Many Christians participated in the movements for social reform in all the continents. Theology itself was developed in Europe and North America towards a more tolerant framework of freedom and justice. Liberation theologies were developed particularly in the Southern Continents. The Blacks, beginning from North America, reflected on the gospel in terms of Black liberation from White domination. The women s movements took their struggle for equal dignity and rights to the theological sphere also.
Asian theology searches further for inter-religious understanding and global justice.
All these groups questioned the earlier dominant paradigm of theology and its assumptions, presuppositions and consequences. They built up new syntheses of Christian thinking that could be in open dialogue with other religions, and related actively to issues of gender and social justice. Thus, Christians participate actively in liberation movements as in Nicaragua, South Africa and the Philippines, as well as in the liberation movements of Blacks and women. The spread of such teaching and praxis was seen as a danger to the ruling establishment in society and in the church. Hence from the mid-1970s or so there has been a counter effort to prevent the spread of such trends.