretaro and Oaxaca: Does God hate gold?
Action
Kathy, our host in Querataro, came to Chiapas in 1970 as a Catholic missionary. Working with extremely poor indigenous people in jungle villages, she learned to practice a type of theology and religious work that was explicitly pro-poor: liberation theology.
Liberation theologians believe that institutionalized violence and poverty are sins and offenses against God. Liberation theology interprets the scriptures and Christian faith based primarily on the suffering, struggle, and hope of the poor. At the same time, it critiques the systemic oppression of society and the practice of the church itself.
Since the 1970s, liberation theologians have rejected the hierarchy and elite-orientation of the Catholic church in Latin America. Rather than teach at private schools and preach in opulent cathedrals, they have gone to rural villages to establish lay-led groups of Christians, in which villagers can more democratically interpret and act on their religious convictions, ultimately in order to establish a more just society. In Chiapas, Kathy’s future husband initiated the consciousness-raising catechist groups that sowed the seeds for the Zapatista rebellion.
Over thirty years later, Renate and I walk down the pedestrianized Macedonio Alcala in Oaxaca and peek into the Santo Domingo church. Like the other tourists, we briefly gaze at the ornate gold-plated designs and figurines that flood the church’s interior:
As we emerge from the church, Renate’s first comment is that she can see why liberation theologians became disenchanted with the Catholic Church and disgusted with what they had been doing.
Reflection
Could the travel guidebooks possibly be wrong? Should grand cathedrals not be the highlight of every quaint historic town tour? Or, if the Bible says "But if any one has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God’s love abide in him? Little children, let us not love in word or speech but in deed and truth" (I John, 3:17-18. [RSV]; cf. also James 2:14-17), should we tear down gold-plated churches and redistribute the spoils to the poor? After all, “Ours is a God of radical transformations and rearrangements, the God who puts down the mighty from their thrones and exalts those of low degree” (Luke 1)
After learning more about liberation theology, this was of course my plan… but spoilsport Renate kept muttering about “legal repercussions” and “deportation”. As if she knew anything about Mexican law!
The scent of nearby taco stands conveniently distracted me, but after recharging, I still felt bitter towards the church we visited. In a region of such extreme poverty (Oaxaca state is one of the poorest of Mexico), why should so much wealth be spent to adorn a building of prayer? Even in more affluent areas, why should this gold not be used to reduce poverty? Or, given the constraints, should we at least orient our tourism in other directions?
Question
Beyond gazing at cathedrals, what are other ways of learning about local religious practices and histories while traveling?
Kathy, our host in Querataro, came to Chiapas in 1970 as a Catholic missionary. Working with extremely poor indigenous people in jungle villages, she learned to practice a type of theology and religious work that was explicitly pro-poor: liberation theology.
Liberation theologians believe that institutionalized violence and poverty are sins and offenses against God. Liberation theology interprets the scriptures and Christian faith based primarily on the suffering, struggle, and hope of the poor. At the same time, it critiques the systemic oppression of society and the practice of the church itself.
Since the 1970s, liberation theologians have rejected the hierarchy and elite-orientation of the Catholic church in Latin America. Rather than teach at private schools and preach in opulent cathedrals, they have gone to rural villages to establish lay-led groups of Christians, in which villagers can more democratically interpret and act on their religious convictions, ultimately in order to establish a more just society. In Chiapas, Kathy’s future husband initiated the consciousness-raising catechist groups that sowed the seeds for the Zapatista rebellion.
Over thirty years later, Renate and I walk down the pedestrianized Macedonio Alcala in Oaxaca and peek into the Santo Domingo church. Like the other tourists, we briefly gaze at the ornate gold-plated designs and figurines that flood the church’s interior:
As we emerge from the church, Renate’s first comment is that she can see why liberation theologians became disenchanted with the Catholic Church and disgusted with what they had been doing.
