55 Liberation theologians

Marcella Maria Althaus-Reid was Professor of Contextual Theology at New College, the University of Edinburgh. When appointed, she was the only woman professor of theology at a Scottish University and the first woman professor of theology at New College in its 160-year history.

Jean-Bertrand Aristide is a Haitian former Salesian priest and politician who became Haiti's first democratically elected president. A proponent of liberation theology, Aristide was appointed to a parish in Port-au-Prince in 1982 after completing his studies to become a priest. He became a focal point for the pro-democracy movement first under Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier and then under the military transition regime which followed. He won the 1990–91 Haitian general election, with 67% of the vote. As a priest, he taught liberation theology and, as a president, he attempted to normalize Afro-Creole culture, including Vodou religion, in Haiti.

Paulo Evaristo Arns OFM was a Brazilian prelate of the Catholic Church, who was made a Cardinal and the Archbishop of São Paulo by Pope Paul VI, and later became Cardinal Protopriest of the Roman Catholic Church. His ministry began with a quiet twenty-year academic career, but when charged with responsibility for the Sao Paulo Archdiocese he proved a relentless opponent of Brazil's military dictatorship and its use of torture as well as an advocate for the poor and a vocal defender of liberation theology. In his later years he openly criticized the way Pope John Paul II governed the Catholic Church through the Roman Curia and questioned his teaching on priestly celibacy and other issues.

Naim Stifan Ateek is a Palestinian priest in the Anglican Communion and founder of the Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center in Jerusalem. He has been an active leader in the shaping of the Palestinian liberation theology. He was the first to articulate a Palestinian theology of liberation in his book, Justice, and only Justice, a Palestinian Theology of Liberation, published by Orbis in 1989, and based on his dissertation for his degree in theology. The book laid the foundation of a theology that addresses the conflict over Palestine and explores the political as well as the religious, biblical, and theological dimensions. A former Canon of St. George's Cathedral, Jerusalem, he lectures widely both at home and abroad. His book, A Palestinian Christian Cry for Reconciliation, was published by Orbis in 2008, followed by A Palestinian Theology of Liberation, 2017.

Tomás Balduíno, O.P. was a diocesan bishop of the Catholic Church in Brazil.

David Batstone is an ethics professor at the University of San Francisco and is the founder and president of Not for Sale.

Carlos Alberto Libânio Christo, better known as Frei Betto is a Brazilian writer, political activist, philosopher, liberation theologian, and former Dominican friar.

Clotario Leopoldo Blest Riffo was a Chilean social activist and labor union leader. Blest was one of the founders of Agrupación Nacional de Empleados Fiscales (ANEF), Central Única de Trabajadores (CUT), Revolutionary Left Movement (MIR), and Comité de Defensa de Derechos Humanos y Sindicales (CODEHS).

Leonardo Boff, born as Genézio Darci Boff, is a Brazilian theologian, philosopher writer, and former Catholic priest known for his active support for Latin American liberation theology. He currently serves as Professor Emeritus of Ethics, Philosophy of Religion, and Ecology at the Rio de Janeiro State University. In 2001, he received the Right Livelihood Award for "his inspiring insights and practical work to help people realise the links between human spirituality, social justice and environmental stewardship."

José Míguez Bonino was an Argentine Methodist theologian.

Blase Anthony Bonpane was the director of the Office of the Americas in Los Angeles, California, which he co-founded with his wife Theresa in 1983. Throughout his life, he worked on human rights issues as well as the identification of illegal and immoral aspects of United States government policy.

Hélder Pessoa Câmara (1909–1999) was a Brazilian Catholic archbishop. A self-identified socialist, he was the Archbishop of Olinda and Recife, serving from 1964 to 1985, during the military dictatorship in Brazil. He was declared a Servant of God in 2015.

Fernando Cardenal Martínez was a Nicaraguan Jesuit and liberation theologian.

Ernesto Cardenal Martínez was a Nicaraguan Catholic priest, poet, and politician. He was a liberation theologian and the founder of the primitivist art community in the Solentiname Islands, where he lived for more than ten years (1965–1977). A former member of the Nicaraguan Sandinistas, he was Nicaragua's minister of culture from 1979 to 1987. He was prohibited from administering the sacraments in 1984 by Pope John Paul II, but rehabilitated by Pope Francis in 2019.

Pere Casaldàliga i Pla, known in Portuguese as Pedro Casaldáliga, was a Spanish-born Brazilian prelate of the Catholic Church who led the Territorial Prelature of São Félix, Brazil, from 1970 to 2005. A bishop since 1971, Casaldàliga was one of the best-known exponents of liberation theology. He received numerous awards, including the Catalonia International Prize in 2006. He was a forceful advocate in support of indigenous peoples and published several volumes of poetry.

Chung Hyun Kyung is a South Korean Christian theologian. She is a lay theologian of the Presbyterian Church of Korea, and is also an Associate Professor of Ecumenical Theology at Union Theological Seminary in the United States.

