Dated from the Medellín Conference, liberation theology is not yet thirty years old. Political theology, by contrast, has many centuries behind it. To define a High Tradition the period 1100-1650 suggests itself: at one end the Gregorian Reforms bring the conflict between papacy and secular rule to the centre of theological discussion; at the other the Moral Science of the early Enlightenment lifts political theory out of the purview of theology. The dates are especially happy as they coincide with two striking contributions to the genre. From the turn of the twelfth century the anonymous York Tractates argue with theological urgency for the sacral character of monarchy, discredited by the new papalism. From the midpoint of the seventeenth century Hobbes's Leviathan, a work with considerably more theology in it than philosophy, seals the case, as early modernity understood it, for politics as an autonomous theoretical discipline. In between lie the great peaks of political theology, scholastic and reformed. But the High Tradition itself did not spring from nothing, but drew on thinkers and ideas of the patristic and Carolingian ages. Augustine is rightly taken as a founding figure; but before him there were Ambrose, Eusebius of Caesarea (notoriously), and from the pre-Constantinian period Lactantius. And why not mention the second-century Letter to Diognetus, which, in turn, was only building on ideas in 1 Peter and Philippians . . . ?

The Warring States period was an era of magnificent artistic creation and renewal in Chinese history. By the end of the Spring and Autumn period, changes within traditional ritual art and architecture had reached a critical point. Many new artistic and architectural forms, styles, and genres appeared during the following centuries and redefined the whole visual vista. In architecture, the city was reshaped and its internal structure reconfigured. Tall platforms and terrace pavilions won great favor from political patrons, replacing the deep, enclosed compound of a traditional temple or palace to determine the center of a city or palace town. With their monumental appearance and dazzling ornamentation, these architectural forms supplied powerful visual symbols much needed by the new elite. In art also, the reaction against ritual bronzes – the dominant artistic genre during the Shang and Western Zhou – continued. Although vessels and other equipment made for ceremonial usage never disappeared, the ritual occasions that they served had gone through fundamental transformations, becoming increasingly mundane. The commemorative inscription declined further. Ornate interlacing patterns or depictions of human events transformed a bronze vessel into a carrier of geometric decoration or pictorial representation. Monochrome vessels had gone out of fashion; lacquers and inlaid objects, both reflecting a fascination with fluent imagery and coloristic effects, enjoyed great popularity. Beautifully decorated mirrors, belt hooks, and other types of personal belongings became major showpieces. Lamps, screens, tables, and other objects of daily use were created as serious works of art; combining expensive materials, exquisite work manship, and exotic images, these objects best documented the desire for material possession and the taste for extravagance.

This volume describes a history of ancient China, though the term China, as the name of a modern country, did not exist until recent times. The civilization that we have come to identify with present-day China began to be formed perhaps a few thousand years ago, but its geographic scope has undergone continuous change, at no other time coinciding with the present political borders. Therefore, it should be borne in mind that in this chapter the geographical stage here called China is more like a short-hand name for one part of East Asia, east of the Altai Mountains and the Tibetan Plateau. This is an area where early hominids came to settle, as they did in the rest of Eurasia, furnishing the basic populations among which an agricultural way of life began some ten thousand years ago. It is only then that one begins to recognize with in this area a distinctive civilization later to be called Chinese. When we describe the beginnings of the area’s human history, we cannot describe it totally separately from the rest of the human world before 10,000 years ago.

the palaeographic stage of east asia and its settlement by humans

In 1859 Charles Darwin presented his theory of evolution by natural selection, immediately generating an impassioned debate on the “antiquity of man.” He called on evidence from stratigraphical and faunal correlations, and although in the subsequent century and a half scientists in a number of disciplines have accumulated a great deal of new information, even now only a sketchy and controversial story can be told.

This chapter is an account of various transformations that took place during the Spring and Autumn period (770–481 B.C.). It covers the transition from a Zhou feudal system to a multistate system; from the expansion of the Zhou into the Yellow River drainage to the ancient China that spanned the Yellow and Yangzi Rivers and the highlands in the north and the west; from an economy based on manorial management to a market economy; and from a family-based society to one based upon great social mobility. The most significant development in this period was a major break through in the intellectual sphere, in which the moral values of Confucius provided an innovative reinterpretation of feudal ethics. This break through brought Chinese culture into a Jaspersian “Axial Age” of civilization. Thereafter, intellectuals served not only as officials in government but, of more profound impact, also as cultural carriers who interpreted the meaning of life and ideals of society. This new condition in the intellectual sphere continued beyond the Spring and Autumn period, remaining characteristic through out Chinese history. In other words, this break through initiated in the Spring and Autumn period would eventually lead China to develop a persistent, collective identity – Chinese civilization.

The Asian context

Liberation theology differs from other theologies in that it starts with an analysis of the context, as it wants to respond to the cries of the people arising from it. As contextual theology we can distinguish it by regions - Latin American, African, Asian, European - and by social groups such as the poor, women, blacks, Dalits, indigenous peoples. However, none of these social or geographical identities can be understood in isolation. Contexts and identities are multiple and overlapping. The realities of class, caste, patriarchy and ethnicity, and of local, regional and global economy are intertwined. A Dalit girl working in a factory in an export-processing zone in India is exploited as an underpaid worker - like other workers around the globe - and suffers from a lack of protection by trade-union rights, while as a woman she suffers from male domination and violence - as other women do - whereas she shares her plight as an 'untouchable' suffering from caste oppression with other outcastes, male and female, in India.

