Introduction

Pablo Richard, a Chilean-born theologian long based in Costa Rica, notes in his essay on “Theology in the Theology of Liberation” that “[i]n Latin America, faith in God does not come up fundamentally against atheism, but rather against idolatry”. Why has the concept of idolatry proved to be so helpful for analysing the world confronted by the poor of Latin America?

In the previous chapter we saw how liberation theologians have sought to identify who the poor are. It was evident that, whatever else liberation theology has had to say about the poor, it has always understood that there is a necessary economic content to any talk of poverty. The discussions have tended to focus on whether this is a necessary and sufficient condition for describing poverty, or whether it is necessary but insufficient.

The lack of terminological exactitude, with terms such as “the economy”, “economics”, “the market” and “capitalism” being used either interchangeably or to mean different things by different authors, does not always help. Strictly speaking one would expect liberation theology to use economics to reflect on the economy. However, given that it wants to deny some of the presuppositions of economics, especially neo-liberal economics, it also has to reflect in a direct theological fashion on both economics and the economy, in order to criticize both.