Theology Goes Public: Richard Shaull’s Dialogue with Public Issues, Social Sciences, and Ecumenism in “The New Revolutionary Mood in Latin America” (1962)

Since the arrival of Protestants in Brazil, the presence of Protestant educational institutions became a reality. Seminaries were founded at the end of the 19th century, focusing on the training of clergy without much concern for dialogue with other churches or with society at large. Public issues, ecumenism—through dialogue and cooperation between Protestants and Catholics—and interdisciplinary theological approaches only became current concerns in the mid-twentieth century, especially with liberation theologies—both Protestant and Catholic. Before that, however, one of the authors who was able to grasp these dimensions in his theological endeavour was Richard Shaull, who, through his theological method, opened a dialogue with the social sciences in order to interpret the reality in which he placed Christian action and mission. Through bibliographical research and document analysis, focusing on the reading of “The New Revolutionary Mood in Latin America”, a report on Latin America presented by Shaull to the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A. Missionary Board, the article aims to show Shaull’s theology, institutionally located, as one that thinks about public issues in dialogue with social sciences and considers its implications for and within Christian churches. In the light of studies on public theology, this paper presents Richard Shaull’s writings as a theological approach to the church, considering its ecumenical stance; to society, considering its most pressing issues of the time; and to academia, through the interdisciplinary dialogue he undertakes with the social sciences.