.

Henry George is most often remembered as a political economist and a social philosopher. However, he could just as properly, perhaps, be called a theologian. All of his books are suffused with deep spiritual feeling and have the justification of the ways of God to man as at least part of their objective. His most famous work, Progress and Poverty, closes with an argument for personal immortality, and even his most technical economic treatise, the Science of Political Economy, contains many passages (including virtually the whole of Book I, chapter 7) that seek to demonstrate the presence of divine will behind the natural order.

In this paper, I want to look more closely at this theological side of Henry George's legacy. Specifically, I intend to examine George's relationship to and possible influence on the moral theology of the Roman Catholic Church, both in its formulation and in its content, by seeking to answer three questions. 1) How are the Papal Encyclicals Rerun Novarum, Ouadragesimo Anno, Mater et Magistra, and Populorum Progressio related to George's thought? 2) What are some connections joining Latin American Liberation Theology to Henry George? And 3) are there indications for a deeper relationship in the future?

George and the pre-CELAM II Encyclicals

Henry George was not himself a Roman Catholic, but during his lifetime his ideas became the focus of intense debate within the Roman Catholic community.[1] On the one hand his views found great favor among many Roman Catholics, especially in Ireland and among the unionized laborers of New York City. Also, many clerics openly identified their views of social reform with George. Thus, in his first bid to become Mayor of New York City, George was publicly supported by about forty Catholic priests. But on the other hand, George's views drew sharp official reprobation within Roman Catholicism. The McGlynn Affair well illustrates George's paradoxical relation with Roman Catholicism.

Father, Dr. Edward Mcglynn, known as "the priest of the poor" and in many ways a precursor of this century's rebel priests of Latin America, had been rector of St. Stephen's, one of the largest and most important Roman Catholic parishes in the nation.[2] Magnetic, independent and fearless, he had already aroused suspicion in the hierarchy by his championship of public schools before he gave a rousing speech to support the nomination of George for mayor. In so doing he defied an order by his archbishop, Michael Corrigan, who was hand-in-glove with the New York power-structure, and who regarded George's land theories (or rather, his distorted conception of them) as dangerously subversive.

Admonishing McGlynn to remain silent on political affairs, the archbishop and his vicar-general did not apply this advice to themselves. They publicly attacked George's ideas of land as "unsound, unsafe, and contrary to the teachings of the Church.1*3 Although McGlynn had sought to keep a low profile so as to forestall dissension within the faith, he felt obliged to protest this slander in an interview in the New York Tribune. He was thereupon suspended from his priestly functions and summoned to the Vatican for an accounting. He declined to go, knowing the cards were stacked against him in the Office of the Propaganda of the Faith. His excommunication followed in due course, and priests who publicly expressed sympathy with him were abruptly transferred or demoted.

The incident became a cause celebre, and led a number of Catholics to abandon the Roman communion in disgust, much to McGlynn's dismay and against his repeated pleadings. On the other hand, many were cowed into dropping their support of George for fear they might themselves be excommunicated.

Deprived of ecclesiastical assignment, McGlynn made himself the main sparkplug of the United Labor Party and, more than anyone else, was responsible for George's reluctant decision to lead its ill-starred slate as the nominee for secretary of New York state in 1887.

McGlynn at this time also founded and became president of the Anti-Poverty Society. It held immense weekly meetings. The nucleus were his old parishioners, two of whom were later denied burial in consecrated ground as penalty for their attendance. At one of these meetings McGlynn delivered his famous address, "The Cross of the New Crusade" -- a moving appeal for social Christianity based on the Creator's gift of nature for the use of all. George was vice president of the society and Hugh O. Pentecost, a prominent Congregationalist minister, one of its chief speakers. McGlynn and George certainly had no intention of establishing anything like a new denomination, but the anti-Poverty Society had much in common with a church: its meetings were held on Sunday evenings, the talks were biblical in emphasis and homiletical in presentation, music was directed by McGlynn's former choir leader, collection plates were passed, and the general atmosphere was evangelistic although theologically inclusive.

It was only a few years after McGlynn's excommunication, in May, 1891, that Pope Leo XIII issued his Encyclical on economic policy, Rerum Novarum.[4] To this day, it is not clear whether Pope Leo XIII intended the document to be a rebuttal of, among others, Henry George's views, Leo XIII did not mention George in the document. But the New Catholic Encyclopedia mentions George's "attack on property itself as one of the precursors of Rerun Novarum;[5] and certainly Archbishop Corrigan interpreted the Encyclical as a vindication of his own opposition to Father McGlynn and Henry George; and George, too, interpreted several statements in the encyclical as condemning his proposals.

