Robert McAfee Brown
Birthdate: May 28, 1920
Birthplace: Carthage, Illinois, USA
Date of Death: September 4, 2001
Occupation: Activist, Author, and Theologian
Profile: Civil rights leader against the American involvement in Vietnam. Author of 29 books.
Website: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_McAfee_Brown
Number of Quotes: 30
And I wanted to cry out at her that I could not put the body apart from the soul, and that the
comfort of her body was more than a thing of the flesh, but was also a comfort of the soul...
Dark the Night, Wild the Sea
But there is one thing that is privileged to be a paradoxical sign of God,
in relation to which men are able to manifest their deepest commitment — our Neighbor. The sacrament of our Neighbor!
Liberation Theology: An Introductory Guide
Charity is today a political charity
. . . . it means the transformation of a society structured to
benefit a few who appropriate to themselves the value of the work of others. this transformation ought to be directed
toward a radical change in the foundation of society, that is, the private ownership of the means of production.
Liberation Theology: An Introductory Guide
God does not bless
poverty. God does not want people to
starve. God sides with the poor, the marginalized, the
outcast, and the marginalized. God wants us to make justice
a reality. God struggles to liberate the oppressed and the
oppressors. God curses war and wants us to live in peace.
From a statement of faith.
History is no longer, as it was for the Greeks, an anamnesis, a remembrance. It is rather a thrust into the future.
Liberation Theology: An Introductory Guide
How does one keep from growing old inside
? Surely only in community. The only way to make friends with time is to stay friends with
people. Taking community seriously not only gives us the companionship we need, it also relieves us of the notion that we are indispensable.
I believe we are here to share bread with one another, so that everyone has enough, no one has too much.
From his biographical archive.
I do not think there are any issues on the theological and human scene more important than the ones liberation theologians are raising.
Theology in a New Key
I won't be silent. The consequences are too steep; the price too high.
Attributed in a blog post.
Man is saved if he opens himself to God and to others even if he is not clearly aware that he is doing so. This is valid for Christians and non-Christians alike
— for all people. . . . We can no longer speak properly of a profane world. A qualitative and intensive approach replaces a quantitative and extensive one.
Liberation Theology: An Introductory Guide
Not he whom I find in my path, but rather he in whose path I place myself, he whom I approach and actively seek.
Liberation Theology: An Introductory Guide
Observermanship is the art of giving the impression that you are with it even though you don't know Latin very well.
Observer in Rome (1964)
One important aspect of justice, Jose Miranda reminds us, involves the restoration of what has been stolen. Giving food to the hungry or clothing to the
naked is not a charitable handout but an exercise in simple justice — restoring to the poor what is rightfully theirs, what has been taken from them unjustly.
Other religions think in terms of cosmos and nature; Christianity, rooted in Biblical sources, thinks in terms of history.
Liberation Theology: An Introductory Guide
Prayer for many is like a foreign land. When we go there, we go as tourists. Like most tourists, we feel
uncomfortable and out of place. Like most tourists, we therefore move on before too long and go somewhere else.
Remember that: Where you stand will determine what you see; Whom you stand with will
determine what you hear; What you see and hear will determine what you say and how you act.
Since the Enlightenment, the political order is an order of freedom. The political structures are no longer given, previous to
man's freedom, but are rather realities based on freedom, taken on and modified by man. . . . This new definition of politics carefully
distinguishes between state and society. The distinction . . . allows us to differentiate between the public sphere of the state of the Church
(or the combination of them) as powers from the public sphere in which the interests of all men as a social group are expressed.
Liberation Theology: An Introductory Guide
Storytelling is the most powerful way to put ideas into the world today.
The Church cannot be content to live in its stained-glass house and throw stones through the picture window of modern culture.
The Significance of the Church (1956)
The denunciation of injustice implies the rejection of the use of Christianity to legitimize the established order.
Liberation Theology: An Introductory Guide
The Exodus from Egypt, the home of the sacred monarchy, reinforces this idea: it is the desacralization
of social praxis. . . . In Egypt, work is
alienated and, far from building a just society, contributes rather to increasing injustice and to widening the gap between exploiters and exploited.
Liberation Theology: An Introductory Guide
The God of Exodus is
the God of history and of political liberation
more than he is the God of nature.
Liberation Theology: An Introductory Guide
The technical term bara designating the original creation, was used for the first time by Second Isaiah to refer to the creation of Israel.
Liberation Theology: An Introductory Guide
The theory of dependence will take the wrong path and lead to deception if the analysis is not put within the framework of the worldwide class struggle.
Liberation Theology: An Introductory Guide
There are not two histories, one profane and one sacred, juxtaposed
or closely linked.
Rather there is only one human destiny.
Liberation Theology: An Introductory Guide
There comes a time when silence is betrayal.
To quarrel with God is to
pay God the supreme compliment: it is to
take God seriously. It is to say that God matters enough
to be worth some anger. To be indifferent to God is to
pay God the supreme insult. It is to say that nothing of consequence is at stake.
True patriotism is not worship of our nation but rather, in the light of our worship of
the God of justice, to conform our nation's ways of justice.
Unexpected News: Reading the Bible with Third World Eyes pg. 159 (1984)
The youth movements could not separate religious formation from political formation.
Liberation Theology: An Introductory Guide
Who we listen to determines what we hear. Where we stand determines what we see. What we do determines who we are.
Last on Earth
