David Tombs, Latin American Liberation Theology (Brill, 2002).
An accessible introduction to the theological challenges raised by Latin American Liberation and a new contribution to how these challenges might be understood as a chronological sequence. Liberation theology emerged in the 1960s in Latin America and thrived until it reached a crisis in the 1990s. This work traces the distinct developments in thought through the decades, thus presenting a contextual theology. The book is divided into five main sections: the historical role of the church from Columbus’s arrival in 1492 until the Cuban revolution of 1959; the reform and renewal decade of the 1960s; the transitional decade of the 1970s; the revision and redirection of liberation theology in the 1980s; and a crisis of relevance in the 1990s. This book offers insights into liberation theology’s profound contributions for any socially engaged theology of the future and is crucial to understanding liberation theology and its legacies.
What people are saying
This well-written book stands as a significant contribution to liberation theology. In five parts, Tombs chronologically and contextually situates the development and maturation of the discipline in a way that allows students to access and appropriate it. The work is synthetic in that it integrates the sociological, political, historical, and economic realities of Latin America into a survey of both theological and philosophical developments. Two bonuses for the teacher-scholar are the extensive footnotes and excellent bibliography… [Tombs’s] masterful interweaving of the social, economic, historical, political, theological, and philosophical realities provides a deeper understanding of the history of Latin America… [Tombs] knows the issues and the debates and discusses them comprehensively.
Prof Thomas M. Kelly, Creighton University, Omaha, USA
This excellent addition to the secondary literature on liberation theology in the Latin American context is organized as a historical account of the movement… This book is a very important resource for understanding the historical context within which liberation theology emerged and has waned in Latin America.
Prof David J. Livingston, Mercyhurst College, Erie, Pennsylvania, USA