The first World Forum on Theology and Liberation opened in the southern Brazilian port of Porto Alegre before an invited audience of over 200 theologians from each of the continents. Deliberately organised to coincide with the World Social Forum the WFTL intends to be a positive Christian influence upon the thousands of people gathering here in just a few days time from all over the world to explore issues common to the poor throughout the globe.

The first day was spent gathering together the different strands and concerns of theologians from each of the regions. Necessarily limited the exercise nonetheless demonstrated the universal impact of Latin America’s decades-long theological reflections on liberation. The five-day meeting takes as it’s theme Theology for Another Possible World linking precisely into the hope-filled aspirations of millions who have taken part in the World Social Forum with it’s slogan of Another World is Possible.

Consistent with the basic intuition of liberation theology the second day began with an analysis of the world in which theology is done and to which theological discourse is addressed. Dr Boaventura de Sousa Santos the world famous Portuguese sociologist commenting on the religious influence at the WSF revealed that in the 2003 meeting 62% of participants claimed to be religious while it was a higher figure for the official delegates and representatives of social movements, the majority of whom belonged to the Roman Catholic tradition. There is a strong religious dimension to the WSF to which this theological forum is beginning to respond.

He went on to give an insightful diagnostic of the current world situation claiming that there is an almost total collapse in expectations of improvement and betterment for the majority peoples of the world. Democracy has lost its historical redistributive power, which was never great but existed, however now it is in the service of capital and the enrichment of the few over against the greater impoverishment of the many. He outlined five dominant monocultures and their impact on creating a society that can no longer imagine any alternative to the present social order.

He challenged theology to be part of the re-imagining of alternatives while recognising the role religion is playing in maintaining the current hopelessness caused by western-style neo-liberal capitalism. Dr de Sousa Santos set a tone that rooted the forum’s participants in the reality of a worldwide economic system that denies life to the vast majority of the earth’s inhabitants. He underlined two areas essential for theological reflection, which were echoed again and again by other speakers, ecology and colonialism.

Following the opening talk each day we had the first of two panel presentations, one morning and the other afternoon. Ulrich Dichrow, a professor of systematic theology from Germany, opened by situating the present moment within the context of ‘empire’ exactly as the early Church had experienced life for the first few centuries. The same tensions could be seen today as then, accommodation, resistance and rejection. The neo-liberal capitalist project has it’s official theologies just as there are groups like ours reflecting on how to overcome it! He challenged the participants to recognise the irreconcilability of this system with the fundamental tenets of Christianity, and also to construct new communities born out of new human beings.

The second speaker in the panel, Deenabandhu Manchala, a Dalit theologian from India, enlightened the assembly as to the nature and origins of the oppression suffered by the Dalits who find themselves at the bottom of the caste system and how religion played an essential part in maintaining their inferior status. The reality for many in today’s world is that religion is not part of the liberating process but is co-opted by the dominant system in order to maintain the status quo.

The afternoon panel shifted the focus onto the question of utopias as a locus of hope and inspiration for struggling peoples. Chung Hyun Kyung, a Korean eco-feminist theologian living in New York, gave a spirited presentation that was warmly received. She rejected the inherent dualism so prevalent in western societies, inviting us to root our utopias in persons and in concrete situations. She pleaded for us to recognise and celebrate our bodilyness and to realise that sexuality is spirituality, just as the personal is political. She called us to make a number of paradigm shifts, from one to many utopias, from abstract to embodied utopias, from nowhere to earthly utopias, from future to here-and-now utopias, from goal-oriented to process-oriented utopias, from struggle to celebratory utopias.

She was followed by the world famous Brazilian theologian, Leonardo Boff, who also made a vigorous appeal for liberation theology to fully embrace ecology as an essential part of its message. As he said, it is not only the cry of the poor that the God of Life hears today, but also the cry of the earth that rises up to the God of Creation. He made the point that safeguarding the planet was now a constituent element for any Christian as was working for the unity of the whole human family. Mother Earth is the common home for all the world’s peoples.

The final part of our day was the discussion groups that lasted from 4.30-600pm. I must say that I am enjoying mine very much and have found that there is so much to share, and it is a place where each one is carefully listened to, so that the time just seems to fly. The evening has an optional talk from 8.00-10.00pm, which I have been attending. It all makes for a very long day and I have to say that each night I am exhausted, not least because of the heat, but also because of the effort to listen to so much input in a variety of languages.

The next three days were part of a unit touching on God, Religion and Theology for Another Possible World. Sunday was dedicated to God! Wanda Deifelt, who holds the chair of feminist theology in Sao Paolo, Brazil, is a Lutheran pastor and her topic was ‘Social context, language and images of God’. She was excellent. The 20th century has presented new challenges to our God-talk. Up till then Christianity had been known from basically one point of view, but now there is an explosion of different points of view, feminist, black, indigenous, Asian, gay, African, contextual, liberation and many others. The language of God is spoken in many dialects and Christianity has a problem with this.

She took us through basic feminist discourse about God and made it clear that the problem feminists have with the metaphor of ‘Father’ for God is its exclusiveness. It also gives rise to issues of patriarchy that definitely need addressing. God cannot be reduced to Father; God is so much greater than that one metaphor. She also rejected the dualistic dichotomy and preferred to make use of embodiment language when looking for a parable to speak of God. Latin Americans are comfortable with this body language. We are the embodiment of God, as is creation, and there is an inter-dependence of human beings with creation and also with each other. Body-talk leads to the model of relationality, to an encounter with the Divine, a relationship with God in both creation, and in people, created ‘in the image of God’. We can respect and have reverence for the Divine in the whole of creation.

Sunday saw two remarkable women theologians, Elsa Tamez, a Mexican Presbyterian working in Costa Rica, and Evangeline Anderson-Rajkumar, a Lutheran from Bangalore, India, configure the morning panel on God and Gender. Their challenging presentations called the forum to question the social context in which images of God, connected as they are to gender, give rise to or at least sanction killing, violence, aggression and abuse towards women. Most of us live in patriarchal and hierarchic cultures, fed on masculine images of God. There is a terrible gender-blindness in all the churches, which makes the question of gender-justice a core faith task in every church.

In the afternoon panel we revisited Dalit reality with James Massey, a Dalit theologian from India, who told us that they are probably the most oppressed community in the world. He was introducing the theme of ethnic-cultural traditions and globalisation. To his experience was added that of the indigenous peoples of Latin America when Fr Eleazar Lopez and Mario Perez Perez from Mexico, and Ernestina Lopez Bac from Guatemala and Victor Bascope from Bolivia opened up for us the cosmo-vision and liberating praxis of their pre-Christian traditions. I was left wondering at how impoverished my western-European tradition was and how much I had to learn from others if I was to recover any semblance of my full humanity.

Our group work was particularly good this afternoon, but you will have to wait for another opportunity to hear about it! I will try to get the next two days report ready by tomorrow night. Tragically there is no gap between our finishing this forum and the start of the World Social Forum on Wednesday. It is definitely a question of all work and no play!!