Poverty, Injustice, Liberation: Class Conflict in Latin America and The Theology of Gustavo Gutierrez

This event was sponsored by the Lumen Christi Institute’s Nicklin Fellows Program, which supports and encourages University of Chicago undergraduate students to develop their intellectual maturity. Fabricio Wei, who designed this program, is a Nicklin Fellow.

The course examined the task of Christian theology in its time and how to speak about God amid poverty and injustice without naïveté or paternalism, exploring how theology could illuminate the call for liberation from those experiencing marginalization, violence, and destitution.

Drawing on the work of Gustavo Gutierrez, the seminar focused on his diagnosis of modernity and on how values such as autonomy and freedom, together with growing industrialization and capitalism, shaped much 20th-century theological discourse. With Gutierrez as a guide, participants evaluated whether modern European and North American theology had centered the needs of the most privileged and had often been complicit with systems that produced poverty and inequality.

Participants then studied the emergence and main tenets of liberation theology as a response to both the inadequacies of modern theology and the needs of the poor and most vulnerable. Through close textual analysis and critical discussion, they assessed the claim that theology could serve as a source of both political liberation and spiritual growth—especially for those suffering poverty, racism, and other affronts to human dignity—and traced how Gutierrez and the liberation theology movement reached that conclusion, while drawing lessons for the present.

Readings: Participants read Gustavo Gutierrez’s The Power of the Poor in History (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1992 [1979]), Chapter 7, “Theology from the Underside of History.” Optional reading included Chapter 1 of A Revolutionary Faith (Stanford University Press, 2023) by Dr. Raul Zegarra.