The Political Crisis and Christian Ethics

By Ronald H. Stone

The Political Crisis and Christian Ethics addresses themes in political philosophy in the context of a crisis in democracy after the denial of the 2020 election by the Republican candidate for president. The refusal to accept the results of the election divided the electorate and drove the president's followers to fail in their attempted coup attempt in January of 2020. Democracy is defended in Reinhold Niebuhr's writing on politics and in Barack Obama's use of the theologian's thought. It is developed further in the political theory of Paul Tillich. The themes of just peacemaking are reviewed in Paul Tillich's critique of John Foster Dulles' work and in the author's critique of just peacemaking in the work of Glen Stassen. Domestically the issues of race, inequality, ecology, and healthcare are addressed from the perspective of prophetic realism. The book concludes in terms of Alfred North Whitehead's philosophy of education and religion and a vision of the good president. In summary, The Political Crisis and Christian Ethics is a volume of American, Christian political theory in a period of overcoming the trauma of 2016 with Christian ethics and political philosophy.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Release date: Sep 26, 2023
• ISBN: 9781666746242

Book preview

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Politics and Christian Faith

President Putin and the Russian Patriarch recognize their interests in restoring Moscow’s leadership of Orthodoxy in Ukraine. Right-wing Evangelicals attack their capitol to save President Trump’s presidency. Some Catholic Bishops consider excommunicating Democratic candidates for president. Even secular political scientists consider the relevance of religion in politics, while across the world religions contribute to conflict and peacemaking. In obvious ways the relationship of religion to politics becomes a subject for the study of Christian ethics.

Many Americans do not recognize the importance of American politics.¹ If only a minority of eligible voters even vote, leaving a small elite of political participants to make the decisions, representative democracy is being squandered. Political participation and voting tend to rise with income. This correlation is mutual, because participation in the political process assists in raising one’s standard of living, and participation in the higher standard of living encourages one to defend it politically. The Citizens United decision of the Supreme Court increases the power of the wealthy to disproportionately influence politics. The middle class can offset this partially with larger donations, but particularly by increasing their volunteer efforts.

Obviously justice will not make gains in a time of increasing political alienation, but it never really is in the self-interest of those who rule to help increase political participation. It is in the short interests of the wealthy to suppress lower class or poor voters. Certain parties or candidates may need votes from the lower classes, but only recently has a voter registration drive produced national results when the organization led by Black women in Georgia elected two Senators, turning the balance of power to the Democrats. The major parties made no great efforts to involve lower-class people in the political process after the Great Society’s attempts at community organization and Jesse Jackson’s early voter registration campaigns.

Alienation and voter apathy contradict the importance of controlling an influential government.² Not only are the economics and politics critical for the peace and human development of the world, but on the domestic scene, one-third of the economy is derived from the spending of tax money. There is no area of American life that is free from political decisions. Neither the spiritual life of the churches nor the life of the wild beast in the deepest forests is totally free from the reach of the American political process. As the importance of American politics grows more and more, citizens are defaulting from it.

The decline is attributable to many factors, an analysis of which requires more work, but several factors are obvious. The tendency toward mass, bureaucratic-technological societies reduces the sense of the relevance of individual participation. Skepticism about one’s voice, vote, money, or work having an influence or even counting has increased. The professionalism of politics and the massive expenses of supporting that professionalism disempower the citizen. The reduction of the citizen’s role in voluntary associations also disempowers the potential activist voter. Television isolates people from their communal life and suburban voters are isolated from the urban life they pass by in their automobile. The results of the 2016 election reflected the irresponsibility of the social media and the intervention of Russian money and influence in the democratic process. In addition to the alienating isolation of the contemporary citizen’s life, the political scandals have deepened political cynicism in the public. In politics skepticism is a virtue and realism is a necessity, but cynicism which cuts the participatory nerve, is deadly. The cynicism is deep and needs to be countered by information and hope. It is not only scandals that have contributed to cynicism, failed dreams have also embittered many. Disillusionment associated with the failure of the civil rights and peace movements has left cynicism for those overly dependent on dreams. Scandalous acceptance of gun violence and murder, the neglect of climate change, and the insulting of women may bring back political participation out of frustration. The jury is out on whether the ills of the American twenty-first century can produce active political participation or not.

