Christian Socialism
The New Testament is replete with evidence of a communal view of Christianity. Acts 2:44-45 states that:
44 And all they that believed were together and had all things common. 45 Their possessions and goods they sold and divided them to all, according as every one had need.
From which Karl Marx drew his famous quote: from each according to their abilities to each according to their needs.
Moreover, Christ and the Apostles have dire warnings for those who accumulate wealth. In the Magnificat, Mary warns that God does not favor the rich. "He (God) hath filled the hungry with good things: and the rich he hath sent empty away" (Luke 1:53). Saint Paul comments that, "For the desire of money is the root of all evils; which some coveting have erred from the faith and have entangled themselves in many sorrows" (1 Timothy 6:10).
But it is James who truly pulls no punches when he warns the wealthy. In The Epistles of James 5:1-6 he writes:
1 Go to now, ye rich men: weep and howl in your miseries, which shall come upon you. 2 Your riches are corrupted: and your garments are motheaten. 3 Your gold and silver is cankered: and the rust of them shall be for a testimony against you and shall eat your flesh like fire. You have stored up to yourselves wrath against the last days. 4 Behold the hire of the labourers who have reaped down your fields, which by fraud has been kept back by you, crieth: and the cry of them hath entered into the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth. 5 You have feasted upon earth: and in riotousness you have nourished your hearts, in the day of slaughter. 6 You have condemned and put to death the Just One: and he resisted you not.
Notice verse 6, where James links the wealthy to the Crucifixion of Jesus. These verses (and many more in both the New and Old Testaments) are not hidden. Nor do they contain as much ambiguity as modern conservatives would have us believe. On the contrary, the fact that Jesus takes up the banner of the poor, downtrodden, and outcast is well documented in the Christian Bible. As happens to many who stand against the inequality of the status quo, Jesus paid with his life (Archbishop Oscar Romero, Father Rutillo Grande, are two of many modern examples).
Nor is this a radically new view for Christians. Clement of Alexandria (a Church Fasther) argues that all wealth is unjust, no matter how it was earned. Saint Jerome (the author of the Latin Vulgate version of the Bible) makes an even more stark point:
For all riches proceed from injustice. Either a rich man is unjust or he has inherited from an unjust man. (Letters)
Again, the Epistle of James enlightens as to the view of Christ.
And you have respect to him that is clothed with the fine apparel and shall say to him: Sit thou here well: but say to the poor man: Stand thou there, or: Sit under my footstool: 4 Do you not judge within yourselves, and are become judges of unjust thoughts? 5 Hearken, my dearest brethren: Hath not God chosen the poor in this world, rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom which God hath promised to them that love him? 6 But you have dishonoured the poor man. Do not the rich oppress you by might? And do not they draw you before the judgment seats? 7 Do not they blaspheme the goodname that is invoked upon you? (James 2:3-7)
Note that in verse 5 James states that God has chosen the poor to inherit His Kingdom.
So what does this mean for Christian Socialists? For the answer we look to Liberation Theology.
Liberation Theology grew from Catholic clergy in Latin America throughout the 1970's and 1980's. At that time many Latin American nations suffered from right-wing death squads funded by the United States in the name of anti-communism. The nations of Latin America also suffered (and still do) from high poverty rates. Especially vulnerable were the rural agricultural communities. In answer to this a number of Latin American priests began advocating a new social order - one that exemplified the equity of the Kingdom of God as well as the notion of orthopraxis. Father Gustavo Gutierrez, Fr Jon Sobrino, Fr Leonardo Boff, Bishop Romero, Fr Ignacio Martin, Fr Juan Luis Segundo and many more began a theological study of the conditions in Latin America. They built upon some German and Dutch theologians (for example Moltmann, Nouwen) who began to use Marxist views of history and alienation as guides.
To say that Liberation Theology is Marxist is unfair to both. There are areas where Liberation Theology and Marxism come sharply at odds. For example, these theologians do not use the Marxist definition of "proletariat" and instead use the Biblical definition of "poor and oppressed."
As opposed to an historical revolution that leads inevitably to communism, liberation theologians argue for a change in the social order that effectively begins building the Kingdom of God for the poor. Yet, for Christian Socialists, the tasks may not be so different. Gustavo Gutierrez argues that:
private ownership of the means of production will be eliminated because it enables a few to expropriate the fruits of labor performed by the many, generates class divisions in a society, and permits one class to be exploited by another. In such a reordered society the social takeover of the means of production will be accompanied by a social takeover of the reins of political power that will ensure people's liberty (Liberation Praxis and Christian Faith).
This paragraph could easily have been lifted from a secular socialist text. Camillo Torres provides an even clearer link between the two phoilosophies:
I feel that the revolutionary struggle is a Christian and priestly struggle. Only through this, given the concrete circumstances of our country, can we fulfill the love that men should have for their neighbors...(Revolutionary Writings).
When I hear the question, "how can you be a Socialist and a Christian?" I reply with, "how can you be a Christian and not a Socialist?"
As a faithful Catholic I find not only solace in the writings of the liberation theologians, but a far better understanding of what it means to be a Christian in the modern neoliberal age. To conclude, I'd like to quote the Brazillian Bishop Dom Helder Camara from his work, Revolution through Peace:
I have not come here to help anyone delude himself into thinking that a little charity and social work will suffice. There is no doubt about it: there is crying misery to which we have no right to remain indifferent. Very often, we have no choice but to take immediate action, however inadequate. But let us not deceive ourselves into thinking that the problem is limited to a few gestures of reform; let us not confuse the beautiful and indispensable idea of order, the end of all human progress, with the mockery of order which is responsible for preserving structures we all know should not and cannot be preserved...
