From my initial exposition of the story of Naboth’s vineyard, we can retain three important learnings:

1. The narrative concerns a dispute between two systems of land ownership, inheritance, and possession.

2. The dispute between land systems is rooted in a dispute between YHWH and Baal. YHWH is the champion of land as inheritance; Baal is the sponsor of land as possession that leads, in turn, to commoditization.

3. This unequal struggle between these two land systems is interrupted by the sharp, critical appearance in the story of Elijah who is a truth-speaker who exposes the unsustainable folly of royal patterns concerning commoditized owners.

On the basis of these learnings, I propose to consider the life and work of Oscar Romero through a reading of Blood in the Fields: Oscar Romero, Catholic Social Teaching, and Land Reform, by Matthew Philipp Whelan (I strongly commend this book to you, dear reader). In what follows, I intend to read in two directions, so that the Naboth story may illuminate Romero, and so Romero’s faith and passion may let us read the Naboth story more deeply and knowingly.

Romero was an ordained Catholic priest, became bishop of a poor rural diocese (Santiago de Maria) in 1974, and became archbishop in San Salvador in 1977, to be murdered in 1980.

His experience in that poor rural diocese was decisive for him as he witnessed the rigged economic system that exploited the peasants and kept them in hopeless debt. A most remarkable fact about Romero is that as a liberation thinker, unlike almost every other prominent liberation theologian, he made no appeal to the economic analysis of Karl Marx. Rather, his critical passion for social justice and, consequently, land reform is based singularly on the Bible and the social teaching of the church.

We may identify three major accent points in Romero’s social analysis and prophetic witness. These reference points, of course, were triggered for him by his own pastoral experience with a social system that oppressed and terrorized vulnerable peasants who constituted his pastoral charge. That exposure permitted and indeed required him to reconsider biblical and church teaching with a critical awareness that he would not otherwise have had. This is made evident in the fact that prior to that pastoral experience in Santiago de Maria, his inclination was conservative with a reluctance about a liberation hermeneutic. All of that was changed for him by the truth on the ground in Santiago de Maria, a truth his faith would not let him deny or disregard.

First, Romero is a theologian.

For him the defining claim of biblical faith is that the earth belongs to the creator God. It does not belong to greedy human possessors. It all belongs to God, and God intends it for all creatures, that they may together enjoy its abundance. Second, Romero is a baptized, ordained Catholic who is grounded in Catholic teaching, most especially its social teaching. This means that he is informed, in his pastoral horizon, by the teaching of Pope Leo XIII, the great pope who responded prophetically to the Industrial Revolution, the teaching of Vatican II, and more recently by the work of John Paul II. Whelan pays attention to the way in which Romero was guided by the encyclical Gaudium et Spes from Vatican II:

God intended the earth with everything contained in it for the use of all human beings and peoples…Whatever forms of property may be, as adapted to the legitimate institutions of peoples, according to diverse and changeable circumstances, attention must always be paid to this universal destination of earthly goods. In using them, therefore, man should regard the external things that he legitimately possesses not only as his own, but also as common in the sense that they should be able to benefit not only him but also others. (Whelan 66)

Third, from that it follows that all things are to be held in common. The church of course affirms private property; at the same time, however, the church recognizes that there is also a “social mortgage” on private property so that the resources of creation are to serve the common good, and therefore the good of those who are excluded from the security and well-being of private property.

From these three accent points of creation, Catholic social teaching, and the common good, Romero offers an acute social analysis that led him to focus on land reform, that is, the redistribution of the land of San Salvador so that immense estates of property would be divided to give access to land to those who are left dangerously exposed and vulnerable.

Romero’s social analysis included the following points:

1. Propelling the unjust distribution of the land is “the idolatry of wealth and property.” It is an idolatry that has led to widespread latifundism through which the economic elite engage in “geophagia,” that is, “the eating of the earth,” and the devouring of everything and everyone in the land with an insatiable appetite.

2. Such idolatry in turn has produced institutional violence that is the root of all other violences. The large landowners control the instruments of power and policy, and so could enact their uncurbed greed in policies and institutions before which the landless are vulnerable and helpless.

