Abstract

© Dr M D Magee
Contents Updated: Saturday, 13 April 2013

The Christian Church exists for the sole purpose of saving the human race. So far she has failed, but I think that socialism shows her how she may succeed. It insists that men cannot be made right until the material conditions be made right. Although man cannot live by bread alone, he must have bread. Therefore the Church must destroy a system of society which inevitably creates and perpetuates unequal and unfair conditions of life. These unequal and unfair conditions have been created by competition. Therefore competition must cease and co-operation take its place.

Episcopal bishop, Franklin Spencer Spalding, of Utah

Capitalism and Greed

Christianity has been tried for more than eighteen hundred years. Perhaps it is time to try the religion of Jesus.

Dr Milman, Dean of S Pauls

According to the Reverend W D P Bliss, T G Shearman pointed out as long ago as the 1880s that around 0.05% of the population, own 60% of the wealth of “this land” (the USA). Today the distribution of wealth is if anything far worse.

A book by Richard G Wilkinson and Kate Pickett was published in 2009. It is called The Spirit Level, the metaphorical title referring to measuring the level of equality of a society, as the various subtitles added to different editions suggest, or explain:

• Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better
• Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger
• Why Equality is Better for Everyone

The authors compared economic data with social inequality indices such as the Gini Coefficient to show that wealthy societies like the USA and the UK were very unequal in how the wealth was distributed among their people. It led to very bad data in respect of problems such as “homicide, infant mortality, obesity, teenage pregnancies, emotional depression and prison population”.

People’s wellbeing and their social cohesion were high in countries that were less wealthy but in which people felt wealth was more fairly distributed—for instance Finland, Norway and Japan. That sharing is a deep instinct is suggested by academic social studies—usually involving game playing—which show that people will pay to reduce inequality, and that even infants have an innate sense of fairness.

Of course, not everyone has the same abilities. When economics is driven by competition, so that the rule is everyone for themselves and each company for itself, some must succeed and others fail. Though sad and apparently wasteful, we are told the benefit is that the strong, the smart, the shrewd, and the perceptive will rise in the social hierarchy. Capitalist Christians who are often utterly appalled by Darwin’s theory of evolution, suddenly call upon him to explain the way capitalism works for the good of us all. They call it social Darwinism.

In fact, it is often the selfish, the unscrupulous and the dishonest capitalists who succeed best, and this outcome is the result of the basis of the system—competition. The competitive system encourages people of poor character to do well, and because it does encourage them, they may end up as millionaires or billionaires, though many, perhaps most, are no better than criminals!

The avaricious man is like the barren sandy ground of the desert which sucks in all the rain and dew with greediness, but yields no fruitful herbs or plants for the benefit of others.

Zeno

Hating these people, though possibly gratifying, is not the place to start to find a solution. It is the system that is hateful, but those who benefit most from it defend it the most. Indeed our awful and immoral economic system forces us all to be greedy so as to compete with those who are naturally. Hoarding of materials or objects, especially by violence, trickery, theft and robbery, or manipulation of authority, are inspired by greed, although an equitable distribution would leave no one in need.

So, greed, avarice or covetousness, is a strong desire to get and keep, primarily for one’s own use, over much of things like money, property, power, food, and so on, without having any need or use for such excess, and using ignoble methods when these desires can only be fulfilled in that way. We all, Christians and non-Christians, have to be selfish, grinding, and cruel, not only defending an indefensible, unchristian system, to succeed in it, but often simply to stay employed.

Capitalism is a fight requiring for success suspension of Christ’s morality, natural human morality. It proclaims, “if any man is not well off, he should get greedy and make money”. For Christian Socialists, indeed for any Christian, this us the worship of Mammon, the God of Greed, the opposite of brotherhood, the opposite of Love, the opposite of Christianity. Thomas Carlyle said “we have forgotten God”. It is true, for, if we had remembered Him, we should never have forgotten that men are brothers. F D Maurice said:

Competition is put forth as the law of the universe. This is a lie. The time is come to declare it is a lie by word and deed.

Greed has traditionally been considered sinful by the Church—one of the capital sins which are often called the “Seven Deadly Sins”. Greed is a serious and idolatrous sin because it causes violations of moral and social norms. It places earthly desires above the will of God motivating other sins. Thomas Aquinas wrote:

Greed is a sin against God, just as all mortal sins, in as much as man condemns things eternal for the sake of temporal things.

