The claim that redemption in Christ has a social dimensionâŠis still under continuous challenge by conservative Christians who seek to invalidate any theology, whether from a feminist, class, or racial minority perspective, that would make socioeconomic liberation an intrinsic part of the meaning of redemption. Such christian would claim that redemption is a purely spiritual matter and has nothing to do with socioeconomic chaanges.
This individualizing and spiritualizing of salvation is the reverse side of the individualizing of sin. Sin is recognized only in individual acts, not structural systems. One is called to examine oneâs sinfulness in terms of abuses of oneself and personal unkindness to oneâs neighbor, but not in terms of the vast collective structures of war, racism, poverty, and, least of all, the oppression of women. In more sophisticated circles, Reinhold Niebuhrâs division between âmoral manâ and âimmoral societyâ is used to declare that altruism and love is possible, if at all, only on the interpersonal level. Collective groups, especially large ones, like nation-states, can only pursue an ethic of self-interest.
This 'realismâ is distorted by neoconservatives into an attack on any effort to create a more just society as fanatical and utopian. Liberation theology is condemned as a 'hereticalâ effort to transcend te limits of historical existence, as thought the present Western capitalist society represented the 'limitsâ of historical existence and the 'best of all possible worlds.â
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