44 And all they that believed were together and had all things common. 45 Their possessions and goods they sold and divided them to all, according as every one had need.
From which Karl Marx drew his famous quote: from each according to their abilities to each according to their needs.
Moreover, Christ and the Apostles have dire warnings for those who accumulate wealth. In the Magnificat, Mary warns that God does not favor the rich. "He (God) hath filled the hungry with good things: and the rich he hath sent empty away" (Luke 1:53). Saint Paul comments that, "For the desire of money is the root of all evils; which some coveting have erred from the faith and have entangled themselves in many sorrows" (1 Timothy 6:10).
But it is James who truly pulls no punches when he warns the wealthy. In The Epistles of James 5:1-6 he writes:
1 Go to now, ye rich men: weep and howl in your miseries, which shall come upon you. 2 Your riches are corrupted: and your garments are motheaten. 3 Your gold and silver is cankered: and the rust of them shall be for a testimony against you and shall eat your flesh like fire. You have stored up to yourselves wrath against the last days. 4 Behold the hire of the labourers who have reaped down your fields, which by fraud has been kept back by you, crieth: and the cry of them hath entered into the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth. 5 You have feasted upon earth: and in riotousness you have nourished your hearts, in the day of slaughter. 6 You have condemned and put to death the Just One: and he resisted you not.
Notice verse 6, where James links the wealthy to the Crucifixion of Jesus. These verses (and many more in both the New and Old Testaments) are not hidden. Nor do they contain as much ambiguity as modern conservatives would have us believe. On the contrary, the fact that Jesus takes up the banner of the poor, downtrodden, and outcast is well documented in the Christian Bible. As happens to many who stand against the inequality of the status quo, Jesus paid with his life (Archbishop Oscar Romero, Father Rutillo Grande, are two of many modern examples).
Nor is this a radically new view for Christians. Clement of Alexandria (a Church Fasther) argues that all wealth is unjust, no matter how it was earned. Saint Jerome (the author of the Latin Vulgate version of the Bible) makes an even more stark point:
For all riches proceed from injustice. Either a rich man is unjust or he has inherited from an unjust man. (Letters)
Again, the Epistle of James enlightens as to the view of Christ.
And you have respect to him that is clothed with the fine apparel and shall say to him: Sit thou here well: but say to the poor man: Stand thou there, or: Sit under my footstool: 4 Do you not judge within yourselves, and are become judges of unjust thoughts? 5 Hearken, my dearest brethren: Hath not God chosen the poor in this world, rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom which God hath promised to them that love him? 6 But you have dishonoured the poor man. Do not the rich oppress you by might? And do not they draw you before the judgment seats? 7 Do not they blaspheme the goodname that is invoked upon you? (James 2:3-7)
Note that in verse 5 James states that God has chosen the poor to inherit His Kingdom.
So what does this mean for Christian Socialists? For the answer we look to Liberation Theology.
Liberation Theology grew from Catholic clergy in Latin America throughout the 1970's and 1980's. At that time many Latin American nations suffered from right-wing death squads funded by the United States in the name of anti-communism. The nations of Latin America also suffered (and still do) from high poverty rates. Especially vulnerable were the rural agricultural communities. In answer to this a number of Latin American priests began advocating a new social order - one that exemplified the equity of the Kingdom of God as well as the notion of orthopraxis. Father Gustavo Gutierrez, Fr Jon Sobrino, Fr Leonardo Boff, Bishop Romero, Fr Ignacio Martin, Fr Juan Luis Segundo and many more began a theological study of the conditions in Latin America. They built upon some German and Dutch theologians (for example Moltmann, Nouwen) who began to use Marxist views of history and alienation as guides.
To say that Liberation Theology is Marxist is unfair to both. There are areas where Liberation Theology and Marxism come sharply at odds. For example, these theologians do not use the Marxist definition of "proletariat" and instead use the Biblical definition of "poor and oppressed."
As opposed to an historical revolution that leads inevitably to communism, liberation theologians argue for a change in the social order that effectively begins building the Kingdom of God for the poor. Yet, for Christian Socialists, the tasks may not be so different. Gustavo Gutierrez argues that:
private ownership of the means of production will be eliminated because it enables a few to expropriate the fruits of labor performed by the many, generates class divisions in a society, and permits one class to be exploited by another. In such a reordered society the social takeover of the means of production will be accompanied by a social takeover of the reins of political power that will ensure people's liberty (Liberation Praxis and Christian Faith).
This paragraph could easily have been lifted from a secular socialist text. Camillo Torres provides an even clearer link between the two phoilosophies:
I feel that the revolutionary struggle is a Christian and priestly struggle. Only through this, given the concrete circumstances of our country, can we fulfill the love that men should have for their neighbors...(Revolutionary Writings).
When I hear the question, "how can you be a Socialist and a Christian?" I reply with, "how can you be a Christian and not a Socialist?"
As a faithful Catholic I find not only solace in the writings of the liberation theologians, but a far better understanding of what it means to be a Christian in the modern neoliberal age. To conclude, I'd like to quote the Brazillian Bishop Dom Helder Camara from his work, Revolution through Peace:
I have not come here to help anyone delude himself into thinking that a little charity and social work will suffice. There is no doubt about it: there is crying misery to which we have no right to remain indifferent. Very often, we have no choice but to take immediate action, however inadequate. But let us not deceive ourselves into thinking that the problem is limited to a few gestures of reform; let us not confuse the beautiful and indispensable idea of order, the end of all human progress, with the mockery of order which is responsible for preserving structures we all know should not and cannot be preserved...