To know God is to do justice.

On a rainy Sunday afternoon I drove up to Elmhurst College to attend the ceremony to award the Niebuhr Medal to Gustavo Guiterrez, father of Liberation Theology. Father Guiterrez grew up near Lima, Peru, and was a professor of theology and a parish priest.

The top photo is of Fr. Guiterrez having received the medal, with President of Elmhurst College, Dr. S. Alan Ray, at the podium reading about the award, and with Kenne Bristol, Chair of the Board of Trustees standing next to him.

What I appreciate most is that Guiterrez gave a speech after receiving the award. It was not new information. I still have my battered paperback edition of Liberation Theology that I bought in seminary in the 1970s. (A Theology of Liberation, 1971) But now, if I read some of it again I will hear it in his voice. His words were substantial, not sentimental. He spoke of poverty as not "misfortune" but rather "injustice." He also clarified some elements of the "preferential option for the poor." It is not an enemy of "universalism;" God does love everyone. Rather poverty is to be dealt with first, because it is contrary to the will of God.



I sat with some friends in Hammerschmidt Memorial Chapel on the Elmhurst campus. It is a big building and there was a good crowd. I count it a great privilege to hear in person people whom I have read for years. It also made me feel a little old; his seminal work was published some 38 years ago and I probably became acquainted with it some 35 years ago!

His theology, with an emphasis on concrete reality has been refreshing after a period when European theology was awfully cerebral. The notion of reading the scripture in the light of our immediate experience and asking "What specific action does God want us to take?" works fairly well at a local church level.