Christian Polarities: Liberation theology vs. Evangelicalism
At the end of the Reagan era, I found liberation theology's pragmatism attractive for four reasons: The then prevalent emphasis on self (remember the "me" generation) was increasingly disturbing and repugnant because it is the antithesis to Jesus' teachings. My doctoral research on religious pluralism raised difficult, perhaps unanswerable, questions about the exclusive trustworthiness of any one religion's scriptures. For example, given both a lack of scientific evidence and conflicting scriptural accounts about what happens at death (e.g., the faithful enter new and everlasting life, death is the end, life follows death which follows life in an endless cycle), one's cultural heritage and personal biases arguably determine which, if any, scripture most persons accept as authoritative. Marx's critique of religion as the opiate of the masses poignantly questions individual and institutional motives