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The Catholic Church, Social Change and Insurrection

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Book cover The Emergence of Insurgency in El Salvador

Part of the book series: International Political Economy Series ((IPES))

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Abstract

Observers agree that the Catholic Church has played a pivotal role in the recent political development of El Salvador.1 More specifically, what is now known as the ‘Popular Church’ is widely viewed as a force, if not the force, behind the political mobilisation of the poor to support the insurgents’ agenda. Thanks to radical priests and theology students, hitherto apathetic and conservative peasants and urban poor learned to identify the ‘structural sin’ of capitalism and started to yearn for a politico-religious version of the ‘promised land’.2 Alain Besançon once made the distinction that Moses and Saint John ‘knew that they believed’, while Marx and Lenin ‘believed that they knew’.3 By blurring this distinction — radical Christians know that they believe and believe that they know — the ‘Christianisation’ of the revolution conceivably produced an explosive mixture.

Underlying any theological argument and, at the very roots of any polemic on God, one almost invariably finds men’s interests and, very clearly, interests of power. (Cabarrús, 1983)

Very soon the Central American University ‘José Simeón Cañas’ attempted to participate in the process of liberation of the Salvadoran people; that is, liberation from its situation of structural oppression. Hence its mission to attempt to be the critical and creative conscience of the Salvadoran reality. (Salvadoran Jesuits, ‘Los Jesuitas ante el pueblo salvadoreño’)

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Notes and References

  1. To mention but a few publications on the subject: Edwin Eloy Aguilar, José Miguel Sandoval, Timothy J. Steigenga and Kenneth M. Coleman, ‘Protestantism in El Salvador: Conventional Wisdom versus Survey Evidence’, Latin American Research Review, vol. 28, no. 2 (1993), pp. 119–40;

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. St Francis Xavier University, Antigonish, Nova Scotia, Canada

    Yvon Grenier (Associate Professor of Political Science)

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  1. Yvon Grenier
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© 1999 Yvon Grenier

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Grenier, Y. (1999). The Catholic Church, Social Change and Insurrection. In: The Emergence of Insurgency in El Salvador. International Political Economy Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-14833-2_6

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