Indebted to the Future: Latin American liberation theology and the critique of capitalism

This paper explores the theological critique of capitalism developed within Latin American liberation theology by engaging Walter Benjamin’s insight that capitalism functions as a form of religion structured by guilt and unpayable debt. Benjamin’s claim that capitalist religiosity binds subjects to a despairing future provides a framework for examining how debt operates not only as an economic mechanism but also as a spiritual and ideological force. Drawing on the work of Franz Hinkelammert, the paper argues that the religiosity of capitalism is most visible in its eschatological imagination: its capacity to discipline the future by presenting the continuation of the present order as inevitable. Within this framework, the carceral state and the militarization of immigration enforcement in the United States can be understood as expressions of the same capitalist logic of surveillance, debt, and control. In response, the paper proposes Christian hope, as articulated in liberation theology, as a communal praxis that contests the foreclosure of the future.