Liberation theology emerged in the 20th century as a moral response to poverty, political repression, and structural injustice, particularly in Latin America. Its motivating impulse was extreme inequality and state violence, where Catholic theologians read scripture through the lived experience of the poor and sought to mobilise religion as a force for social transformation. From barrios to rural comunidades, theology extended beyond seminaries and was brought into dialogue with hunger, land dispossession, and authoritarian rule.
At the centre of this movement stood figures such as Gustavo GutiĂ©rrez, whose seminal work A Theology of Liberation argued that God has a âpreferential option for the poor.â Salvation, on this view, was not only a future, otherworldly hope but something that must be pursued historically through the dismantling of oppressive structures. Sin came to be understood not just as individual moral failure but as embedded within economic systems, political institutions, and social hierarchies. In this framework, liberation from poverty and domination became a theological category.
To diagnose injustice, liberation theologians often borrowed analytical tools from social theory, especially Marxist class analysis. Concepts such as exploitation, false consciousness, and structural violence were used to explain why poverty persisted despite formal independence and nominal democracy. While this is helpful in exposing the realities of elite capture and foreign-backed regimes, it imports assumptions about history, power, and human motivation that sit uneasily with the Abrahamic covenantal tradition. The proletariat (working class) are recast as a collective moral subject, while oppressors were framed in terms of class location (bourgeoisie) rather than personal moral responsibility.
1. The reversal of moral causality
From a covenantal perspective grounded in Godâs law, covenantal loyalty, and human agency, these moves introduce problems. Covenantal thinking begins with the premise that God establishes a moral order through His law and that human beings are addressed as responsible agents within it.
Justice is not just the outcome of correct structural arrangements but the fruit of obedience, restraint, moral accountability and a sound political culture at every level of society. When liberation theology prioritises structural change while relativising individual responsibility, it risks severing justice from the very moral discipline required to sustain it. God says:
"God does not change the condition of a people [for the worse] unless they change what is in themselves." (Q 13:11)
At the heart of the Abrahamic tradition (Ù ÙŰ© ۄۚ۱ۧÙÙÙ ) is a moral grammar that links human flourishing to ethical conduct under Godâs law. Prosperity and decline are not random, nor are they solely imposed from without. They are the cumulative outcome of choices made by individuals and societies within an order.
Liberation theology reverses this causality. It treats material deprivation primarily as the result of external oppression and structural sin, while downplaying internal moral decay, leadership failure, and communal responsibility. Poverty becomes proof of innocence and wealth becomes evidence of guilt. In doing so, liberation theology collapses moral distinction into economic position.
God will say, âJoin the crowds of jinn and humans who have gone before you into the Fire.â Every crowd curses its fellow crowd as it enters, then, when they are all gathered inside, the last of them will say of the first, âOur Lord, it was they who led us astray so give them double punishment in the Fire.â God says, âEvery one of you will have double punishment, though you do not know it.â The first of them will say to the last, âYou were no better than us: taste the punishment you have earned.â (Q 7:38-:39)
This passage fits precisely into the covenantal critique of liberation theology because it addresses the temptation to displace responsibility onto structures, leaders, or historical forces. It exposes a recurring human instinct to explain moral failure by pointing upward or outward, rather than also inward.
God depicts communities entering judgement together. Each group arrives with a narrative ready to hand: They misled us. They shaped the conditions. They were in charge first. The later generations accuse the earlier ones. The elites are blamed by the masses, the leaders by the followers. It is the same moral grammar that underpins structural determinism. Offence is externalised, guilt is redistributed and agency is diluted. However, God's response cuts cleanly through this evasion: âEvery one of you will have double punishment.â There is no cancellation of responsibility through hierarchy and no moral refuge in historical circumstance. The covenantal mission does not deny that people mislead others but it refuses to allow that fact to negate personal accountability. Each party is judged both for misleading and for following.
Notice the devastating symmetry of the exchange. The first say to the last, âYou were no better than usâ which is fundamentally a moral diagnosis. Once agency is surrendered and conscience suspended in the name of circumstance, the oppressed reproduce the same patterns when given power. History confirms this where revolutions carried out in the language of liberation routinely regenerate domination because the inner covenantal discipline was never restored. The passage undercuts the idea that liberation can be achieved by rearranging external conditions alone. Covenantally, liberation begins with fidelity to Godâs sovereignty which governs how power is used, how wealth circulates, how leaders are obeyed or resisted, and how individuals restrain themselves even under injustice. Structural evil is real but it is not sovereign. Human beings remain addressed as moral agents at every point. This is why covenantal logic doesn't speak primarily in the language of class struggle or historical inevitability but the language of earning, as the final line makes explicit: âtaste the punishment for what you used to earn.â
Interestingly, the passage is often read as eschatological but its purpose is diagnostic. It exposes the danger of any framework that explains injustice while absolving the self. Liberation without covenantal responsibility becomes accusation without repentance and revolution without reform, a mirror image of the injustice it set out to destroy.