The Catechism of the Universal Church considers a mortal sin to be one that destroys the natural human principle within us, the virtue of charity. It is God’s will that human beings should be charitable, yet capitalism aims to make greed itself into a virtue—one necessarily opposed to charity and therefore theologically a mortal sin. The Christian just cannot square this particular circle, and nor can God without contradicting Himself. It is just not true for all things to be possible for God. What God deems good, even He cannot simultaneously deem bad. Inasmuch as the Christian is bound to think of Christ as God, his teachings as God—recorded by His own chosen disciples as having been uttered from His own human lips during His incarnation on earth—are the teachings of socialism and communism.

And again the apocryphal book, Ecclesiasticus, denounces the pursuit of wealth, stating:

He who loves gold will not be justified [cannot be righteous], and he who pursues money will be led astray by it. Many have come to ruin because of gold, and their destruction has met them face to face. It is a stumbling block to those who are devoted to it, and every fool will be taken captive by it.

Ecclesiasticus 31:5-7

Yet every crook and capitalist in the world will disagree. President Reagan in the USA and Prime Minister Thatcher in the UK made greed acceptable in the 1980s, reflecting the opinions of Jewish stockbroker and capitalist hero, Ivan Boesky, who in 1986 proudly advocated greed as being good. He made a speech at the UC Berkeley’s School of Business Administration,, in which he said:

Greed is all right, by the way. I want you to know that. I think greed is healthy. You can be greedy and still feel good about yourself.

Eventually he was tried and convicted for his dishonest insider trading by which he fraudulently made hundreds of millions of dollars. Yet, it was so unusual for insider trading to be punished in the USA before then, that Boesky became more famous for his crime than for his advocacy of capitalist greed. Even though he paid a large fine, he only served 2 years in prison.

Both Christians and Jews like Boesky justify their capitalist greed in the Jewish scriptures, the Christian Old Testament, where such sayings are recorded as:

The righteous has enough to satisfy his appetite, but the belly of the wicked suffers want.

Proverbs 13:25

The greedy see this as a commendation of their greed and a curse of poverty on the wicked, proving that successful capitalists are not wicked, when the plain meaning is that the wicked are insatiable in their greed whereas the righteous are satisfied with few possessions. Lest any Christian should want to agree with the capitalists’ interpretation, let them read what Christ said in the Lucan version of the “Sermon on the Mount”:

Blessed are you who hunger now, for you shall be satisfied.

Luke 6:21

Christ’s saying is a clarification of the one in Proverbs 19:15, “an idle soul shall suffer hunger”, which he saw as being read quite wrongly in the light of Isaiah 49:9-10:

They shall feed in the ways, and their pastures shall be in all high places. They shall not hunger nor thirst, neither shall the heat nor sun smite them, for he that hath mercy on them shall lead them, even by the springs of water shall he guide them.

Isaiah is the prophet most regarded by Jesus Christ, and by the Jewish sect of the Essenes which preceded him. The Old Testament has other passages requiring righteous people not to be greedy:

You shall not covet… anything that is your neighbours.

Deuteronomy 5:21; Exodus 20:17

So, greed is not an option. Those who are less fortunate must always be considered, and particularly their suffering must be alleviated:

When you reap in your harvest in the field, and have forgotten a sheaf in the field, you shall not go back to get it… When you beat your olive trees, you shall not go over the boughs again… When you gather the grapes of your vineyard, you shall not glean it afterward. It shall be for the sojourner, the fatherless and the widow. You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, therefore I command you to do this.

Deuteronomy 24:19-22

God commands that the poor should be provided for, and that desiring everything is contrary to His will! The psalms emphasize this commandment:

Give justice to the weak and the fatherless. Maintain the right of the afflicted and the destitute. Rescue the weak and the needy. Deliver them from the hand of the wicked.

Psalms 82 (81):3-4

Blessed is the man who fears the Lord, who greatly delights in his commandments!… He has distributed freely, he has given to the poor, his righteousness endures forever, his horn is exalted in honour.

Psalms 112 (111): 1-9

The good person, Isaiah says (Isaiah 1:15-17) will “seek justice, correct oppression, defend the fatherless, plead for the widow”, and no amount of prayer will wash off the guilt of not doing this because it is evil!

