Christian base communities

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Christian Base communities are autonomous religious groups often associated with Liberation Theology. The 1968 Medellin, Colombia meeting of Latin American Council of Bishops played a major role in popularizing them.

Created in both rural and urban areas, the Christian Base Community, organized often illiterate peasants and proletarians into self-reliant worshipping communities through the tutelage of a priest or local lay member. Since established churches were often miles away and high level church officials rarely visited even their own parishes, for people in rural these communities were often their only direct exposure to the church. Thus, the base community was significant in changing popular interpretations of Catholicism for multiple reasons. Initially, their very structure encouraged discussion and solidarity within the community over submission to church authority and, as their very name suggests, made power seem to flow from the bottom or base upward. The influence of liberation theology meant that discussions within the church were oriented toward material conditions and issues of class interests. Through this process of concientizacion or consciousness raising, evangelization turned into class consciousness.

They are in some ways similar to Western cell groups (small groups), a notable component of many Pentecostal and some Protestant churches. Base christian communities believe in helping people whos lives have been destroyed. Over 120,000 new churches have been set up to help the poor. The Base Christian communities follow the word of God and stand by the poor, they believe in helping the helpless. The Base Christian communities teach the word of God to the poor people, they tell them of hope, that there is always someone loving them somewhere, and that they still have a chance in life.

A Base Christian community is a group of people who join together to study the Bible, and then act according to social justice oriented from of Christianity especially popular among the third world and the poor.