Rerum Novarum's point of departure is very similar to that of Henry George: the exploitation of the nonpropertied working class by the propertied class. Thus, "a small number of very rich men have been able to lay upon the masses of the poor a yobe little better than slavery itself."[6] While the encyclical drew attention to "the unbridled greed of competition" and the "inhumanity of employers, it also attacked "the socialist answer" and defended private ownership of property as "a natural right." The private ownership of property was necessary, so thought the pope, 1) to protect the worth and liberty of the individual, 2) to provide security for the family, and 3) to establish means for providing for the future.

Rerum Novarum offered few solutions to the unjust disparity between the haves and the have-nots. After affirming that all economic activity should be governed by moral means, Leo XIII made only two concrete suggestions. He endorsed the organization of workers into trade unions as a natural right and suggested that public authority should redress injustices suffered by the propertyless working class.

George's answer to Rerum Novarum appeared five months later, in September, 1891. The Condition of Labor, an Open Letter to Pope Leo XIII was an eloquent work.[7] In it George essayed to distinguish his teaching from anarchism on the one hand and socialism on the other, and to show that it in no wise contradicted Church doctrine. The Open Letter addresses Leo in respectful and even reverent tone, emphasizing the shared natural law assumptions on which his and George's social views are based. It applauds the "many wholesome truths" in the encyclical and pays tribute to Leo's "desire to help the suffering and oppressed." Yet it audaciously but courteously ventures to correct the pontiff's misconstruction of George's theory, and the inadequacy of programs advocated in the papal document. A copy of the Italian edition was put into Leo's hands via the Vatican Library, but George never received (or expected) any direct acknowledgment.

George surmised that he received an indirect acknowledgment the following year (1892), however, as he reported to his friend, Father Thomas Dawson:

Something wonderful has happened on this side of the water. The Pope has quietly but effectively sat down on the ultramontane toryism of prelates like Archbishop Corrigan. ... Dr. McGlynn is to be restored, and the fighting of the Single Tax as opposed to Catholicism effectually ended. I have for some time believed Leo XIII to be a very great man, but this transcends my anticipations. Whether he ever read my "Letter" I cannot tell, but he has been acting as though he had not only read it, but had recognized its force.[8]

Archbishop Francesco Satolli, a theologian who belonged to Leo's inner circle, had come to the U.S. as papal ablegate and personally investigated McGlynn's case, inviting him to submit a statement of the beliefs that had led to his excommunication. His memorandum, consisting largely of passages from George's writing, was subjected to the scrutiny of a panel of four experts from Catholic University, who attested unanimously that it contained nothing contrary to doctrine.

On Christmas eve, much to Corrigan's displeasure, the excommunication was unconditionally reversed and McGlynn reinstated in his priestly functions. Next spring (1893) McGlynn went to Rome and received the pope's blessing in a half-hour private audience. Three years earlier, George's works had been secretly condemned by the Inquisition but never officially placed on the Index of Forbidden Books. Concurrent with McGlynn's reinstatement, George's books were treated as "free doctrine" -- meaning that Catholics may accept or reject them according to their individual convictions.

The next papal encyclical concerning the social order, Quadragesimo Anno,[9] appeared forty years after Rerum Novarum. In it, Pope Pius XI quotes extensively from the earlier encyclical which he calls the "Magna Charta" of the social order. Although Henry George is never mentioned, Pius XI seems to have the "Open Letter" in mind when he sets out "to clear up certain doubts that appeared interpreting Rerum Novarum" and proceeds to accept George's argument for the twofold character of property, the individual and the social. While reiterating the right of private ownership, Pius XI shows himself much more convinced than Leo XIII had been of the need to maintain a just equilibrium between the natural rights of the individual and the common good. Thus, for instance, he seems to give a Georgist twist to the following passage in Rerum Novarum.

The prudent Pontiff had already declared it unlawful for the State to exhaust the means of individuals by crushing taxes and tributes. "The right to possess private property is derived from nature, not from man; and the State has by no means the right to abolish it, but only to control its use and bring it into harmony with the interests of the public good." (Rerum Novarum. paragraph 35)

However, when civil authority adjusts ownership to meet the needs of the public good it acts not as an enemy, but as the friend of private owners; for thus it effectively prevents the possession of private property, intended by Nature's Author in His Wisdom for the sustaining of human life, from creating intolerable burdens and so rushing to its own destruction. It does not therefore abolish, but protects private ownership, and far from weakening the right of private property, it gives it new strength.[10]

Pius XI might also have had George in mind when he quibbled with the "false moral principle . . . that all products and profits, excepting those required to repair and replace invested capital, belong by every right to the workingman," calling the error "more subtle than that of the socialists" and "an alluring poison."[11] Certainly Quadragesimo Anno does not accept George's view that the complete right of property attaches itself only to things produced by labor.

