{"id":522,"date":"2011-04-22T18:16:43","date_gmt":"2011-04-23T01:16:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/danielharper.org\/yauu\/?p=522"},"modified":"2026-01-30T16:56:52","modified_gmt":"2026-01-30T21:56:52","slug":"humanism-and-liberationist-theologies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/2011\/04\/humanism-and-liberationist-theologies\/","title":{"rendered":"Humanism and liberationist theologies"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In a recent comment on a post I wrote about Cornel West<\/a>, Kim Hampton makes a statement that I quite agree with:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“I agree that the biggest reason that West is not talked about [among Unitarian Universalists] is the fact that he speaks from a liberationist standpoint … but I think you may be downplaying the fact part of the reason he is such a liberationist is that he is a forthright Christian. And Unitarian Universalism is still trying to figure out its relationship to Christianity.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This raises another interesting issue for me. In the contemporary theological landscape, socialism is almost exclusively associated with either a Christian liberationist theology perspective (e.g., Cornel West), or a Neo-pagan liberationist theology perspective (e.g., Starhawk). Humanists, by contrast, tend to be associated with a more moderate political philosophy. So humanist William Schulz, former director of Amnesty International, sounds like pretty straightforward natural-law human rights advocate and political liberal; and humanist Sharon Welch, ethicist and theologian, sounds to me like a pretty straightforward second-wave feminist and political liberal. Or put it this way: while I can think of some prominent Christians and Neo-pagans whom I would call socialists or leftist councilists, all the prominent humanists I know of seem to accept late capitalism without making a serious challenge to it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition, it seems to me that much of humanist dialogue in recent years \u2014 at least, among the humanists I know \u2014 has largely divorced theology and religion from social justice theories. This is not to say that humanists aren’t concerned with social justice; indeed, the opposite is true in my experience, as the humanists I know tend to be strongly committed to social justice and political action. But most of the humanists I know seem to remove ethics from religion, and their theology focuses on ontotheology almost exclusively. Sharon Welch is an excellent example of this: over the years, the trend she has followed has been to remove explicit religious concerns from her ethics, to the point where I would not longer call her a theologian and instead I’d call her simply an ethicist (without a qualifier).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Any thoughts on this from you, dear reader? I’m willing to hear counterexamples that disprove my hypothesis, but I’m far more interested in a broader analysis: are humanists tending to move to the political right of socialist Christians and Neo-pagans? and is there something inherent in the trend of humanist thought today that is moving humanism in that direction? and aside from William R. Jones, is there such a thing as a liberationist humanist thinker?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Update 1\/30\/26:<\/strong> Finally getting around to reading James Crofts’s comment. How could I have forgotten Anthony Pinn is another liberationist humanist? There are probably many more.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In a recent comment on a post I wrote about Cornel West, Kim Hampton makes a statement that I quite agree with: “I agree that the biggest reason that West is not talked about [among Unitarian Universalists] is the fact that he speaks from a liberationist standpoint … but I think you may be downplaying … Continue reading “Humanism and liberationist theologies”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[218,91,166,298,89,90],"class_list":["post-522","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-theology","tag-christianity","tag-cornel-west","tag-humanism","tag-liberation-theologies","tag-starhawk","tag-william-r-jones"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/522","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=522"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/522\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12795,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/522\/revisions\/12795"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=522"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=522"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=522"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}