For clarity, a covenantal framework does not deny injustice or exploitation. It recognises them clearly and condemns them but it insists that oppression is not the only cause of decline nor is resistance alone the path to renewal. Godâs law addresses the oppressed and the oppressor simultaneously, demanding justice from one and moral rectitude, discipline, and reform from the other. By contrast, Liberation theology moralises grievance while neglecting internal reform.
2. The politicisation of revelation
Liberation theology does not just apply ethical principles to politics. It subordinates revelation to a political theory, most often a Marxian analysis of class struggle. As a result, scripture no longer judges history but becomes a resource selectively mined to legitimise a predetermined ideological framework. From a covenantal perspective, this is a category error. Godâs law is not an instrument of political mobilisation for the sake of power - stewards selflessly serve God's order. Revelation exists to discipline power, not to baptise it. When theology is fused with revolutionary ideology, the moral limits that covenantal law places on violence, coercion, and collective punishment are eroded. And letâs be frank, modern history bears this out. Where liberation theology has gained political influence, it has often justified authoritarianism, excused corruption among revolutionary elites, and silenced dissent in the name of the oppressed. The covenantal tradition insists that righteousness is not established by seizing power, but by governing justly once power exists.
3. The eclipse of individual moral agency
Covenantal law treats the individual as morally accountable before God, even within unjust systems. While structures matter, they do not absolve personal responsibility. Every person remains answerable for honesty, restraint, trustworthiness, and covenantal conduct regardless of circumstance.
However, liberation theology weakens this principle. By locating moral failure primarily in systems rather than persons, it reduces individuals to victims or functionaries of class, often where they do have agency. Offence to God thus becomes structural rather than personal. Repentance becomes political realignment rather than personal transformation.
This shift has profound consequences. A society cannot be renewed if its members are trained to see themselves as morally passive. Covenantal renewal begins with the reform of the self, the family, and the community - the concentric circles of cooperation - which then shapes societal institutions over time. Liberation theology attempts the reverse, seizing institutions first and hoping virtue will follow. Itâs like assuming capital punishment will rectify society, where the truth is that it stoutly protects a society built on active virtue.
4. The misunderstanding of justice
There is also a paradox at the heart of the movement. By framing the poor primarily as victims of structures, liberation theology can diminish the agency it seeks to affirm. If injustice is explained almost entirely by external systems, then moral failure, corruption, and violence within post-liberation societies become harder to account for without constantly locating new enemies. History bears this out. Revolutions justified in the language of liberation have often reproduced new elites, new coercive mechanisms, and new forms of inequality, precisely because the inner moral economy of power was never adequately addressed.
Justice in a covenantal framework is not merely redistribution. It is the right ordering of relationships under Godâs law. It includes fair courts, honest and fair trade, protection of resources, care for the vulnerable, and restraint of power. Charity and welfare exist but they are bounded by responsibility and sustainability. Liberation theology tends to equate justice with economic equalisation but in doing so, it ignores the covenantal insistence that justice must be procedural, ethical, and forward-looking. Redistribution without moral formation produces dependency, resentment, and eventually tyranny. As such, justice without law becomes sentiment, and sentiment without discipline becomes chaos.
5. Liberation without transcendence
A further issue lies in the redefinition of salvation. In covenantal terms, liberation is inseparable from moral formation. Communities flourish when individuals and leaders alike submit to God and fully adhere to commands governing economic conduct, political authority, and social relations.
You who are faithful, enter wholly into submission to God and do not follow in Satanâs footsteps, for he is your sworn enemy. (Q 2:208)
Liberation theology, by contrast, often collapses salvation into historical emancipation which reduces theology to a form of religiously inflected political activism, where success is measured by redistribution, regime change, or policy outcomes rather than by covenantal fidelity and transformation.
Perhaps the deepest flaw in liberation theology is its reduction of salvation to material conditions. Liberation becomes freedom from poverty, imperialism, or capitalism, rather than alignment with Godâs order and His coding of the universe. A covenantal perspective insists that material wellbeing is key, but it is not ultimate. Societies can become wealthy and remain unjust, or become revolutionary and remain corrupt. True liberation is not the absence of oppression alone, but the presence of Godâs order that upholds justice. There is no point in fighting against oppression in a way that simply brings about another oppressive regime. This is the single antithesis that defines the covenantal critique: liberation theology seeks freedom from power, while covenantal theology seeks freedom under God's sovereignty.
Conclusion
None of this is to deny the reality of oppression or the moral urgency that gave rise to liberation theology. The covenantal tradition itself is uncompromising in its condemnation of exploitation, tyranny, and indifference to the poor. It insists that rulers are accountable, that wealth carries obligation, and that injustice invites God's judgement. The difference lies in method and diagnosis. Covenantality locates the roots of injustice in broken loyalty to Godâs law and seeks renewal through repentance, ethical discipline, and lawful reform. Liberation theology often inverts this order, treating structural overhaul as the primary path to moral renewal.
Liberation that is detached from covenantal responsibility risks becoming cyclical rather than transformative. Systems change, slogans change, elites change, but the underlying patterns of domination will persist. A godliness that truly seeks human flourishing must therefore hold together compassion for the oppressed with an unflinching commitment to law, responsibility, and moral agency. Without that foundation, the promise of liberation remains compelling in rhetoric yet fragile in reality.
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