On the whole, however, Quadragesimo Anno is not too concerned with the views of Henry George. Pope Pius XI was of the opinion that "the entire economic scene had greatly changed" since the end of the 19th century. "Domination" had replaced free competition, and socialism had split into "two opposing and hostile camps," communism and a more moderate socialism. While like George, Pius XI recognized that there was an immense number of propertyless wage earners who did not get a just share of the things that they themselves produced, he was convinced that the solution rested in "just wages."

Quadragesimo Anno's solution to the unfair distribution of goods take's its clue from Rerum Novarum which had placed its hope in trade unions and the benign oversight of public authority. Just wages were to be achieved by reforming governmental institutions and by correcting morals. Pope Pius XI held that the most pressing duty of the State and of good citizens was to do away with conflict between the classes and to foster harmony between groups in society. Thus, he urged that increases of productivity be passed on to workers so that they might become property owners. But, he realized that economic affairs could not be left to the free play of rugged competition, which was justified and useful only within certain limits. Thus, Pius XI also called for regulation. As the state determines what is licit and illicit for property owners in the use of their possessions, public authority should intervene if and when contending parties cannot agree.

Pope Pius XI clearly perceived and affirmed that this (baseball commissioner) view of economics that trusts in a benign and impartial state to settle disputes and work for the common good of all citizens would only work if it were accompanied by what he called "a profound renewal of the Christian spirit."[12] His new economic order depended upon good will. "Otherwise, all Our endeavors will be futile, and Our social edifice will be built, not upon a rock, but upon shifting sand."[13] In sum, the social change depended on the conversion of all people to Christian charity. While there was some sense that structures can be oppressive, the main fault for unfair wages and the resultant unjust distribution of goods rested with selfish individuals who, because of original sin, are so deranged that they are "easily led astray by low desires, and strongly tempted to prefer the transient goods of this world to the lasting goods of heaven."[14]

John XXIII's Mater et Magistra shows little,[15] if any, awareness of Henry George's ideas. But even though the solution that this encyclical offers to the unjust social order is very far indeed from the Georgist solution, John XXIII's perception of the problem as a structural problem draws much closer to George than had Leo XIII and Pius XI1s emphasis on individual sin or greed.

Mater et Magistra begins with a broader definition of property than "land." John XXIII recognized "surrogates" for the role of property, including "insurance programs and various systems of social security."[16] To John XXIII, the salariat had supplanted the proletariat. Eighty four percent of the U.S.'s population, he wrote, "lived not by the fruit of the land tilled or by the sale of things made, but by the income of a regular paycheck."[17] There were substitutes, he saw, for the traditional role of property in society. Professional skill and education had economic value and served as substitutes for the possession of property.

Mater et Magistra, identified the concentration of great economic power in corporations which in turn were often controlled by managers rather than owners. Thus, owners were largely hidden and the concept of ownership itself was "diluted" and somewhat "illusory." Even nations, he thought, operated largely as concentrations of economic power.

Against this concentration of economic power in the "unknown" corporation. Pope John XXIII appealed for a wider distribution of property. He indicated his preference for diffuse ownership and indicated that the right to productive property should be spread through all ranks of the citizenry.[18] To bring this about, he, following the lead of Pius XI, invoked the supervisory role of the state. Thus, he urged the state to provide good education, for instance, for its citizens. Also, he thought that workers should form cooperative federations, protected by the state, so that workers could participate at all levels in industry. He further thought that increased productivity should be passed along to the workers in the form of higher wages. This increased participation of labor in all aspects of industry, would work also to restrain the great power of corporations by forcing them to conform to limits allowed by the common good.[19]

By the time of John XXIII, it was abundantly clear that Henry George had been consigned to oblivion by the great majority of European and North American Roman Catholic moral theologians. While his critique had been of keen interest for his age, capitalism and the ownership of private property had so changed from the late nineteenth century as to seem to make George's views quaint and out of step. Mater et Magistra was in step with the economic theories of its own day. The unjust distribution of goods was held to be more a matter of unfair wages than inequalities in the ownership of property. George's great theological insight into the economic centrality of God's gift of land to all people was all but forgotten by the Church of the first world. It would remain for the Church of the Third World to rediscover it.