Added to apathy born of alienation and political cynicism is ignorance. American education at the public school and university levels does not educate young people to understand or participate in politics. Participation on an admission committee in a university religious studies program and at a seminary reveals that most college students applying for graduate study in religion do not even study politics. The American public is ignorant of the issues and the importance of American politics. The 2016 conventions of the two major political parties seldom dared to raise the level of discourse to a serious conceptual level. Political rallies in American cities could be distinguished from rallies for football games, but the differences between the slogans producing cheers of the two teams were disturbingly slight. The victory of Donald Trump in 2016 was characterized by rallies and speeches with very little political philosophy. The crowds roared with Trump and Pence’s shouts of Lock her up, and Build the wall. American civics teachers and political scientists should be ashamed of the low level of discourse characteristic of American politics. Even candidate Trump’s pleas to Russia to exploit candidate Clinton’s emails were celebrated at his rally.

Votes 2020

The social failure and the pandemic inadequacy of the Trump administration produced more voting in 2020. It was the largest election ever in the United States even with abstentions. The contrast between the moderate Catholic and the extreme Republican produced good results for the Democrats which collected a several million majority vote for Joseph Biden. Republicans bolstered by Protestant and Catholic votes and driven by conservative Christians won gains in local elections while conceding national leadership to the Democratic coalition of minorities and the return of swing states to the Democrat column. Still into 2021, Trump trumpeted a return in 2024 of ultra-conservative Republicans to power. The country seemed severely divided on cultural and political lines. The Republicans seemed strong in rural populations and the former Confederacy while Democrats won new votes from the suburbs and continued their urban strength outside of the South.

Violent Riots of 2021

Days spent in research in the Library of Congress across the street from the Capitol outnumber my hours spent in politics in or around the Capitol. However, as a student and a professor both were of value. In 1957, I questioned Senator Hubert Humphrey urging him to support tax breaks for higher education expenses. Later I challenged Senator Burke Hickenlooper in his office about race relations and nuclear weapons. He responded, Ron, I wouldn’t have voted for the test ban treaty, if it had not been for those damn Methodist pastors from Iowa. Education, race relations, and commitment to nuclear threats are all issues of value. Witnessing for voting rights in four-hour shifts beside the Lincoln Monument, marching to King’s voting rights speech in 1963, and later visiting the Poor Peoples Camp were all assertions of particular religious values. Politics expressing values was central to the National Council of Churches youth event in Washington, DC, which I assisted in when JFK was assassinated in Texas. So also the mixture of political values and Christian faith led to the leading of Pittsburgh Theological Seminary students to lobby for peacemaking in the Capitol. A demonstration against the war in Vietnam led to a week in the Washington Jail. The hearing freeing all the seminary students was in the courthouse in which a few years later the Administrators of Nixon’s reign were sentenced to jail. The vigils near the Capitol continued for women’s rights as human rights. From an earlier day as a graduate student I remember leaving DC for New York after a civil rights protest while the Black population of DC cheered our buses. I thought I would not return to Washington without power, but value questions kept intruding and calling me back. A fellow teacher from Morningside came to DC as a Congressman from North West Iowa, and then later had his office in the Watergate as a Democrat official burglarized. So, conflicting values continued to define my visits to the Capitol.

It was my work as an editor that involved me more deeply in the Capitol. First, an election edition of Social Action/ Social Progress³ which I edited in 1968 focused on religious ethics and politics. An essay by Roger Shinn was accompanied by shorter comments by George Chauncey, Paul Ramsey, Steven Rockefeller, and Senator Mondale. Lewis Maddocks analyzed voting records of Congress people vis-à-vis church policy. Reinhold Niebuhr contributed his most thorough essay on race relations for the issue. The cover reflected the burning of racial ghettos in DC in flames composed of the white and red stripes of the American flag over the Capitol.

The more direct and personal work was in Reformed Faith and Politics, a study book for the Presbyterian uniting General Assembly and university classes, published in 1983. Written mostly by Presbyterians, it was a strong affirmation of politics as a most important arena for Presbyterian participation. Its introduction became the essence of the 1984 policy on politics and faith for the church. Senator David Pryor of Arkansas as the author of an essay A Perspective from the United States Senate sponsored a reception for the book among congressmen, senators, and denominational social action staff people in the Mansfield Room of the Senate. The University of America Press co-sponsored the event, and I spoke about the importance of government and the participation of church people while honoring the separation of church and state. My parents Hubert and Bernice Stone from Iowa attended, bringing to my mind memories of a picture of me as a baby being held by my father at the Capitol in Des Moines. It was probably their only visit to the Capitol in DC. My short remarks addressed our common source in God, our mutual sinfulness in politics, and the need for government in balance under the law. I still love the book, my parents and the Capitol.

