Page - 57 - in Limina - Grazer theologische Perspektiven, Volume 2:1

57 | www.limina-graz.eu toral students in Paris published a kind of manifesto, calling for a theol- ogy that reflected more closely African values (Des Prêtres noirs s’interrogent 1956). There were thus stirrings, especially in colonized areas, to develop a distinctive theological voice that did not reject the received Western theol- ogy, but expressed a local voice attuned to a different cultural experience. The Second Vatican Council proved to be a decisive turning point that al- lowed the beginnings of a plurality of theologies to find ground. The Pas- toral Constitution Gaudium et Spes addressed the Church “in” the modern world, not the Church “and” or “over against” the modern world. Pope Paul VI affirmed this direction for theology in his 1969 visit to Uganda, where he urged the Church there to be “truly Christian and truly African.” By the 1970s this pluralization of theology came to be known as a process of “inculturation,” paralleling the doctrine of the Incarnation, where the Second Person of the Trinity took on human nature in its very particular form. The term was first used in the General Congregation of the Jesuits in 1973 and appeared in Pope John Paul II’s Apostolic Exhortation Catechesi Tradendae in 1979 (Shorter 1988). This became a way to describe the “iden- tity theologies” of many countries in the immediate post-colonial era. Parallel to the theologies of inculturation were the theologies of liberation that began emerging in Latin America in the 1960s. Rather than focusing on cultural identity, these theologies investigated the social realities of Christians who were suffering from poverty and political oppression. They first received legitimacy in the Second Plenary Assembly of the meeting of the Episcopal Conferences of Latin America (CELAM) in 1968 at Medellín in Colombia. The publication of Gustavo Gutierrez’s A Theology of Liberation in 1971 marked the beginning of a rich literature that theologically engaged the political reality of Latin America and quickly spread to other parts of what was then called the “Third World” (Gutierrez [1971] 1973). These theologies of inculturation and liberation have continued to grow since those times. A common feature is a desire to address the local, con- crete situations of Christians in all their cultural, social, and political di- robert J. schreiter | Globalization and Plural theologies The Second Vatican Council allowed the beginnings of a plurality of theologies to find ground. Parallel to the theologies of inculturation, the theologies of liberation began emerging in Latin America.