George and Third World Theology

Pope Paul VI's encyclical, Populorum Progressio (1967),[20] like Mater et Magistra, also ignored Henry George -- but I will mention it because of its influence on Liberation Theologians who are rediscovering his thought. But first, let me place the document in its proper context in Latin America. The 1950s was the decade of developmentalism. It was an optimistic time. Underdevelopment and development were said to be on a continuum, the one leading to the other, and Latin America was seen on the verge of achieving self-sustained economic growth. Using nations such as the united States, England and Germany as models, underdeveloped nations supposedly could copy their steps into industrialization and surge forward to prosperity.

In Populorum Progressio, Paul VI questioned this promise of economic development.[21] He saw rich nations developing quickly while poor nations developed slowly. He saw discord between people and nations arising from glaring worldwide inequalities of power and possessions.

These conflicts arose in part, the Pope said, from too narrowly conceiving development as limited to economic growth. He called for broadening the goal to promote the good of every person, with emphasis on the whole person. Development should not only provide necessities and end misery, but also pursue an increase of knowledge and culture, esteem for the dignity of others, peace and cooperation, and, in sum, it should seek "for each and all the transition from less human conditions to those which are more human."[22] Paul VI mentioned two guideposts for achieving these goals. First, the right of private property should not be absolute and unconditional.[23] At times, for the common good, it is necessary to expropriate private property.24 Second, a system that operates on the bases of "profit as the key motive for economic progress, competition as the supreme law of economics, and private ownership of the means of production as an absolute right that has no limits or social obligations" should be replaced by an economy at the service of man.[25]

In Populorum Progressio, Paul VI identified himself with the poor nations of the world. He decried the fact that whole populations live in a state of dependency, destitute of necessities and cut off from initiative, social responsibility and cultural advancement.

The encyclical was vague in parts, not explaining for instance how "an economy at the service of man" comes into being. It shied away from radical solutions, apparently trusting that powerful people and institutions could be persuaded to act for the common good. It blamed much of the disequilibrium between rich and poor nations on free trade, which Paul VI assumed was unjustly putting poor countries at further disadvantage.[26] The document nevertheless served to correct a popular belief; that economic growth alone is a sufficient path toward progress and dramatized how poor nations may be held captive by their economic dependence on rich ones.

The influence of Populorum Progressio was almost immediately felt in Latin America through CELAM II (The Council of Latin American Bishops which met at Medellin in 1968). One of the young theologians who helped shape the social documents for Medellin was Gustavo Gutierrez, the father of Liberation Theology. Building upon the censorious attitude displayed in Populorum Progrressio toward free trade, Gutierrez advanced in a theological context ideas drawn from the "dependency theory" school of secular Latin American social scientists. The critique of development theory was further elaborated in his epochal work, A Theology of Liberation.[27]

Gutierrez charged that the push for development, while raising expectations, had not succeeded in breaking the hold of economic stagnation because development theory did no address the roots of the situation. As he saw it, underdevelopment, instead of being a step on the way to progress, is really a by-product of development; it is the historical end process of the economic expansion of great capitalist countries.[28] Rich countries stood at the center and poor countries at the periphery of a closed system. The amount of fat of wealthy nations was directly related to the amount of hunger among poor nations.

Further, Gutierrez claimed that Third World development was promoted by organizations closely linked to control of the world1? economy.[29] That was why their policies did not challenge the control mechanisms. They devised strategies which kept the weak countries economically, socially, politically and culturally dependent on the powerful countries. The dynamics of world economics dictated the simultaneous perpetuation of great poverty for the many and the creation of great wealth for the few.[30]

To break away from this aspect of the world economy, Gutierrez saw the need for a radical break from the status quo. He appropriated the biblical language of liberation that, for three thousand years now, has been the idiom of oppressed people and captives. Thus, the first step toward a new society must be to break the bondage of dependence.

But, this reliance on dependence theory -- with Gutierrez, drawn from the moderate version of Fernando Henrique Cardoso -- proved to be a blind alley for liberation theologians. As Gutierrez himself now relates, "it is clear . . . that the theory of dependence, which was so extensively used in the early years of our encounter with the Latin American world, is now an inadequate tool. …"[31] In The Power of the Poor in History, he gives a reason: dependency theory focused too much on the conflict between nations and not enough on internal factors of economic disparity.[32]

Of course, the basic tenet of Liberation theology was not to be found in dependency theory, but in that it called attention to institutionalized violence and affirmed that this violence was contrary to the will of God. God stood with the oppressed and against the oppressor. Also, from the movement's very beginning, liberation theologians saw clearly, just as had Henry George, the close connection between societal structures and poverty. Gutierrez described the world of the poor as a universe in which the socio-economic aspect was basic. "Poverty means death: lack of food and housing, the inability to attend properly to health and education needs, the exploitation of workers, permanent unemployment, the lack of respect for one's human dignity, and unjust limitations placed on personal freedom in the areas of self-expression, politics, and religion. Poverty is a situation that destroys peoples, families, and individuals. …"[33] Dependency theory, then, had simply proved inadequate to describe the causes of poverty.

