A well-informed history of the sources, methods and doctrines of the liberation theology movement in the Latin American Catholic Church; its impact on the politics of Chile, El Salvador and Nicaragua; and its effects on the church in Latin America and on Vatican theology. A veteran student of both Latin American politics and of religion and its social context, the author argues that liberation theologians need to preserve their methods but change the content of their analysis in order to remain relevant. "The question for the future is whether this commitment to involvement of, and with, the poor can take place without the heavy overlay of pseudo-Marxism that produced such strong reaction against the movement in the 1970s."