3. The greed of the ownership class has caused food production to be distorted and skewed. No longer is agriculture designed to provide food for subsistence peasants in society as heretofore, food such as maize, corn, sorghum, and rice. Now food is designed for export (and so profit)!  That means primarily coffee. When agriculture serves primarily export for profit, there is less food for the indigenous population.

4. The development and maintenance of policies of greed has resulted in laws of “enclosure” that fence off property so that the poor can no longer forage in the land. As a result, the landless have become more and more dependent upon the economy of the great estates, reduced to “wage labor,” and subject to intense and hopeless debt. The loss of access has produced a large population for which political-economic agency is denied.

5. The outcome of such extravagant wealth has eventuated in a careless “throw-away” culture of waste and self-indulgence. And of course a practice of “throw away” has meant that landless people are also “left-overs” to be disregarded, thus denying the elemental reality of a commonly shared life including both haves and have-nots.

This convergence of social facts has evoked Romero’s singular passion for land reform. He has understood most clearly that without access to land and its resources, the landless people can have no value in a throw away economy of greed and violence.

It was Romero’s witness, based on his acute social analysis, that led to his murder.

It should be evident then that Romeo, in his witness and passion, reiterates the narrative of Naboth. It is easy enough to see that the agricultural peasants in San Salvador play the part of Naboth, and that the greedy landowners assume the role of Ahab and Jezebel. Like that ancient king and queen, the landowners worship a god of ruthless greed and entitlement. Romero, moreover, is surely cast in the role of Elijah, surely the voice that the landowners would define as “my enemy.”

We already know from that old story that the acquisition of land by the greedy will readily evoke whatever actions are necessary for the acquisition. It is clear enough to read the story forward to Romero to see that such ruthless greed, in prophetic horizon, cannot go uncurbed. Like Elijah, Romero speaks against the greed on behalf of the creator God who intends that the land should be treasured as a common inheritance and not debased as a fungible possession.

Thus, Micah after Elijah, in his condemnation of such destructive greed, anticipates a new division of the land (at the behest of the Assyrians) that will exclude the greedy:

“Now, I am devising against this family an evil
from which you cannot remove your necks;
and you shall not walk haughtily,
for it will be an evil time.
On that day they shall take up a taunt song against you,
and wail with bitter lamentation,
and say, “We are utterly ruined;
the Lord alters the inheritance of my people;
how he removes it from me!
Among our captors he parcels out our fields.”
Therefore you will have no one to cast the line by lot
in the assembly of the Lord. (Micah 2:3-5)

This later poet anticipates the displacement of exile and the reassignment of land that excludes the greedy owners. This is indeed “land reform” from the top! This poetic anticipation goes beyond the specificity of Elijah; the trajectory in any case is the same. Greedy ownership will, soon or late, be curbed by the intent of the creator God who ultimately governs the land.

It is equally compelling to read backward from Romero to Naboth.

When we do that, we sense that the Naboth narrative is no one-off incidental transaction. This is rather a window into the systemic practices that pervaded ancient Israel. The urban elites in the capitol cities of Samaria and Jerusalem depended on the produce of subsistence peasants. Such inequity of surplus and subsistence is not sustainable in the long run. It is not sustainable for practical reasons because cheap labor will tolerate exploitation only so long; but it is also unsustainable because the creator of the land will not tolerate such injustice.

The reduction of the land to a fungible commodity is sure to bring big trouble on society from which the owners will be able to claim no exemption. Thus, we may be grateful for the life and witness of Romero and, at the same time, appreciative of the narrative of Naboth as we ourselves live in an economy where the gap between haves and have-nots grows daily. The gap is everywhere among us, supported by (1) the idolatry of wealth and property, (2) institutional violence of policing, tax codes, and rigged financial arrangements, (3) food from agribusiness designed for export and profit, (4) privatization of public land to the exclusion of the landless, and (5) a throw-away culture of extravagance that is ready to dispose of unneeded folk as well as other commodities to the great detriment of the environment.

Given this evident economic reality now as then, it is urgent that the church learn to reread its text in more knowing, compelling, and courageous ways that are appropriate to the urgency of the moment that God has entrusted to us.

Continue to Part III.

Walter Brueggemann