. The recognition of the danger of a merely sentimental attachment to the
Notes to Pages 45-68 That liberation theology is above all a practical theology that is concerned
6. to understand and transform the pastoral function of the Church is emphasized by a number of these theologians. See, for example, Juan Luis
Segundo, The Hidden Motives of Pastoral Action (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1978), and José Miguez Bonino, Doing Theology in a Revolutionary
Situation (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1975).
. Wesley uses this term to refer to the whole spectrum of the biblical message from creation to eschatology. One of the decisive contributions of liberation theology is to anchor the view of solidarity with the poor, protest against injustice, and social transformation in just such an ample reading of the Bible. See chapter 9 below.
. "On Family Religion," VII:84-85.
3. A Preferential Option for the Poor . The recognition of the danger of a merely sentimental attachment to the poor is a characteristic of the theology of liberation. See Gustavo Gutierrez,
We Drink from Our Own Wells: The Spiritual Journey of a People (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1984), p. 16.
. In the United States today, for example, almost daily there are stories of the terrible risks run by "illegal aliens" in their desperate quest for work—and the most gruelling sort of work at that. Astonishingly, many of the same people who claim that the poor are lazy seek to place even more obstacles in the way of those who stake their very lives in the search for honest employment.
. Wesley was often pressed to pay off the debt incurred for the building or purchase of the many Methodist chapels that were an increasingly important feature of the movement. This exigency even led to the class meeting as the typical form of Methodist organization, as Wesley noted in his Short History of the People Called Methodists, X1I1:310. But this activity is not referred to when Wesley deals with stewardship. It remains true that the taking of collections was generally related to the relief of the poor in contrast to the "subscription" that was used to pay off the debt.
. One of Wesley's criticisms of the Moravians was the partiality of their compassion. He wrote, "I do not admire their confining their beneficence to the narrow bounds of their own society" (Journal, Nov. 28, 1750, 11:214; see also Journal, Dec. 21, 1751, I1:248).
. For further discussion of this aspect of Wesley's ministry, see E. Brooks Holifield, Health and Medicine in the Methodist Tradition (New York:
Crossroad, 1986).
. Gutierrez notes: "There is no authentic evangelization that is not accompanied by action in behalf of the poor" (We Drink from Our Own
Wells, p. 44). In this respect Wesley's position is even more consistent than that of Gutierrez since, for Wesley, it is not a matter of two actions in tandem but of even evangelization's being governed by the commitment to the poor.
. Warner provides a helpful summary of the role Methodism played in fostering this movement (The Wesleyan Movement in the Industrial Revolution, pp. 333-36).
. When, in 1976, the youths of Soweto in South Africa burned down the Shabeens (government sponsored speakeasies), protesting that these