So, I am offended to the core of my being by the ex-president’s incitement of populist Republicans, Proud Boys, Promise Keepers, and other militants to take the Capitol to stop the certification of the election. His lies about winning the election and an encouragement of insurrection to prevent the certification of the election which had been defended sixty times in various courts of the land is reprehensible and, in the popular use of the term, treasonous. Majorities of both the House of Representatives and the Senate voted to find him guilty of misusing his office to encourage the failed coup. Though he was advised to declare martial law to retain his office by Michael Flynn, the resistance of the Capitol police prevented it. How close we came to losing our Capitol needs to be recognized. All the insurrectionaries deserve severe punishment.

It does not take much historical knowledge to remember how Nazis prevailed through street violence and the burning of their capitol. The failure of democrats in Germany to punish Nazi violence encouraged their bullying until they won. By abandoning the classic literature of Rome our nation has forgotten how violence in the streets of Rome and murder in the capitol led to the end of its republic. We have too long tolerated immoral politics. Our best universities teach too much Machiavelli and not enough Calvin as our Republic totters on the knife’s edge. We forgot how many of our churches evolved out of the English Revolution through Parliament and came to flower in the American Revolution and Republic guided by the Continental Congress. Since those epochs we have learned of the combined power of nonviolent action and educated-democratic politics, and that distinguishes us from liars and insurrectionists. For me and my church the Capitol is a very special place. It is not holy, as I heard a Russian-Communist Intourist guide label the tomb of Lenin and Stalin. I would not call it a temple, but it is a Very Special Place. It symbolizes our democratic republic and deserves respect as the house of our politicians who represent us.

Some mercy needs to be extended to nonviolent members of the mob because they believed the lie of the then-president. Retributive justice needs to be mixed with restorative justice for their education and repentance. The gentle treatment of the Proud Boys encouraged them to prepare to fight in the Capitol, and the threats of murder have no place in the halls of Congress. The future of elections and the rule of law are at stake. Thorough investigation, punishment, and reeducation may reduce these threats to law and order.

This book is an extension of my response to the mob’s attempted usurpation of the people’s right to vote by the attack on Congress on January 6, 2021. The intervention of Trump’s allies in the certification of the election interrupted the Senate and the House of Representatives duties for only a matter of hours. US forces finally reinforced the beleaguered Capitol Police and restored order. However, large numbers in both houses joined in the goals of the rioters voting to deny the certification and challenged the rights of Arizonians, Pennsylvanians, and Georgians to have their votes counted. Sixty courts had denied the president’s claims that he won the election. The Supreme Court ruled likewise, and no evidence to the contrary was sustained. The president was impeached for inciting the riot. The support of President Trump by Christians refusing to vote against his neglect of values and ethics points to the need for moral education of the American Protestantism, which is still nearly 50 percent of the electorate. The critique of Democrats as neglecting their religious advocacy is matched by Republican Christians lacking political morality. Part of the task of restoring political sanity is to argue the case for the common good in words and arguments drawn from the religious majority of the American people. This book is an essay in moral political philosophy. It is neither political science in the contemporary meaning of the term nor theology. It represents a tradition of loyalty to God, the nation, one’s family, and the neighbors. It draws upon political philosophy, political science, practical politics, theology, ethics, moral philosophy, and participation in practical politics in Iowa, New York, and Pennsylvania.

Politics came easily in an Iowa family whose ancestors had been teachers, chairs of county offices, mayor of a small town, county school superintendents, school board members, township officers, etc. Evangelical church participation was also normal for our family where three brothers attended theological seminaries from Yale to University of Chicago to Union. I found myself active in Iowa in race relation issues, peacemaking in a local election, and active in politics in school and church. Working for the church at the United Nations led to major work in divestment from South Africa, and later research and writing for a Republican presidential candidate to oppose Richard Nixon. In both New York City and Pittsburgh I canvased for elections, registered voters, and in Pennsylvania ran twice as a Democrat for public office. I served fifteen years in Allegheny County’s Commission on Accountability, Care, and Ethics, chairing it for four years.

Richard Thornburg and I taught ethics to the Pittsburgh police, and my responsibilities as Chair of the Ethics Commission meant I lectured to County Officers on governmental ethics. Service as public safety director and president of an economic development organization in the inner city of Pittsburgh also toughened my perspective on urban-political ethics. My students who went on to serve as judges, lawyers, urban officials, social workers, heads of governmental departments all drove me to relate my political philosophy to very practical politics. This book attempts to relate political philosophy, religion, and ethics close to political action as Cicero accomplished as a writer of political philosophy and as a political actor who paid with his own beheading.

