Agent of The Powerless

In class, I am part of the group that is in charge of learning about Oscar Romero and the Liberation Theology. So far, I have learnt that Oscar Romero was a guy who preached to large crowds about the Liberation Theology and about the role that the church should play in society. From what I understood, the Liberation Theology wanted for the Church, mainly it's holy men of power, to use their religious power to fight for the 'people'. It wanted for the church to fight the main power against oppression, their goal was to achieve justice, equality, and liberty. The liberation Theology was a popular movement with strong connections to the Marxist ideology, involving its own twist that asked for the Christian Church to support the movement by essentially become politically aware, then preaching to the public to also become more involved in political affairs by encouraging uprisings against all that was unfair.

From what I understood, this Liberation Theology movement was unsuccessful, but there were many people who felt passionate about it. While I agree in what this movement was trying to accomplish, I think the reason it was not successful was because while preaching to the public, talking to people about some of the issues that they wanted to change and improve could raise awareness, I’d say that the amount of people that would actually act upon their concerns on the issues being faced, was minimal.

The way that I see it, while it may be very close minded of me and what not, the reason for why the Liberation Theology was not successful in achieving its goals was because the execution of their plan relied far too much on religion itself along with its holy men of instead of basing some of it on the people themselves, as the bigger percent. I think that the Liberation Theology was either far too complex or too simple, and the people who supported it just found it hard to decide how to help it thrive and grow and be successful. I think its a poor example of how through out history religion has been used as an agent of the powerless because it relied on power.