Carlos Mesters offers insights into, and argues for, a new way of reading the Bible that has emerged from his experience of Brazilian base communities. When discussing a biblical text, the base communities discuss their own situation, without making distinctions on the level of methodology or content.
In this attitude of interpretation, three elements stand out. First, the people treat the Bible with freedom. They are liberated from the prison of the letter through lived experience. Second, they read the Bible with familiarity-not the familiarity of a people who know the Bible from beginning to end but that of a people who feel at home in the Bible.
Third, the people's main interest is not in interpreting the Bible's historicoliteral meaning but in interpreting life through the Bible. They are faithful to the meaning they discover contextually in the Bible for their own lives. This way of reading the Bible offers a framework within which it is possible to rediscover what the ministry of the Word needs to be in the Church today.
"These essays on how to read the Bible from a liberation perspective are as urgently needed today in North America as they were in Brazil. We in fact lag far behind the base communities of Latin American in recognizing the 'pre-ext' (social location from which we read the Bible) and the 'con-ext' (the social situation to which we wish to apply it). Carlos Mesters has a lot to teach scholars and clergy about how to listen to and learn from lay people about interpreting scripture."