In an article first appearing in a Festschrift in honor of Gustavo Gutierrez (1989), Arthur McGovern examines the use and failure of dependency theory in liberationist analysis. He concludes that while dependency analysis helps explain some problems in Latin America, it also tends to oversimplify causes and solutions. What follows is what McGovern and many other liberationists today think is at the root of poverty in Latin America:

In striking contrast to the United States, where four of every five white Americans owned their own land or trade prior to the civil war, property ownership in Latin America was concentrated in the hands of a few and the vast majority were left propertyless. In the United States, free enterprise developed and agricultural industrial development met domestic needs (though it did so by ruthlessly excluding Amerindians and enslaving blacks). But concentration of ownership and failure to invest profits into new domestic markets crippled Latin America's efforts to build a productive economy. The concentration of land ownership begun in colonial times continues into the present with 1.3 percent of landowners in Latin America controlling 71.6 percent of all land under cultivation. This structure of concentrated ownership deprived the great masses of the population access to their own land and trades. One could characterize this legacy in Marxist terms as lack of control over the means of production; but one could also describe it in terms of the absence of any real experience of free enterprise.[34]

That the clearest expressions of exploitation in Latin America lie in concentrated landownership has become clear to many liberation theologians. In this paper, I will mention two of these theologians: Charles Avila, a Filipino peasant organizer who spent much time underground during the Marcos tyranny, and Marcelo de Barros Souza, a coordinator for the Comissao Pastoral da Terra in Brazil. Avila produced a compilation of and commentary on patristic writings on land ownership.[35] In the preface to his book, he describes what led him to be interested in the topic:

… most [of the peasants] farmed the land, whose ownership, for centuries now, had been concentrated in the hands of a few hacenderos, or landlords. …

When harvest time came, no matter how hard they had worked, no matter how much they had invested in the land, the landlord got the lion's share of all the crops. The rent was not a capitalist rent taken from the surplus of the worker's average profit, but a feudal, pre-capitalist rent based on the landlords' ownership of the land and the peasant's dependence on them for the privilege of tilling it. The peasants were left with only a meager part of the harvest, and invariably with more debts than they had had the year before.

If they were farm workers-say, in the sugarlands -- they would be lucky indeed if their wages amounted to forty cents a day for eight to twelve hours of back-breaking work. ...

In all their trials and sufferings, the peasants knew that if only they could own their land -- if landlordism were extinct-then surely, instead of nothing but debts and constant penury, there might be some savings and the opportunity for decent food, clothing, and shelter. And so, out of sheer necessity, the Filipino peasants, in different parts of the country and at various times, began to ask the basic moral question: What is just with regard to the land?[36]

Avila was especially interested in looking at the early church teachings because he thought that the fourth century teachers were similar to the twentieth century peasants in that they were searching for "the meaning of the concept of ownership-as-it-ought-to-be." Thus, in the teachers of the early church, Avila hoped to find a model of ownership that could be appropriated for the society of the Filipino peasant.[37]

Here is a sampling of what he found: Basil the Great "criticizes those who make idia, or private, what should actually be koina, or public -- 'designed for the common use of all.'"[38] Basil's view is that, basically, all persons have an equal right to the land, just as they all have an equal right to the air they breathe. …"[39] Ambrose of Milan, in his homily on Naboth's vineyard, minces no words in excoriating land monopolists: "'Shall ye alone dwell upon the earth?' (Is. 5:8) … Why do you arrogate to yourselves, ye rich, exclusive right to the soil?"[40] John Chrysostom thunders that God "left the earth free to all alike. Why then, if it is common, have you so many acres of land, while your neighbor has not a portion of it? ... Is this not an evil, that you alone should enjoy what is common?"[41] Even if present owners are not responsible for the unjust acquisitions of their forbears, unless arrangements are rectified to provide for equal right to use, "property is nothing but a continuing and fresh robbery."[42]

It is not coincidental that Avila had also discovered Progress and Poverty during his struggle for the landless Filipino peasants. He called the book a "monumental work," and noted that "on first reading Henry George ... I was particularly struck by the similarity of his arguments, and even analogies, to those of the fourth-century Christian social philosophers on the topic of ownership."[43] Avila concluded that patristic thought concurred with Henry George in that "the ownership of land by some individuals . . . simply rob[s] the others, the producers, of their produce." And this unjust enslavement of the laborers by the land owners as depicted by George, in fact, was what Avila set out to establish in his book.[44]

