Abstract

The theory and practice of liberalism has historically justified the dispossession of non-European peoples through the ideological deployment of individual rights—private property being the most prominent. Rather than discarding rights language altogether owing to its colonialist background, the theological option for the poor in the postconciliar Church of Latin America establishes a criterion of authenticity that contributes to its prophetic renewal. The methodological turn toward the poor evident in the liberation theology of Ignacio Ellacuría can wrest rights from its crippling association with political, economic, and cultural forms of liberal domination as seen in the Americas. Latin American theologians provide historical and constructive resources for demythologizing the sacred right to private property in liberalism’s neocolonial present and historical past, as typified by John Locke. Specifically, the theme of integral liberation outlines the material, social, and transcendent dimensions of justice for the dispossessed as an ecclesial alternative to liberal individualism.