The Protestant Theology of Rubem Alves: Proto-History of the Theology of Liberation

It is precisely in this year 2019 that we celebrate the jubilee of the publication of Rubem Alves' The Theology of Human Hope (1969) the result of a doctoral thesis defended a year before by him at Princeton Theological Seminary (New Jersey). Its original title was Towards a Theology of Liberation, which was changed for editorial matters. Little known, however, was his first scholarly work - a master's thesis presended in 1964 at Union Theological Seminary (New York) - A Theological Interpretation of the Meaning of the Revolution in Brazil. Rubem Alves, highly affected by Richard Shaull, and also by the theologians like: Barth, Rauschenbush, Bonhoeffer, Niebuhr, Cox, the missionary testimony of Albert Schweitzer and the reflections of Paulo Freire and ISAL, as well as the results of the Conference of the Northeast (1962) was able to amalgamate this new Protestant theology, being the Protestant pioneer to use the expressions "revolution" (1963) and "liberation" (1968) in academic works of a religious nature, permanently altering the vocation of theology in Brazil. Beyond this celebration, Rubem Alves's masters research indicated the emergence of a new movement in Latin American theology, although he could not be named as a liberation theologian stricto sensu, his theological ideas about revolution had been a kind of preamble to what would follow.