Now let me mention the work of Marcelo de Barros Souza. He was, until his recent death, a Benedictine monk from Goias, a state in the interior of Brazil. He was one of the founders of the Pastoral Commission for the Land (Goiahia, 1975), the principal Roman Catholic organ fighting for agrarian reform in Brazil. The purpose of the Commission is to secure basic rights for the rural peasantry and also to monitor and expose violence. Working with other Human Rights agencies in the church, the eight workers at CPT headquarters used a computer to keep track of land-related violence, listing death threats, attempts, and killings. Souza was closely involved with Dom Pedro Casaldaliga in the Church's stand against certain large cattle ranchers who appropriated large tracts of land in the region. Although I have not verified it yet, Souza seems to have been influenced also by the socially-progressive prelate, Dom Carlos Duarte Costa, bishop of Rio de Janeiro, who in 1946 declared about Progress and Poverty; "After the Gospel, this is the book that I love and admire the most."[45]

The just ownership of land is a dominant theme in two books by Souza. In A Biblia e a luta pela terra (The Bible and the Battle for the Land), Souza shows how the desire for land by the landless people of Brazil is a window which opens up some of the passages and stories in the Bible.[46] For instance, the story of Abraham takes on all sorts of different connotations when seen through the eyes of the homeless masses. As one might expect, the emphasis falls on God's promise to give Abraham and his community some land, rather than on the promise to make him a great nation. Souza1? other book, Nossos pa is nos contaran (Our Fathers Told Us) is a running commentary on the Old Testament as seen through the eyes of tenure.[47] In it, the settlement of Canaan becomes a sociopolitical upheaval by the peasantry within Canaan. The Hebrews are the rebellious serfs and workers at the bottom of Canaanite society who join fleeing slaves from Egypt to overthrow the established order. The Old Testament, then, from this perspective, is the story of a broad egalitarian revolution which in large part was oriented toward land reform.

These two books came out of Souza's experiences in the Basic Ecclesial Communities. These BECs-astoundingly, tens of thousands of them in Brazil and elsewhere--are attempts by clergy and lay people to act out liberation theology in their daily lives.[48] Members of these BECs, as we shall see shortly with the case of Chico Mendes, have joined together to protest the fact that so many poor Brazilians have no land. Souza's books reflect the voices in the BECs as they articulate the belief that God disapproves of Latin American land practices.

Henry George and the Future of Liberation Theology

To me, the work of Marcel o de Barros Souza and other liberation theologians from the BECs augurs for a renewed interest in Henry George. Not only are liberation theologians putting aside dependency theory and becoming very aware, as was George, of the close ties between land ownership and oppression. They also, like George, are finding their answer in the biblical view that God intends land to benefit all people. Besides their interest in a just use of land, what indicates to me a close future relationship between liberation theologians and Henry George is that they approach the Bible is such similar ways. One could almost say that liberations theologians in the BECs have rediscovered (of course by their own paths) Henry George's method interpreting scripture.

At this conference we are all familiar with such George classics as "Moses," "Thou Shalt Not Steal," and "Thy Kingdom Come."[49] Notice the similarity between George's approach to the Bible and that found in the Basic Ecclesial Communities! (The following seven characteristics describing the BECs' approach to scripture is taken from a writing entitled "Como se Faz Teologia Biblica Hoje no Brasil" by the brazilian liberation theologian Carlos Hesters.[50])

1. The reading is a community reading. There is always the understanding that the Bible was written for a community, that it belongs to a community, and that its meaning pertains to the community rather than to the individual.
   
2. The reading is present oriented. The Bible is read not only as past history but, above all, as a mirror to the history that occurs today. Thus, the principal objective of the reading is not to interpret the Bible but to interpret life with the help of the Bible.
   
3. The Holy Spirit is active in the reading. The readers do not look for an impartial, objective historical-literal meaning. Rather, they try to listen to what the Spirit says to the present-day church through the Bible. The focus is on what the Bible says to the community today.
   
4. The reading is an exercise in faith. Faith is not only a condition previous to understanding; it is an active element in exegesis. Reading is a prayerful act. Understanding comes as a gift from God.
   
5. The reading is militant. That is, the people not only read to understand but also in order to seek direction for action. The reading then is political, social, and economic -- practical.
   
