Atheism and Liberation (Antonio Perez-Escalarin 1974)

[struggle4progress]

This is an excerpt from an originally Spanish text written in 1974 and translated into English in 1978, when it was published by the Catholic Foreign Mission Society of America.

Chapter V ...

Do you call this a fast, a day acceptable to the Lord? This, rather, is the fasting that I wish: releasing those bound unjustly, untying the thongs of the yoke, setting free the oppressed, breaking every yoke, sharing your bread with the hungry, sheltering the oppressed and the homeless, clothing the naked when you see them, and not turning your back on your own. Then your light shall break forth like the dawn ... If you remove from your midst oppression, false accusation and malicious speech, if you bestow your bread on the hungry and satisfy the afflicted, then light shall rise for you in the darkness and the gloom shall become for you like midday (Isa. 58:3—10).

The primary role and task of religion is the establishment of a world based on just relationships. To overlook that fact is to prostitute religion. By the same token, every commitment to a more humane world and to the eradication of oppression is “anonymously” religious. It is after the heart of all true religion. According to the prophets, faith in G-d must be convened into the concrete praxis of liberation. It has political, economic, and social dimensions. To believe in G-d is to work for justice and to serve those in need. To be authentic, religion must be fleshed out in the struggle for a more humane world. G-d is on the side of people and their liberation, fighting against structures that continue to oppress them. To accept G-d is to opt for liberation and to take a stand on the side of the people ...

Chapter VI ...

Christian love can he meaningful only as a revolutionary commitment to the liberation of one’s fellow human beings. If love seeks a world of brothers and sisters, a world without classes, then it will fight for the liberation of the oppressed ... Love for the oppressors means fighting against them as oppressors in order to restore their nature as human beings to them. Thus with their combative love in quest of liberation, the oppressed also make it possible for the oppressor to be liberated and humanized ... Guilio Girardi, an Italian priest ... has this to say: The gospel commands us to love our enemies but it does not say that we are not to oppose or fight them. Not only does love not rule out class struggle, it actually demands it. We cannot love the poor without lining up on their side in their struggle for liberation ...

Conclusion ...

One can be an atheist while professing faith in God, and a believer while professing atheism. -- H De Lubac

... After twenty centuries of Christianity, the world is essentially anti—Christian. The great precept of love calls for justice and underlines the essential equality between human beings. It would have us regard all human beings as brothers and sisters and other Christs and turn the world into a haven of communion. Today it remains an idle word and a vain slogan. The most serious aspect of the matter is that the very part of the world that considers itself Christian and has grown up in the Christian tradition seems to be the most inhuman and exploitative part of the world ...

Interesting here is the view of what constitutes "true religion," consistent with the view that: everyone has a religion -- though not everyone tells you accurately what their religion is.