Reflection
Could the travel guidebooks possibly be wrong? Should grand cathedrals not be the highlight of every quaint historic town tour? Or, if the Bible says "But if any one has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God’s love abide in him? Little children, let us not love in word or speech but in deed and truth" (I John, 3:17-18. [RSV]; cf. also James 2:14-17), should we tear down gold-plated churches and redistribute the spoils to the poor? After all, “Ours is a God of radical transformations and rearrangements, the God who puts down the mighty from their thrones and exalts those of low degree” (Luke 1)
After learning more about liberation theology, this was of course my plan… but spoilsport Renate kept muttering about “legal repercussions” and “deportation”. As if she knew anything about Mexican law!
The scent of nearby taco stands conveniently distracted me, but after recharging, I still felt bitter towards the church we visited. In a region of such extreme poverty (Oaxaca state is one of the poorest of Mexico), why should so much wealth be spent to adorn a building of prayer? Even in more affluent areas, why should this gold not be used to reduce poverty? Or, given the constraints, should we at least orient our tourism in other directions?
Question
Beyond gazing at cathedrals, what are other ways of learning about local religious practices and histories while traveling?
4 Comments:
At 6:28 PM, J-Lau said…
Have you all read The Power and the Glory? If not, it's a quick Graham Greene read, perhaps find-able in a used bookstore along your route, and might "dialog" nicely with these observations.
At 12:57 AM, lernerm said…
Your comments on the contrast between the riches of the church vs the poverty of the people remind me of an interview I read in a paper before our recent election. Apparently in one household the father, an evangelical Christian, was for Bush, while the mother, also an evangelical Christian, was for Kerry. Her rationale was that Jesus was a liberal, which makes sense to me considering that he was clearly in favor of the poor, and against the wealthy excesses of the churches of his time. What is sad is how he was co-opted so to speak, and the Church that was founded based on his teachings (the rich have a chance in hell of reaching heaven and so on) has become what he protested against, namely a respository for wealth and conservatism. My question for you is why hasn't liberation theology taken hold in North America (other than the Quakers perhaps). How is it that so many conservative evangelical Americans can argue that " What would Jesus do" is a line of reasonning that leads to going to war in Iraq, having a death penalty, denying people such as homosexuals their right to happiness, and so on, when it seems clear to me that Jesus would be appalled at modern American evangelical Christians. And how can we somehow convince Christian Americans that it is wrong for churches to have gold, for billionaires to get tax cuts, for Christians to kill Iraqis and so on because these are all unChristian in fact. I know that this doesn't directly commment on your query, but I post them anyway. I do agree that whenever I have seen beautiful cathedrals, my thoughts have always been of how so much wealth was built upon the backs of the poor, and how in fact rather than being monuments to God, they are testaments to man's inhumanity to man - but then again, I'm a devout atheist. As to how to learn more about local religious practices, I guess you'll have to mingle with the locals rather than just tour the big cathedrals.
At 1:04 AM, Jen said…
So many good points above . . . not much more to add.
I was thinking of another thing - how the gold, etc seems to represent the hope of the people who worship there. It always seems that churches frequented by the poor seem to emphasize that the people will get all of the wealth for themselves once they die. Is that to placate them - to make it easier to accept that they don't hold the wealth now?
But then, as someone who studied architectural history, I have to admit that I've been moved by many a beautiful cathedral.
Jen
At 11:59 PM, josh said…
Although liberation theology certainly hasn’t taken hold in the US, there are quite a few progressive Christian movements and organizations (see examples at Just Faith - http://www.catholiccharitiesusa.org/justfaith or Pax Christi - http://www.paxchristiusa.org). Perhaps Christian churchs are just as contested as other parts of society, and most of us just hear about/from the dominant voices? I’m sure that there are plenty of people within different US churches struggling to change church policies, so maybe one way to encourage more liberatory strains of Christianity is just to spread the word about more progressive interpretations and ideologies of Christianity.
Post a Comment
<< Home