6. The reading starts from the people's social position and their realization of oppression. There is no neutral reading of the Bible. The reading is an engaged reading by the poor, with the concerns of the poor in mind. For the people, the words "oppressors" and "oppressed" are rooted in the Bible -- not in Marxism.
   
7. Thus, as Hesters points out, the reading involves much more than lectures, information, class discussion, and reason. The reading involves all aspects of life.
   

As with George, the reading of the Bible in the BECs is closely allied to political action regarding the land. A good recent example in Brazil is to be found in the struggle of Francisco Filho Mendes on behalf of the rubber tappers in the state of Acre.51 Part of Chico Mendes' story is well known in the United States: The rubber trees were being burned off by ranchers who wanted to extend their grazing lands. The tappers unionized. Chico became the tappers' spokesperson, and more broadly, an international voice for the preservation of the Amazonian rain forest. Late in 1988 he was gunned down. There were questions concerning whether his murderer would be brought to trial, but after intense international pressure, the trial was held in Rio de Janeiro, and just this year, the gunman, a son of a cattle rancher was convicted.

Marcelo de Barros Souza's Pastoral Commission for the Land had much to do with forming and supporting Mendes' union of rubber tappers. Beginning in the early 1970s, large tracts of Acre were being purchased by banks and holding companies which had in mind to clear the forests and turn the area into grazing land. Alex Shoumatoff claims that at this time three hundred and twenty thousand people were displaced by 130 paulistas and "were living in the state without the right to land."[52] The municipality of Xapuri where Chico Mendes lived was losing 25,000 acres annually to the bulldozers, chain saws, and clearing fires. The Pastoral Commission got the National Confederation of Agricultural Workers to visit Acre, identify local leaders, and inform the people of their squatters' rights under brazilian land laws.

The diocese of Rio Branco which is responsible for eastern Acre directed its twelve or thirteen priests to help form a union for the sem terra. The reason given by the bishop, Dom Moacyr Grechi, was that "the violence started to become serious. Investors came and, with the greatest facility, took land by fraud and force. The police were corrupt."[53] In 1975, the union was formed inside the cathedral at Rio Branco.

Dom Moacyr worked closely with Chico and by late 1970s he had appointed two priests to Xapuri who were good friends to Chico. The church building was used for training session, seminars on union organization, and rap sessions concerning the struggle. By this time also, there were in excess of 800 Basic Ecclesial Communities in Acre. Each group had ten to fifteen members and a monitor who lead the reading of the Bible and the discussions that followed. Chico Mendes was the monitor of a group in Xapuri. He lead them in their reading of the Bible and in their empale (stance of passive resistance against the landlords.

Conclusion

There is a song sung in the BECs:

Nos nao queremos Guerra pois nao sabemos brigar, nos so queremos paz e justice e a terra para plantar. (We don't want war because we don't know how to fight We just want peace and justice and land on which to plant.)[54]

The idea that peace and justice can only come when all have equal opportunity for the land is what so strongly unites the BECs to Henry George. The claim that the land was meant for the benefit of all is biblical.

It would be hard to miss the hidden threat in the song. The landless people of the BECs are militant. "We don't want war," but. …The people's active, political, this-world approach to the Bible is also very similar to that of George.

But the song admits to a failing. In it, the people recognize that they do not know how to fight. They are very aware of the unjust distribution of the Land. They are searching for an alternative to dependency theory, which they now find inadequate to fully describe the cause of oppression in Latin America,[55] and which gives little help indeed to remedying the domination of the landless people. But they have not yet discovered how best to fight.

Let me suggest that here too the answer lies with Henry George.

