Paulo Freire, the “Pedagogue of the Oppressed”: Is This a Good Fit for Jesus?

Last updated on: February 13, 2023 at 8:13 am by Jack Hartjes

Paulo Freire, the “Pedagogue of the Oppressed”: Is This a Good Fit for Jesus? 2023-02-13T08:13:58-06:00 Jack Hartjes

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

The Paulo Freire quote: "Washing one's hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral."

William Herzog thinks Jesus stood with the poor in the conflict between power and powerlessness.

Paulo Freire was a Brazilian activist and academic. He taught, and led others to teach, literacy to impoverished, downtrodden, and despised people in Northeastern Brazil. Teaching for Freire wasn’t just imparting knowledge and skills. Education’s goal, he thought, was to help people discover themselves as “creative agents” in the process of lifting themselves up and changing their world. Before being vindicated by the worldwide scholarly community, Freire was imprisoned as a threat to Brazil’s elite. That was after a Cia-aided coup replaced the formerly favorable, leftist government in Brazil.

Is Freire’s career as pedagogue of the oppressed enough like Jesus’ work to make a good model? William Herzog thinks so. There’s the biblical record of the many times Jesus referred to poverty, riches, debt, and the working conditions of poor people in sermon and parable. Then there’s the fact that Jesus also was an enemy of the state, or was crucified as such. Herzog, along with many others, reasons that Palestine’s Roman overlords must have seen in Jesus a threat to their status and luxurious life, both of which came at the expense of the poor.

Paulo Freire and Jesus: Differences and similarities

If Paulo Freire, as pedagogue of the oppressed, is our model for understanding Jesus, then we should see similarities between each one’s careers. But differences strike the observer first. Herzog, in Parables as Subversive Speech, Chapter One, (See note below) details:

Jesus was a poor villager and unknown to the world at large. Freire experienced poverty during the Great Depression but came from a middle-class, urban family and rose to worldwide fame.
Jesus did not teach letters to illiterate people. He may not even have known letters very well. Freire wrote books and was published worldwide.
Freire was familiar with the day’s intellectual currents, including Marxism, existentialism, and liberation theology. Jesus’ one source of learned wisdom was the Jewish Scripture. He knew how rabbis interpreted the Scriptures and developed his own reading of them.
Jesus’ Palestine was occupied by Roman overlords. Freire’s Brazil had been an independent country for a century and a half.

With all those differences the similarities are still significant.

Both Jesus and Freire were educators whose special concern was poor people.
Both teachers lived in advanced agrarian societies. Jesus mostly ministered among poor peasants. Freire was more often among rural poor, less often among the peasantry. But agrarian peasants in both ages knew about urban systems; they depended on them. Freire’s peasant clientele was similar to that in Jesus’ time for another reason as the next point explains.
Even though Freire’s Brazil had been independent for a century and half, a colonial mindset there was as strong, among both rich and poor, as it was among Jesus contemporaries.
In both societies religious influence was strong, and leading religious figures identified and shared interest with the urban elite. Religion blessed the separation of classes and the impoverishment of the poor by the rich.

Why a model?

William Herzog’s method of interpreting the sources we have for Jesus’ life (mainly the Bible) differs from many scholars. It’s not enough, he says, to collect and analyze the historical data and let that fund lead to historical conclusions. That data are too incomplete and obscure. Interpretation will necessarily depend on the interpreter’s own view of the world and its possibilities. In fact, the conclusions that interpreters draw are about as numerous and contradictory as the mindsets they bring to their task. The problem, Herzog, says is focusing so intently on the data that personal bias operates in the background, hidden from awareness.

A better procedure is to work backwards. Start with a tentative conclusion, or model, based on preliminary and rough acquaintance with the historical data. Then see how well or badly the model fits a more thorough analysis of the data. Modify the model or throw the model out as the data require. This procedure brings personal bias out into the open.

“Generative words” and word pictures

As Herzog explains what Paulo Freire meant by “pedogogy of the oppressed,” we begin to see more similarities between this model and Jesus.

Brazil had literacy programs for the poor before Freire entered the scene. He called them “paternalistic.” Their manuals relied on middle class and elite words and images. That induced peasants, who valued literacy, to devalue their own language and culture. Similarly, the elite in Jesus time had ways to devalue the life experience of the poor.

In contrast to those government-sponsored literacy programs, Freire investigated the vocabulary of peasants and urban poor. He singled out “generative words,” words with rich meaning relevant to the people’s lives. Kim Diaz, in an Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy article on Paulo Freire, says it might be a word like tijolo (brick). Paraphrasing Diaz:

A teacher would break the word into its syllables (ti-jo-lo). Students then would practice coupling the consonants with different vowels (ta, te, ti, to, tu; ja, je, ji, jo, ju; la, le, li, lo, lu). They’d combine the new syllables to make new words. Words like “land,” “economy,” and “culture” might arise and get talked about. In the conversation the class might come to a “limit situation,” a problem that participants and facilitator, by working together, could find a path through or around.

Already we see some similarity with Jesus. Freire’s literacy program used words that captured the rich experience of poor people’s lives. Jesus’ parables drew word pictures of common peasant experiences. Did these word pictures also evoke something like Paulo Freire’s “limit situations” for Jesus peasant hearers? That is what Herzog tries to show in his detailed analysis of several of Jesus parables. And that will be the theme of the next posts.

Image credit: Quotefancy

Politics and Religion

Education and Religion

Herzog

Social Justice

Previous Post

September 9, 2022

William Herzog Reads Jesus’ Parables, Brings them Down to Earth

Next Post

September 22, 2022 Human Composting: California Bishops Say ‘No,’ but Why Not?

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category Advent Christmas Amazon Synod Angels Being Consumed Bible Catholic Modern Creed Ecology Economics Elizabeth Johnson Eucharist Fragments and Filaments Gender and Sex Gospel of Mark Herzog Historical Jesus Liturgy Luke Opening Scriptures on Way to Emmaus Ordinary radicals Parables Pro-Life Reincarnation Rosary Sacraments science Social Justice Souls Stories of Jesus The Creed Torture and Eucharist Tracy Uncategorized War and Peace

Select a Month October 2026 June 2025 April 2025 March 2025 February 2025 January 2025 November 2024 July 2024 March 2024 December 2023 October 2023 September 2023 August 2023 May 2023 April 2023 March 2023 February 2023 January 2023 December 2022 November 2022 October 2022 September 2022 August 2022 July 2022 June 2022 April 2022 March 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 November 2021 October 2021 August 2021 July 2021 June 2021 April 2021 March 2021 February 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz