Opting for Democracy? : Liberation Theology and the Struggle for Democracy in Brazil

Maclean (Western religious thought, James Madison University) examines Brazilian liberation theology and its understanding of democracy within its ecclesiastical and national political contexts.

He contends that the original theoretical paradigm of liberation theology, together with later institutional constraints on liberation theologians, so determined its political options that most liberation theologians were unable to adapt to the rapid social, political, and religious changes in Brazil in the 1980s.