What is "liberation theology"

n. A Roman Catholic political movement interpreting the teachings of Jesus in relation to liberation from unjust economic, social, or political conditions.

Liberation theology has been described as "an interpretation of Christian faith out of the experience of the poor...an attempt to read the Bible and key Christian doctrines with the eyes of the poor", or "the message of the gospels", restored from "the first three centuries [of Christianity in which] it was ... a pacifist ... religion of the poor". Detractors have called it Christianized Marxism.

The best-known form of liberation theology is that which developed in Latin America in the 1950s, however various other forms of liberation theology have since developed, including Asian, Black, and Palestinian liberation theologies.

Although liberation theology has grown into an international and inter-denominational movement, it began as a movement within the Catholic Church in Latin America in the 1950s and 1960s. Liberation theology arose principally as a moral reaction to the poverty and social injustice in the region. The term was coined in 1971 by the Peruvian priest Gustavo Gutiérrez, who wrote one of the movement's defining books, A Theology of Liberation. Other noted exponents include Oscar Romero of El Salvador, Leonardo Boff of Brazil, Jon Sobrino of Spain, and Juan Luis Segundo of Uruguay.

Latin American liberation theology met opposition in the United States, which accused it of using " Marxist concepts", and led to admonishment by the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) in 1984 and 1986. The Vatican rejected certain forms of Latin American liberation theology for focusing on institutionalized or systemic sin; and for identifying Catholic Church hierarchy in South America as members of the same privileged class that had long been oppressing indigenous populations from the arrival of Pizarro onward.