God and Caesar

The question of the relationship of God and Caesar is not a new issue, yet today it arises with a fresh urgency. All human communities have had to resolve the problem of the relationship between their deepest religious loyalties and their practical decisions about government. The solution of one society has never prevailed over all of humanity. In our day, the crisis between religion and government has disturbed regimes in Central America, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Poland, Russia, China, and India. Recent politics in the United States has been energized and disturbed by new forms of Christian political activism. Religious divisions have contributed to recent political conflicts and wars in the Sudan, India-Pakistan, the Middle East, and elsewhere. Currently political leaders and scientists are taking serious account of religious forces. As religious leaders and students of religion have learned their religious practices have political implications that they cannot ignore.

Members of the church know that the sovereignty of God and service of God are of utmost importance in their lives. Some also know that the practical exercise of politics—the process of governing human life—interpenetrates most areas of our lives. Questions of life and death, whether considered on the global scale of peace and war or the personal scale of human rights in abortion, have both theological and political dimensions. Both God and Caesar are involved. There will be no peace without politics. There will be no answer to questions about abortion without politics. Human history, through which God works to realize divine purpose, is subject also to the politics of human beings. These humans act out of a mixture of religious judgments and political decisions. Some in the Western world, influenced by secularism or individualism, attempt to escape religion or politics. Such pretense is foolish in terms of the reality of human nature and real life. The God-Caesar question will not let us go. The question flows through the Scriptures. We are confronted with a variety of solutions. God moves Joseph into a position of authority in Egypt and then Egypt oppresses Israel. God leads Moses out of Egypt, and the confrontation between Yahweh, the God of Moses, and the god-king, Pharaoh disrupts Egypt. The tribes of Israel are joined in a religious confederacy to resist the Baalistic city-states of Canaan. Kingship is granted Israel only reluctantly by Samuel for he sees the rejection of God in the institution of kingship. Prophets and priests struggle to work out a solution to the problem or loyalties. In Amos the struggle is between the prophet of God and the priests of the court serving the king. Through periods of political success and political failure, from David to the exile, the question is not absent. The struggle of the Jews for pure religion breaks out into political conflicts with their Greek and then their Roman masters.

The portrayals of Jesus from his birth to his death and resurrection involved him in the political-religious controversy. The stories about his birth involve promises of the overthrow of the established order in Mary’s Magnificat and Herod’s perceived threat to his rule by the birth at nearby Bethlehem. His death was an act of political execution and his resurrection a surprising victory over the political-religious order that had attempted to silence him. Luke described the charges brought against Jesus by the leaders as perverting the nation, forbidding the tribute to Caesar, and proclaiming himself, Christ a King (Luke 23:2 RSV). The three Synoptic Gospels related Jesus’s own avoidance of the trap about paying taxes. Confronted by the disciples of the Pharisees and the Herodians, he avoided affronting either Rome or Judaism by saying, Then render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s (Luke 20:25 RSV). By the time Luke was writing Caesar was proclaiming to be a god.

Political thinkers have had to deal with the meaning of this aphorism in varied historical situations since Constantine. What is appropriately owed to government and what is reserved to God? Different political orders work out the issue differently. Jesus himself only avoided the verbal trap of his enemies. Soon he had to surrender his life to representatives of Caesar. Could there be anything on earth more completely God’s than the life of Jesus. Yet it was laid down before Caesar. The Gospel of John makes it clear that Pilate, the representative of Caesar, was acting under God’s authority. Pilate, overwhelmed by the issue of the crowd’s religious-political convictions, finally acquiesced to the crucifixion. The saying of Jesus on rendering to Caesar and to God points toward the need for a distinction but it fails to draw the line for Christians or for Jesus himself.

Religious faith and politics are not the same reality, but they cannot be totally separated. On biblical grounds they cannot be separated, although distinctions can be found. Empirically they cannot be divorced for many of the political conflicts of our day involve dimensions of faith. Political authority, like water, is ultimately from God. Neither water nor political authority is a god, although in certain cultures both have been worshipped. Governments, like irrigation canals, must be reorganized by people. The breaking of either can create chaos. Often both canals and governments must be changed.

Consequently the search for wisdom regarding the religious-political question begins with recognition of: (1) the inevitability of the issue, (2) the importance of the issue, and (3) a variety of answers to the issue found in the study of the Bible, church history, and social science. All three sources provide wisdom. The Bible in particular provides controls of the options that are open to Christians.