Today, usury is defined as “excessive” interest, charging modest interest apparently being all right so far as modern Christians are concerned. Latterly, rates of interest even on the updated definition have been getting usurious, yet the biblical meaning of usury is charging any interest for money lent. The bible forbids it all together! So millions of Christians have been taught falsehood about usury!

Wall street is the center of our social and national corruption. The rich men of our countries, not the maligned socialists, are our dangerous, even evil, class. They deny God’s gift to humankind to take pleasure in their work, by either denying them it or paying them so little that they never cease to worry just how they will manage to feed, clothe and house their families. There is no pleasure in that.

Capitalism is the way of the devil and exploitation. If you really want to look at things through the eyes of Jesus Christ—who I think was the first socialist—only socialism can really create a genuine society.

Hugo Chávez, Catholic Socialist

Christian Socialism

Socialism which means love, co-operation and brotherhood in every department of human affairs, is the only outward expression of a Christian’s faith. I am firmly convinced that whether they know it or not, all who approve and accept competition and struggle against each other as the means whereby we gain our daily bread, do indeed betray and make of no effect the “will of God”.

George Lansbury, UK Labour Party Leader

Some Christians call for an entirely new Christian theology, and a complete break from the clerical hierarchies of the organized churches. Recent biblical scholarship by J D Crossan, and others, focus on Jesus as a revolutionary. But even the Jewish Old Testament, which Christ’s message of love encompassed, instructs believers:

You shall not oppress your neighbour… but you shall love your neighbour as yourself. I am the Lord.

Leviticus 19:13,18

Despite the professed Christian basis of western societies, whether ostensibly Christian now, like the USA, or secular but based on a history of Christian morality, like most others, the practice of capitalism is possible because Christianity lost the proper morality of Christ. That is what allowed capitalism tp take root. The adoption of Christianity by the Roman state and the fog of pointless ceremonial and sacramentalism it introduced, caused the religion to lose its true purpose and moral compass. The earlier distortions and confusions of Christ’s simple message by the apostle to the gentiles, Paul, to make it easier for gentile Romans to accept the austere Christian religion facilitated its popularity. Ever since, Christians sacramentally and ceremonially remember God, but have forgotten what is more important—His moral teaching. “They remember God in their creeds, but ignore him in their deeds!”

Yet throughout history, right back to the primitive religious communism of the first Christians described in Acts of the Apostles many people have advocated socialism based on the teaching of Christ, “the first Christian socialist”. All Christian socialists agree that humanity must apply the “Sermon on the Mount” and much more of Christ’s practical teaching to society—“the Fatherhood of God” must necessarily mean “the Brotherhood of Man”. If Christians believe God is our father, everyone’s father, then they must accept that we are all brothers and sisters whoever we are and wherever we live on earth.

Christ’s morality is the instinctive practical morality of human life, that has been driven out by bad religion and worse thinking leading to our acceptance today of a wicked economic system. Applied Christianity is socialism—Christian Socialism! Among those who have taught principles akin to those of Christian Socialism are the Jewish prophets, Christ, Augustine in City of God, the Paulicians and Publicani, the Albigenses, the Waldenses, the Fratres Vitae Communis, John Wycliffe, the Lollards, Dante in De Monarchia, John Ball, German Anabaptists, Savonarola, and so on.

As early as 1849, Henry James Sr, in a lecture delivered in Boston, argued the identity of Christianity and socialism. Socialism is the modern “livery of Christianity”—the modern development, practical application, and manifestation of Christianity. F D Maurice and Charles Kingsley, a clergyman of the Church of England began latter day Christian Socialism. Kingsley said:

The business for which God sends a Christian priest in a Christian nation is to preach freedom, equality, and brotherhood in the fullest, deepest, widest meaning of those words.

Also involved were laymen like J M Ludlow, Thomas Hughes (Tom Brown’s Schooldays), Adin Ballou (Practical Christian Socialism), and E Vansittart Neale for whom Christian Socialism in practice meant forming co-operative associations for production and distribution:

The evolution of society is the evolution of co-operation.

S C T Dodd

Socialism is only a form of a very old principle—that of social union, or association, applied to [modern] facts and conditions… Whereas industry is at the present carried on by private capitalists, served by wage labor, it must in the future be conducted by associated or co-operating workmen, jointly owning the means of production. On grounds both of theory and history this must be accepted as the cardinal principle of Socialism.