What is specific about Asia, especially in contrast with Latin America, is the religio-cultural context. The overwhelming majority of the poor and oppressed in Asia are non-Christians, many of whom adhere to a wide variety of popular religious traditions which are more or less connected with the traditions of the great religions which have shaped dominant Asian cultures. Yet within Asia there are again tremendous differences. Latin America is, compared to Asia, a relatively homogeneous continent in terms of history, language, economic and political developments. Asia has to be subdivided into various regions with different cultural, religious, political and economic histories.

The urgency and the richness of the commitment that many Christians in Latin America and the Caribbean began to feel in the 1960s as part of the struggle for justice and solidarity with the poor raised new questions, as well as pointing to fertile new pathways in the discourse about faith. These circumstances helped convert such reflection into a theology of liberation; that is, a way to understand the grace and salvation of Jesus in the context of the present and from the situation of the poor.

From the start, therefore, this theological perspective is bound up with the life of grassroots Christian communities and their commitment, as well as with the evangelising mission of the Church. This is the reason for its great impact, also from the outset, in the magisterium of the Church. Medellín and other Latin American Bishops’ conferences, as well as many other texts, bear witness to this fact

The theology of liberation, like any theology is about God. God and God’s love are, ultimately, its only theme. But since for Christian revelation (the starting point for any theology) the love of God is a mystery, the immediate question is how to talk of a mystery? The humble and respectful advice of Thomas Aquinas remains valid: ‘we cannot know what God is, only what he is not’ (ST I.9.3 introd.). It is in this context that, nearly thirty years ago, we asked ourselves what path the theological task ought to take in the context of Latin America.

Introduction

There are several ways of approaching Black theology. One approach seeks to characterise it in terms of its history, that is, of its origins in the Civil Rights and Black Power movements of the 1960s. It maintains that the demands for racial justice embodied in these two movements provided the basis for the emergence of Black theology. I shall not follow this approach here since it is not the aim of this chapter to offer a detailed description of the relationship between movements of protest and Black theology in the 1960s. This has been done elsewhere.

The second but related approach starts from an interpretation of the different ways in which African-American slaves appropriated and reworked Christian faith in the context of their experience of slavery. According to this understanding Black theology represents not just a faddish attempt to redefine Christian teaching in the light of the demands of the social and political forces of the 1960s but a critical search for a historically black Christian form of reflection on issues of racial justice and liberation. The materials for such reflection come from the twin realities of slavery in the past and the experience of racism in the present. One important difference between these two approaches is that, although they both share the same understanding of Black theology, the first is very much shaped by the politics of the recent past whereas the second locates its point of departure in the history of slavery itself, with the latter being seen as a historical expression of racism.

The two and a half centuries commonly known as the age of the Warring States (481–221 B.C.) witnessed the creation of the major political institutions that defined early imperial China. The old league of cities ruled by the Zhou nobility was replaced by a system of territorial states built around unchallenged monarchs who commanded a large number of dependent officials. These in turn were employed to register and mobilize the individual peasant households, primarily for the sake of imposing universal military service. The mass peasant armies of the period entailed the emergence of military specialists who were masters of the theories and techniques of warfare. At the same time, the needs of diplomatic maneuver produced theorists of stratagem and persuasion who formulated new models of interstate relations. The Zhou world was also reinvented as a geographic entity, both through expansion to the south and the southwest and through new patterns of physical mobility that marked differences of status.

However, the writings of this period present no tidy portrait of politics or institutions. Since written materials were still rare, difficult to produce, and not widely diffused, “books” tended to emerge, evolve, and survive as the legacy of groups who defined themselves through loyalty to a common master. Members of these groups sought patrons who took an interest in the wisdom or expertise that they claimed to offer. As a consequence, the writings that preserve information about the political history of the period are pragmatic and factional. They are devoted to the policies, philosophies, and actions of those who actively participated in creating the new states, and they defend these actions or philosophies as uniquely efficacious.

Introduction

It seems that for every commentator who has put pen to paper or given voice upon the lecture circuit, there is set forth a different, and supposedly conclusive, definition of the base ecclesial community (comunidade eclesial de base). Ever since the emergence of this innovative and challenging ecclesial phenomenon within the Latin American continent, ecclesiologists and sociologists alike have fallen over themselves in an attempt to explicate the concrete, lived experiences of those within the base communities by way of their own preferred analytical vocabulary. The precision with which etymological origins, epistemological status and theological significance is sought, whilst laudable in terms of theoretical rigour, often belies the haphazard, disjointed and sporadic nature of much of the actual pastoral practice and tangible experience of those engaged in the day-to-day struggle to survive at the base of Latin American society.

As the above intimates, it is not our intention here to understand the base ecclesial community by means of dissecting the words comunidade, eclesial, de base. Rather, we shall explore the character of the comunidade eclesial de base (hereafter, CEB) by way of highlighting a number of landmark events and experiences which, over the course of at least a decade, played a constitutive part in the emergence of the CEB phenomenon. To this end, we seek to understand the CEB, not as a neatly definable entity, but rather as an ecclesial tool and lived experience which has emerged out of a prolonged series of pastoral crises, perceived threats, ecclesiological shifts, theological refinements, and historical exigencies born of a whole gamut of economic, political, social, and theoretical upheavals.