The crisis of the relationship between faith and politics involves not only religious issues but also the changing political scene. The American political scene is troubled as an old system impacted by new technology, new religious movements, and new problems. It is uncertain whether the old system can handle the new problems presented by science and technology of ecological collapse, and the threat of nuclear war.

The complexity of the relationship between faith and politics is inherent in the nature of politics as well as in the demands of faith. Politics on every level is obviously self-interested people pursuing their own advantage through the use of government. However, politics, particularly where it is exercised through democratic procedures, also requires a sense of the public good to be served. Politicians must represent themselves as expressing the best interests of those they represent. Too narrow a pursuit of self-interest exposes the politician to criticism and the profession to a reputation that cheapens the meaning of politics. Even self-interest must be disguised under promises to work for the civic good. Politics is a mixture of serving self-interest and serving the public. People try to be moral as well as political, although they are not perfect in either attempt. In politics and ethics the search for both the public good and self-interest leads to uneasy compromise and often to hypocrisy.

Machiavelli’s amoral politics were not successful. He used religion and blessed the immorality of the Pope’s bastard prince’s pursuit of power. In our day Machiavelli’s pattern of seeking religion’s blessing for the power struggle and practicing amoral or immoral politics has been most successfully developed by President Trump and his religious allies. At this writing his successful regaining of power hangs in the balance criticized by charges of immorality.

Until the founding in the nineteenth century of frankly secular states, most earthly rulers in Christian civilization were Christians. Maybe they were not thoroughly Christian, but they were baptized and most confessed themselves to be Christians. Christianity, since the overthrow of official idolatry has been quite political. The hopes and values of their populations nurtured the politics of those societies. Their societies were not secular; they were religious in Christian terms. Still the Christian faith could not be reduced to politics. Memories of prophetic distance between religion and politics were never completely eclipsed. A faith with even a dim memory of Jesus could not equate Roman rule or its motley heirs with the reign that Jesus had announced. Western Christianity in its Catholic and Reformed traditions is committed to political action, but it also has a reservation about political action. Not all of life is politics. There is a freedom in the human spirit that is too great for any of our political organizations. The neglect of this religious reservation about politics has led and can lead to a religious fanaticism in politics. Knowledge of the greatness of the human spirit as well as knowledge of human sin must help Christians affirm a religious reservation about politics as well as a commitment to politics.

Two Roots of Politics

In the closing days of the Weimar Republic, in 1932 Paul Tillich reflected on the relationship between faith and politics. The new pagan, political cult of Nazism threatened to overturn the weakened republic, which was also under attack by Communism and by a collection of conservative political interests. Tillich’s chapter Two Roots of Political Thinking⁴ made a contribution that is still relevant. He argued that the traditional regimes often were founded in the sacralization of political systems in root myths of the society. Ancient Egypt and Babylon were characterized by myths that supported divine kingship and religious hierarchy and wove into the myths of creation the divinely ordered ruling government. Religion and politics were one, with politics favoring particular religions and religion legitimizing political order.

In Israel prophets arose and criticized the political order in terms of their understanding of God’s covenant with Israel. Amos, for example, witnessed to God judging all nations by justice. Also, he held out for the possibility of repentance or change for the political order. The present rulers were not merely to be legitimized but were to be judged by justice, and there was a sense of historical movement or expectation. By hearing judgment now, better order could be established.

Consequently one root of political thinking was the myth of origin involving worship of the mother or fatherland, the sacralization of kingship, and the blessing of customary rule. The second major root of political thinking had a sense of historical movement, and evaluated rule by a standard of God’s judgment; it was the prophetic critique of sacral politics. In Greece a similar reservation was developed through philosophy criticizing traditional rule.

Despite a tendency in the Middle Ages to sacralize the papal Caesar settlement, the Western world kept alive the second root of political thinking until it broke forth again, borne by the movements of Renaissance, Reformation, and Enlightenment. Democratic politics, capitalism, and socialism all contained this movement of historical expectation and centrality of justice or political ethics.