James Hal Cone (1938-2018) was an American theologian, best known for his advocacy of black theology and black liberation theology. His 1969 book Black Theology and Black Power provided a new way to comprehensively define the distinctiveness of theology in the black church. His message was that Black Power, defined as black people asserting the humanity that white supremacy denied, was the gospel in America. Jesus came to liberate the oppressed, advocating the same thing as Black Power. He argued that white American churches preached a gospel based on white supremacy, antithetical to the gospel of Jesus. Cone's work was influential from the time of the book's publication, and his work remains influential today. His work has been both used and critiqued inside and outside the African-American theological community. He was the Charles Augustus Briggs Distinguished Professor of Systematic Theology at Columbia University-affiliated Union Theological Seminary until his death.

Luiz Albuquerque Couto is a Brazilian politician as well as a university professor and Catholic priest. He has spent his political career representing his home state of Paraíba, having served as state representative from 2003 to 2019.

Miguel A. De La Torre is a professor of Social Ethics and Latino Studies at Iliff School of Theology, a progressive scholar-activist, author, and an ordained Southern Baptist minister.

Enrique Domingo Dussel Ambrosini is an Argentine and Mexican academic, philosopher, historian, and theologian. He served as the interim rector of the Universidad Autónoma de la Ciudad de México from 2013 to 2014.

Jean-Marc Ela was a Cameroonian sociologist and theologian. Working variously as a diocesan priest and a professor, Ela was the author of many books on theology, philosophy, and social sciences in Africa. His most famous work, African Cry has been called the "soundest illustration" of the spirit of liberation theology in sub-Saharan Africa. His works are widely cited as exemplary of sub-Saharan African Christian theology for their focus on contextualisation and their emphasis on community-centered approaches to theology.

Ignacio Ellacuría was a Spanish-Salvadoran Jesuit priest, philosopher, and theologian who did important work as a professor and rector at the Universidad Centroamericana "José Simeón Cañas" (UCA), a Jesuit university in El Salvador founded in 1965. He and several other Jesuits and two others were assassinated by Salvadoran soldiers in the closing years of the Salvadoran Civil War. His work was defining for the shape UCA took in its first years of existence and the years to come. Ellacuría was also responsible for the development of formation programs for priests in the Jesuit Central American province.

Marc H. Ellis is an American author, liberation theologian, and a retired University Professor of Jewish Studies, Professor of History and Director of the Center for Jewish Studies at Baylor University. He is currently visiting professor of several international universities, including the University of Innsbruck, Austria and the United Nations University for Peace, Costa Rica.

Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann was an American-born Nicaraguan diplomat, politician and Catholic priest of the Maryknoll Missionary Society. As the President of the United Nations General Assembly from September 2008 to September 2009, he presided over the 63rd Session of the United Nations General Assembly. He was also nominated as Libyan Representative to the UN in March 2011. He died on 8 June 2017, having suffered a stroke several months earlier.

Teresa Forcades i Vila is a Catalan physician, Benedictine nun and social activist. Forcades i Vila is known for her outspoken and sometimes controversial views on the church, public health and Catalan independence, and for her vaccine skepticism.

Paulo Reglus Neves Freire was a Brazilian educator and philosopher who was a leading advocate of critical pedagogy. His influential work Pedagogy of the Oppressed is generally considered one of the foundational texts of the critical pedagogy movement, and was the third most cited book in the social sciences as of 2016 according to Google Scholar.

Father Gaspar García Laviana was a Spanish Roman Catholic priest who took up arms to fight as a soldier in Nicaragua with the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) in 1977.

Gustavo Gutiérrez Merino is a Peruvian philosopher, Catholic theologian, and Dominican priest, regarded as one of the founders of Latin American liberation theology. He currently holds the John Cardinal O'Hara Professorship of Theology at the University of Notre Dame, and has previously been a visiting professor at many major universities in North America and Europe.

Chris Haw is a Catholic theologian and professor in the United States who was an important figure in New Monasticism.

Franz Josef Hinkelammert is a German-born theologian and economist, an influential theorist of liberation theology who writes theological critiques of capitalism. He is one of the co-founders of the influential Departamento Ecuménico de Investigaciones in Sabanilla, Costa Rica, along with Hugo Assmann and Pablo Richard.

Gérard Jean-Juste was a Roman Catholic priest and rector of Saint Claire's church for the poor in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. He was also a liberation theologian and a supporter of the Fanmi Lavalas political party, as well as heading the Miami, Florida-based Haitian Refugee Center from 1977 to 1990.

Zephania Kameeta is a Namibian religious and political leader. Since March 2015, he has been the Namibian Minister of Poverty Eradication and Social Welfare.

Sebastian Kappen was an Indian Jesuit priest and liberation theologian.

Erwin Kräutler C.Pp.S. is a Roman Catholic bishop who headed the Territorial Prelature of Xingu from 1981 until 2015.

Arturo Lona Reyes was a Mexican bishop who served as the Catholic bishop from Tehuantepec, Oaxaca, Mexico. He served in his position for 30 years before resigning from his diocese in 2001.

Aloísio Leo Arlindo Lorscheider, O.F.M. was a prominent cardinal of the Catholic Church in Brazil during the 1970s and 1980s. He was renowned as an advocate of communism and liberation theology in the 1970s and was seen by some observers as a serious candidate for the papacy in the two conclaves of 1978.

