The Left Side of the Church

The Left Side of the Church:

The fiftieth anniversary of 1968 has occasioned much reflection on that pivotal moment in the twentieth century. If the quintessential image of that year of upheaval is students assembling barricades in the Paris streets, or protests at Berkeley against the Vietnam War, it was also marked by challenges to political and social power throughout the world. Curiously overlooked, however, is the gathering in Colombia of the Medellin Conference of Latin American Bishops — a pivotal event in the development of liberation theology throughout Latin America. The declarations of the conference broke new ground in expanding the notion of theological “liberation” to imply a positive humanizing process, and attacking the political, social, and economic structures that kept millions of Latin Americans poor and oppressed.