The Weimar Republic was an expression of the second root of political thinking combined with traditional rule. However, it was not strong enough, given economic depression to withstand movements based on the myth of origin. The monarchists expressed the myth of origin, but they were enfeebled by the lack of a sense of historical expectation; they were simply trying to return to the past. The forces supporting the Weimar settlement seemed to lack sufficient respect for the myth of origin. They were critics of the past without deep roots. In the crisis Hindenburg would surrender the state to the romantics. The Nazis expressed a romantic myth of origin with a sense of future transformation in the dream of a Third Reich. They had the power of myth of the past and a myth for the future, but they had no sense of justice or any critical understanding of human reality. They didn’t need science, but only myth and the control of instruments of power. They could use myths developed from science about human evolution and racism effectively.

Democracy depended upon critical reason, but in a period of worldwide depression it was a weak opponent to romantic, pagan myths of ancient Germany united with a promise of political messianism and a transformed future. The universities, the press, and other moral-cultural institutions were in disarray and unwilling to fight for the weakened liberal culture. The fury of romantic myths and fighting cadres of Nazis overwhelmed them in the pursuit of romantic nationalism.

Protestants were too willing to abandon the political realm, and Catholics were too willing to compromise with an evil regime to maintain their prerogatives. The democratic, mixed economy of the Weimar Republic could possibly have defeated the Nazis with more sophisticated understanding of the need to maintain a promise of a better order with justice and a willingness to fight the rising tide of barbarism. The churches, however, could not understand and would not fight except for some resistance to protect their own establishment.

From Tillich’s essay we can conclude that the liberal republics of the Western world are weakened if they do not understand the need for maintaining a sense of the myths of origin. Myths of origin in our day are expressed in terms of civil religion and the American story. The European Union should have been able to find a way to express its Christian origins. Civil religion is not strong enough in periods of stress, unless it maintains a sense of expectation or future promise combined with a strong commitment to social justice. Justice cannot be the only agreement of a society to order its life in a certain way; it needs also to be grounded in the conviction or the reality of a sovereign God, who requires justice in periods of stress as well as in times of affluence.

In our society, the civil rights movement, particularly as it was led by Martin Luther King Jr., combined the affirmation of the American myths of origin in the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the American dream with the demands of justice for the oppressed and the poor expressed in prophetic language from the Bible. The movement combined a willingness to fight, albeit nonviolently, for justice, with a grounding of the fight in the democratic ideals of the country. The sense of expectation that the country would change in the direction of fairness toward its oppressed was vital to the success of the movement. When this expectation was lost with King’s assassination, and as the movement surrendered the nonviolent strategy, it clouded its ideals to the point that its achievements were limited. Myth and its critique in terms of justice and sense of expectation are vital to the expansion of further democratization in the liberally oriented republics of the Western world.

Theology of Liberation

Theologies of liberation have struggled to relate their ideals to political change. Many of the movements in Latin America which tried to overcome both traditional Catholicism and the United States dominance were suppressed in the 1990s. Remnants survive in Latin America, and though it still has influence in Pope Francis and elsewhere its days of promising a new order have faded. The failure of the Soviet Union’s socialism, the transition in China to a state-controlled market economy, and the difficulties of success in Haiti, Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela make it appear less promising than when I edited a volume for Father Gustavo Gutierrez in 1976. Recent elections in Latin America provide a basis for the hoping of the reemergence of liberation theology. The recent leftist trends should encourage the strengthening of this theology which was founded on the idea that the theology would follow the developments of a changing society. Black liberation theology in the United States has not established itself in Black denominations or in many Black churches though it contributes powerfully to Black identity among more militant members of the movement. Neither it nor the Black Lives Matter movement possesses the power or the promise of King’s civil rights movement. The feminist movement wins many gains, and was impressive in the 2018 elections and the Me Too denunciations of male misbehavior. Here it seems the women’s liberation church trajectories join with the larger more secularly driven feminist movement rather than being its inspiration. This is a subtle judgment, for the liberation theology of Latin America depended upon the socialist options in politics there. Black theology to some degree is a derivative from earlier Black power movements (Stokley Carmichael, and others) and Black Nationalism (Malcolm X and James Baldwin for James Cone).

The violence of the systems the liberation theologians were resisting led the US government to choose violence for the suppression and sometimes murder of advocates for radical social change. The Roman Catholic Church led by its Cold War popes joined with the Central Intelligence Agency to support liberation in Poland and to suppress it in Central America. It was an intra-church fight as well as a class struggle. The struggle went on in different forms when personnel from the Contra conflicts in Nicaragua were recycled to follow the lead of the United States in Venezuela.

Theology of liberation has helped some in mainline Christianity to rediscover the social mission of the church.⁵ The move in the United States government toward nationalism with a religious flavor is opposed to the insights from liberation theology. Voting against aid to the poor is a rejection of