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Book Review: Spirituality of the Third World: A Cry for Life

Spirituality of the Third World: A Cry for Life Edited by K. C. Abraham and B. Mbuy-Beya Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books 1994, vi, 214 pp., paper, $19.95 Reviewed by Christie Joachim Pillai This slim volume is a collection of papers and reflections from the Third General Assembly of the Ecumenical Association of Third World Theologians, held in Nairobi, Kenya, in January 1992. The two well-researched papers of Part I refer to relations between Third and First World countries (by F. 1. Hinkelammert) and between South and North (by L. Surendra). These were not presented at the conference, but are meant to introduce the reader to the context of the current socio-economic and political situation. The collection of papers that follows is an effort to express what goes on in the minds and hearts and bodies and neighborhoods of those who are at the receiving end of the socalled New World Order where the haves have it and are proud of their consumerist revolution of uninhibited capitalism. The whole exercise is described as the search for the spirituality of the Third World. The five papers of Part II strive to identify and to articulate the main forms of this spiritual experience of the base communities in Brazil, the Chicanos in the United States, the poor communities of Africa, and the blacks of the Americas. All these were background materials for the conference. Only in Part III (pp. 87ff.) do we really come to the papers and discussions of the conference itself. Except for G. Soares Prabhu's theological essay on how to do Christology in a Third World context, most of the pieces tend to repeat the familiar strictures of Liberation Theology. One would have liked to see more sustained reflection on the nature of human suffering and the causes of this suffering, not only on the part of the oppressors, but also the oppressed who have their own drawbacks and limitations. The essays tend to too easily canonize the victims of East and South, and to castigate uncritically the oppressors of the North and West. In the process, the writers do not always bring out the richness of the religious cultures of the East and South, nor the positive resources of those in the North and West. Nor do we see any kind of spirituality emerging, but a confusing medley of rhetorical questions, and the litany of well-known accusations. The dialectic remains rather pointed and reactive. All this socio-economic analysis in Part I, the phenomenological analysis of Part II, and the theological reflection of Part III do not really deliver what is announced in the title as Spirituality of the Third World. The prophetic denunciation is loud and clear, but the Christian annunciation is not that audible. The redemptive and reconciling power of the suffering of the innocent and powerless is not adequately underlined. There is, however, no doubt that as an effort to locate, recognize, and celebrate the broken face of Christ in the disrupted lives of millions of poor people, both the gathering and the discussions and the publication by Orbis have an important prophetic function in the Christian community. The risen Lord continues to be present in the poor who witness to life in all its richness, even in the face of oppression, of passion and death. The poor are blessed indeed.