CORE 367C/PHIL368C: Liberation Thought
Essay Assignment #1
Due: Monday, February 12
Robert McAfee Brown’s book modeled for us some of the biblical lessons those from the “first world” might learn from those of the third world. He admits that the book’s perspective might make many of us feel uncomfortable, even “personally assaulted,” and he addresses these feelings in his epilogue.
The assignment is to choose a Bible passage and try to read it “with third world eyes.” The length of the passages will vary, but it should be a self-contained unit: long enough to sustain the reflection but not so long as to blur the focus. the length that is used for readings at liturgies or for homilies and sermons is probably most appropriate. You can choose either Old or New Testament.
“Reading with Third World Eyes” means to try to represent how this passage might be understood by a person who comes from a situation Gutiérrez would say is in need of “liberation.” You can try to imagine someone from a specific Third World situation, for example, a Mexican corn farmer who has lost the ability to sell his corn in the market since NAFTA allowed Cargill to sell North American corn (and beans!) in Mexico. Or someone from a poor family living in the slums of a big South American city like Rio de Janeiro or São Paulo, Brazil, or Lima, Peru, or Mexico City. Or you could even imagine someone from a non-Christian country like Darfur who encounters a particular Bible passage through relief workers. Sometimes the passage itself might dictate a situation you’ll imagine.
You do not need to do a terrific amount of research to approach the assignment. Simply imagining yourself in a developing country situation—or even an American underclass situation—a undocumented Hispanic worker at the Golden Plump chicken plant in Cold Spring, MN; or the Jennie-O Turkey plant in Melrose, MN; or the Swift Pork Processing Plant in Worthington, MN. Or a young black child growing up in the South Bronx, in Newark, in East St. Louis, South Chicago (all places described by the author Jonathan Kozol as having very poor educational resources). Or a Native American on a reservation—Red Lake, Pine Ridge, etc. The “third world” would also cover large parts of Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe. Simply imagine yourself as best you can into a situation of “not having,” into a situation of feeling oppressed by poverty, by the “system,” whether this is the result of race, class, gender, etc. How might the bible passage speak to you differently if your situation were different?
You do not need to structure your essay as Brown did his chapters. It is fine to contrast how you might have been taught to understand a passage in your “real life” in contrast to what you imagine a “third world” reader would find in the passage. And since you’ll be trying to imagine this perspective, you may certainly use 1st person: “I expect someone in a developing country might think like this about the passage....” Quote the passage as you see necessary. If you quote it in full, single-space this part and keep in mind that your essay itself should be 800-1200 words (1500 maximum).