NOTES AND REFERENCES

1. Important sources for the life of Henry George are Henry George, Jr., The Life of Henry George (New York: Doubleday and McClure, 1900); Louis F. Post, The Prophet of San Francisco (New York: Vanguard Press, 1930); Anna George de Mille, Henry George: Citizen of the World, ed. Don C. Shoemaker (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1950); and Charles Albro Barker, Henry George (New York: Oxford University Press, 1955).
2. For a biography of Father McGlynn, see Stephen Bell, Rebel, Priest and Prophet (New York: Robert Schalkenbach Foundation, 1937).
3. Ibid., 44.
4. Delivered at St. Peter's in Rome, May 15, 1891. See for text, Seven Great Encyclicals (Glen Rock, NJ: Paulist Press, 1963), 1-30.
5. E. Duff, "Property, Private," NCE vol. ?: 852.
6. Rerum Novarum, art. 2.
7. The edition currently in print is part of a volume that contains four other works including the text of Rerum Novarum [George, The Land Question (New York: Schalkenbach Foundation, 1984)].
8. Quoted in Barker, 576.
9. Delivered at St. Peter's in Rome, May 15, 1931. See for text, Seven Great Encyclicals. 125-168.
10. Quadragesimo Anno, paragraph 49.
11. Ibid., art. 55.
12. Ibid., art. 12.
13. Ibid., art. 127.
14. Ibid., art. 132.
15. Delivered at St. Peter's in Rome, May 15, 1961. See for text, Seven Great Encyclicals, 222-274.
16. Mater et Magistra, art. 105.
17. Duff, 853.
18. Mater et Maaistra, arts. 113, 115.
19. Ibid., arts. 91-96.
20. Delivered at St. Peter's in Rome, March 26, 1967. See for text, The Papal Encyclicals, 1958-1981 (Raleigh, NC: McGrath Publishing Company, 1981), 183-201.
21. Populorum Progressio, arts. 1-31.
22. Ibid., art. 14.
23. Ibid., arts. 23-24.
24. Ibid.
25. Ibid., arts. 26, 30-31.
26. Ibid., arts. 57-58, 78.
27. Gustavo Gutierrez, Teologia de la Liberacion (Salamanca: Ediciones Sigumene, 1972). English translation A Theology of Liberation, trans. and ed. by Sister Caridad Inda and John Eagleson (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1973).
28. Gutierrez, A Theology of Liberation. 29, 79.
29. Ibid., 25-28.
30. Ibid.
31. Gustavo Gutierrez, "Expanding the View," in Expanding the View: Gustavo Gutierrez and the Future of Liberation Theology, eds. Marc H. Ellis and Otto Maduro (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1990).
32. Gustavo Gutierrez, The Power of the Poor in History (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1983), 45, 78.
33. Gutierrez, "Expanding," 8.
34. Arthur F. McGovern, "Dependency Theory, Marxist Analysis and Liberation Theology," in Expanding, 83. The article first appeared in The Future of Liberation Theology; Essays in Honor of Gustavo Gutierrez (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1989).
35. Charles Avila, Ownership: Early Christian Teaching (Mary-knoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1983).
36. Ibid., xv-xvi.
37. Ibid., 2.
38. Ibid., 53.
39. Ibid.
40. Quoted Ibid., 62.
41. Quoted Ibid., 94, 132.
42. Ibid., 96-97.
43. Ibid., 156 n. 6.
44. Ibid., 7.
45. From the flyleaf of Henry George, Progresso e pobreza, trans. Americo Werneck, Jr.; 2nd ed. (Rio de Janeiro: Grafica Editora Aurora, Lta.; 1946). Costa 's statement rendered from Portuguese into English by James L. Busey.
46. Marcelo de Barros Souza, A Biblia e a luta pela terra, 2nd ed. (Petropolis, Brazil: Vozes, 1983).
47. Marcelo de Barros Souza, Nossos pais nos contaram (Petropolis, Brazil: Vozes, 1984).
48. For information in English concerning the Basic Ecclesial Communities see Marcelo de Azeveda, Basic Ecclesial Communities in Brazil (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1986). See also the article by the same author, "Basic Ecclesial Communities; A Meeting Point of Ecclesiologies," Journal of Theological Studies 46 (1985)! 601-620; Alvaro Barreiro, Basic Ecclesial Communities: The Evangelization of the Poor, trans. Barbara Campbell (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1982); and John Eagleson and Sergio Torres, eds., The Challenge of Basic Christian Communities (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1981).
49. Texts of these lectures are available from the Robert Schalkenbach Foundation, New York, NY. "Moses" was first delivered in San Francisco in June, 1878. "Thou Shalt Not Steal" was delivered in New York, Hay 8, 1887. And "Thy Kingdom Come" was delivered in Glasgow, April 28, 1889.
50. Carlos Hesters, "Como se Faz Teologia Biblica Hoje no Brasil," For Sem Defesa; Uma Explicacao da Biblia a Partir do Povo (Petrdpolis: Vozes, 1983), 188-202. It was reprinted in Estudos Biblicos 1 (1984): 7-19.
51. See the recent accounts by Andrew Revkin, The Burning Season; The Murder of Chico Mendes and the Fight for the Amazon Rain Forest (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1990); and Alex Shoumatoff, The World is Burning; Murder in the Rain Forest (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1990).
52. Shoumatoff, The World is Burning. 66.
53. Quoted Ibid., 71.
54. Song appears on the cover of Souza, A Biblia e a luta pela terra. My translation.
55. But the theory has not been completely off the mark. One of the large companies that in 1979 would have cleared ten thousand hectares from Xapuri if not successfully stopped by Chico Hendes was the Bordon Meatpacking Company.