On Sundays, the Metropolitan Cathedral of San Salvador is a structure divided. In the main nave, as in many other Latin American cathedrals, ornate hangings and elaborate paintings cover the walls and ceiling. Priests in full vestments conduct traditional masses for congregants dressed in their Sunday best.
The crypt downstairs is an alternate universe, where plastic lawn chairs, a makeshift stage, and simple tombs of El Salvador’s previous archbishops fill a dark space. The only ornamentation is the memorial commemorating the tomb of Monseñor Oscar Romero, the archbishop who was considered the voice of the poor in El Salvador and whose assassination in 1980 spurred the 12-year civil war that still haunts the country. What the crypt lacks in decoration it makes up for in attendance, for the room is filled with people, ranging from adults dressed in suits to teenagers wearing jerseys and jeans. They sing hymns and listen to stories of Jesus’s compassion towards the poor.
This mass is part of a greater movement to resurrect religious worship and service in the spirit of Oscar Romero and liberation theologians like him by celebrating Christianity for Christ’s embracing of everyone, particularly the poor. Despite these weekly anti-establishment services, some say that liberation theology has stagnated in El Salvador since the end of the civil war in 1992, when the country’s religious leadership became increasingly conservative. The underground mass in the crypt of El Salvador’s national cathedral, led every week by a group from a different village, is part of a struggle to return to the teachings of Oscar Romero and Jesus Christ—and to turn away from the ruling conservatism. And a struggle it is.
Through the Eye of a Needle
Liberation theology, which originated in the Catholic Church, focuses on Christ’s struggle to relieve the burdens of the poor. Liberation theologians point to various passages from the Bible to emphasize Jesus’s message of social justice and condemn those who do not spread their wealth.
Although liberation theology was first articulated in the 1960s during the Second Vatican Council, its roots go back to the earliest days of Spanish colonial rule in Latin America. Bartolomé de las Casas, a priest who sailed with Christopher Columbus, denounced the Europeans’ treatment of the indigenous people as contrary to the teachings of Christianity. Priests, particularly from the Jesuit order, have since promulgated similar ideas, creating the cultural foundation for liberation theology.
Liberation theology is part and parcel of El Salvador’s history. Oscar Romero was selected as the fourth archbishop of San Salvador in 1977 because of his conservatism. As archbishop, however, he witnessed the government committing ongoing human rights violations and oppressing the poor, and he turned to liberation theology in search of a solution. At a 1980 mass, Father Romero called upon the country’s soldiers to stop the death squad killings that had beset the country since the coup of the previous year, saying: “You are killing your own brother peasants. Any human order to kill must be subordinate to the law of God which says, ‘Thou shalt not kill.’ It is time you recovered your consciences and obeyed your consciences rather than a sinful order.” Government troops assassinated him as he said the homily, touching off a reaction that exacerbated tensions between poor farmers and the U.S.-backed government, which erupted into civil war.
The war ended in 1992 with peace accords, but tension is still palpable between the two political parties. Once enemies in war, they now battle over their differences on the country’s political stage. ARENA, the ruling party, includes members of the war government and military, while the FMLN, the other major party, consists mostly of former guerillas. With the parties locked in stalemate, the conflict between the reigning religious conservatism and controversial liberation theology remains part of the country’s religious landscape.
Not to Destroy, but to Fulfill
Liberation theology has been under fire in the Church and in El Salvador in recent years, but some El Salvadorans still struggle to adhere to it.
Dean Brackley is somewhat familiar with the crypt services in the Metropolitan Cathedral. A professor of theology at the Universidad Centroamericana (UCA) in San Salvador, he preaches in another community outside of the city and has not been able to attend many of the masses, though he noted that “twice I brought the whole community” to see Romero’s tomb and a bit of the Sunday service. Brackley joined the UCA after government forces killed a family of six Jesuits, their housekeeper, and the housekeeper’s daughter there in 1989, and has thus been an active witness of the country’s religious development since the civil war.
He explained that in the early 1970s, the Catholic Church began to face social problems that had been articulated in the Medellín Conference and the Second Vatican Council, and within the Church there was an explosion of charisma and creativity. However, he said that this burst of liberal thought stagnated over time: “The creativity in El Salvador was not able to be sustained. The theoretical creativity was fueled by praxis of fundamental social change, which at the end of the civil war here seemed increasingly less possible.”
Religious conservatives are no friends of liberation theology. “There are powerful forces, conservatives from Latin America in the Vatican who wage a campaign against liberation theology,” admitted Brackley. The archbishop is one such force, but it was the Vatican that condemned Brackley’s colleague, Father Jon Sobrino. Father Sobrino, a theologian from Spain who has dedicated his life to El Salvador’s poor and served as Oscar Romero’s theological advisor, survived the 1989 UCA massacre because he was at a conference in Bangkok. In March 2007, the Vatican issued a formal notification stating that Sobrino’s writings “may cause harm to the faithful.” One of the foremost concerns shared by the archbishop of San Salvador and others in the Vatican is that liberation theology does not focus sufficiently on the divinity of Christ, making it a dangerous ideology.
Even without top-down suppression, the continuation of liberation theology as an influential ideology is complicated by the fact that most people who follow its teachings are unaware that they are subscribing to a school of thought. According to Brackley, “The term liberation theology is not in common use today. The population in El Salvador on average has finished six years of poor schooling.” Most may not have the education to know what branch of Christian thought they are being exposed to, even though preaching in many of these communities is in the spirit of liberation theology.
Brackley also noted that the face of El Salvador has changed since the civil war. “The median age in El Salvador is around 23. This is the first generation raised in front of the television, raised in the postwar period without Romero liberation theology. The concern of these young kids is not with fundamental social change. They are concerned with consumerism and the gospel of MTV.”
In recent years, even within the UCA theology department—historically a bastion for liberation theologians—the ideology is given less reception. During the civil war, students steered clear from the Jesuits out of fear for their personal safety. While the university today is considered progressive, the theology department has many students who do not identify with liberation theology at all. Brackley explained, “We have people from all different socioeconomic backgrounds, and different countries. If I talk about liberation theology, I just can’t take for granted that they’re going to buy it.”
Despite the throngs of people gathered at crypt masses in the Metropolitan Cathedral every Sunday, Brackley—and those like him who are attuned to the politics of faith in El Salvador—suggest that the polarization of religious ideology in El Salvador will last as long as socioeconomic inequality and the political remnants from the civil war persist.