Sergio Méndez Arceo was a Mexican Roman Catholic bishop, activist and human rights supporter. A product of a wealthy family, Méndez Arceo's father was a successful lawyer and his uncle was a prominent archbishop believed to be involved in the church-state conflict of the 1920s. Méndez Arceo graduated from the Pontifical Gregorian University of Rome and served as a Seminary professor in Mexico. He became Roman Catholic Bishop of Cuernavaca, Morelos, in 1953 and served in that capacity until 1983.

Alberto René Methol Ferré was a Uruguayan thinker, writer, journalist, teacher, historian and theologian. He has been described as one of Latin America's most fertile and original thinkers.

Segundo Montes was a scholar, philosopher, educator, sociologist and Jesuit priest. He was one of the victims of the 1989 murders of Jesuits in El Salvador.

Carlos Mugica was an Argentine Roman Catholic priest and activist.

Ivan Petrella is an Argentine social theorist and liberation theologian. He is the Secretary of Culture in Argentina's Ministry of Culture and currently teaches at Universidad Torcuato Di Tella in Buenos Aires, Argentina. He was an associate professor in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Miami in Coral Gables, Florida and co-executive editor of the “Reclaiming Liberation Theology” book series with SCM Press.

Leonidas Eduardo Proaño Villalba was an Ecuadorian prelate and theologian. He served as the bishop of Riobamba from 1954 to 1985. He was a candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize and is considered one of the most important figures in Ecuadorian liberation theology.

Mariano Puga Concha was a Chilean Roman Catholic priest and a human rights activist.

Mario Enrique Ríos Montt, C.M. is an emeritus auxiliary bishop of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Guatemala, public figure and human rights activist. He is the brother of the late former general Efraín Ríos Montt, a dictator accused of genocide in Guatemala during the period when he was in power from March 1982 to August 1983.

Samuel Ruiz García was a Mexican Catholic prelate who served as bishop of the Diocese of San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas, from 1959 until 1999. Ruiz is best known for his role as mediator during the conflict between the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) and the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), a Mexican political party which had held power for over seventy years, and whose policies were often disadvantageous to the indigenous populations of Chiapas. Inspired by Liberation Theology, which swept through the Catholic Church in Latin America after the 1960s, Ruiz's diocese helped some hundreds of thousands of indigenous Maya people in Chiapas who were among Mexico's poorest marginalized communities.

Edgar Freitas Gomes da Silva is a Portuguese politician and former Catholic priest. He is known for having been a bitter dissident from the Portuguese Catholic hierarchy.

Jon Sobrino is a Jesuit Catholic priest and theologian, known mostly for his contributions to Latin American liberation theology. He received worldwide attention in 2007 when the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith issued a notification for what they termed doctrines that are "erroneous or dangerous and may cause harm to the faithful."

Dorothee Steffensky-Sölle, known as Dorothee Sölle, was a German liberation theologian who coined the term "Christofascism". She was born in Cologne and died at a conference in Göppingen.

Poykayil Sreekumara Gurudevan, known as Poykayil Appachan alias Poykayil Kumara Guru Devan, was a dalit activist, poet and the founder of the socio-religious movement Prathyaksha Raksha Daiva Sabha. His father was Kandan and mother Lachi. His original name was Kumaran.

Liz Theoharis is an American theologian who is the co-chair of the Poor People's Campaign: A National Call for a Moral Revival, and the Director of the Kairos Center for Religions, Rights, and Social Justice at Union Theological Seminary. She is an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church.

Tito de Alencar Lima, O.P. was a Brazilian Dominican friar who was severely tortured during his country's rule by a military dictatorship. This torture eventually led to his suicide.

Andrés Torres Queiruga is a Galician theologian, writer and translator.

Camilo Torres Restrepo was a Colombian socialist, Roman Catholic priest, a proponent of liberation theology, and a member of the National Liberation Army (ELN) guerrilla organization. During his life, he tried to reconcile revolutionary Marxism and Catholicism. His "social activism and willingness to work with Marxists troubled his ecclesiastical superiors, who ordered him to choose between priestly duties and secular concerns."

Francisco Whitaker Ferreira, known as Chico Ferreira, is a Brazilian architect, politician, and social activist. A devout Roman Catholic, Whitaker inspires his work in the liberation theology, while maintaining close ties with the Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace, a body linked to the National Conference of Bishops of Brazil. Whitaker served as an alderman for the Workers' Party in the Municipal Chamber of São Paulo from 1989 to 1993, when he acted as the majority leader for mayor Luiza Erundina. He left the party in 2006, and currently serves on the advisory board of the non-profit organization WikiLeaks. He is also a member of the interim consultative committee of the International Organization for a Participatory Society.

Jeremiah Alvesta Wright Jr. is a pastor emeritus of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, a congregation he led for 36 years, during which its membership grew to over 8,000 parishioners. Following retirement, his beliefs and preaching were scrutinized when segments of his sermons about terrorist attacks on the United States and government dishonesty were publicized in connection with the 2008 presidential campaign of Barack Obama.