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| author | Charon Hribar |
| title | Poverty in the Midst of Plenty: Structural Violence, Liberationist Ethics, and the Right to Not Be Poor |
| abstract |
The 2008 economic crisis in the United States helped to reveal the structural violence of poverty. This dissertation aims to re-envision the role a liberationist
Christian social ethics can play in responding to the crisis. I argue that the poverty experienced by a growing majority of Americans is not due to scarcity, but
the result of a fundamental weakness of an economic order that has created abundance through dispossession. While the field of Christian ethics has remained largely
silent about the chronic crisis of economic inequality in the United States, this project challenges American Christians to recognize the ways in which the ideological
conflation of Christian and capitalist values have resulted in the justification of poverty. Drawing on critical lessons from Latin American liberation theology and
liberationist social theory, I challenge the complex mechanisms of social control that have obscured basic notions of class struggle and deepened social division in
the United States. In addition, this project seeks to re-imagine core Christian values of solidarity and a preferential option for the poor. Through an engagement
with progressive efforts (of and with the poor) to unite the dispossessed and build a social movement to respond to growing inequality, this dissertation will examine
the potential use of community based truth commissions as a model for developing a Christian praxis of liberation. Furthermore, this project contributes to efforts
within Christian social ethics and liberation theology to create a counter-narrative to dominant assumptions that obscure Christians' understanding of poverty, class
struggle, and racism in the United States.
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| school | Drew Theological School |
| degree | Ph.D. (2016) |
| advisor | Traci C West |
| committee | Chris Boesel
Elias Ortega-Aponte |
| full text | CHribar.pdf |
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