Prof Kirkup, Encyclopedia Britannica, SV “Socialism”

The Alpha and Omega of Socialism is the transformation of private and competing capitals into a united collective capital.

Prof Albert Schäffle

What then persuades Christians like these that Jesus taught socialism? Christian socialists read the moral teaching of Jesus as being emphatically an extension of the teaching in Isaiah. Self interest as “the pivot of capitalist social action” is worldliness. What is Christ teaching but an explicit condemnation of self seeking? So what is needed is a moral economy based upon the social principles of fairness, service, co-operation, and justice while opposing possessive individualism. We have seen, capitalism is rooted in greed, a mortal sin which brings on other sins. Christian Socialism is the service of others—metaphorical sacrifice—self-sacrifice for others! So the law of society is sacrifice, not self-interest. This ought to be a necessary qualification for the Christian:

Whosoever would be chief among you, let him be servant of all.

Matthew 20:27

Bear ye one anothers burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ.

Galatians 6:2

Let no man seek his own [advantage], but each his neighbors’.

1 Corinthians 10:24

The word in brackets, “advantage”, is not in the text, but some such word has to be understood. John Gill explains that the apostle’s meaning is a man should not gratify his sensual appetite or passions that please or profit him, but should seek the profit and edification of others. Jesus Christ summed up the law and the prophets as loving God and loving man, two commandments which Christ gave as being the greatest commandment (singular) of all. In other words loving God and loving your fellow human being is a single commandment made up of two equivalent halves. Economics professor, R T Ely, founder of the Christian Social Union said:

The Church has carefully developed the science of the first commandment, love to God, or theology. It should now as carefully and scientifically develop the study of the second commandment, love to man. It is not easy to “love thy neighbour as thyself”. I do not suppose that the Almighty intended it should be easy.

Yet according to the capitalist law of competition which justifies anything profotable, the pastors of Christian Churches in the USA—eager to get bigger congregations and the bigger collections that go with them—pretend that salvation is easy, and most US Christians have convinced themselves that they will be sure to meet all their best loved relatives and friends in heaven. It is, as usual, the opposite that Christ taught. The gate to heaven was a narrow gate difficult to access. It was the one to hell that was easy to access

Enter ye in at the strait gate, for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leadeth to destruction. And many there be which go in thereat, because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.

Matthew 7:13

Greed corrupts pastors who thereby condemn their congregations with their false gospel.

New Testament and Early Christian Evidence

A key statement in the New Testament for Christian Socialism is Matthew 22:34-40 (Luke 10:25-37 adapted from the original in Mark 12:28-34) in which a lawyer, an expert in the Jewish Mosaic law, asks Jesus, “Master, which is the great commandment in the law?”. This man is a lawyer, so already knows the answer and is hoping to expose Jesus as a fake or a fool.

Knowing this, Jesus in Luke asks in return, “What is written in the law? How readest thou?”. The lawyer is forced to answer his own question:

Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind. And thy neighbour as thyself.

Interestingly, the lawyer had given two answers, to love God, and to love your neighbour as yourself. In Matthew, Jesus answers the man directly, but he also gives the two same two commandments even though only the greatest was asked for. To love your neighbour as yourself is a requirement of the Jewish law (Lev 19:18), as the Jewish lawyer knew, and Jesus made it the central message of his practical morality.

Christ commended the Lawyer’s double answer though he asked for one only—the most important commandment. The reason is that the two commandments he gave are the same one, to Love God and to love your neighbour. The conjunction is “and”, not “or”. To be saved you have to do both! Because both are necessary, neither alone is sufficient—loving your fellow human being is equivalent to loving God Himself. In Matthew 22:40, Jesus notes explicitly that two commandmentas are the greatest of all, saying:

On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.

That means, for Jesus, God, in practical terms, is your fellow human, your neighbour on this planet. God and your neighbour on earth are the same thing. No one can pretend to love God by mistreating other person. Loving other people is the only way God recognises as showing love of Him! The greatest commandment of all is the totality of the Jewish law and prophets—the whole Bible!

Elsewhere in Matthew 19:16, the questioner is not a lawyer. The original author of Matthew, considered a very Jewish gospel, must have known a lawyer could not have asked such a question without looking foolish himself, so here in Matthew the question is asked by a rich young man eager to be saved, and it is Jesus again who gives the double answer. He cites the commandments of God in essence, adding with emphasis, “You must love your neighbour as yourself”. The young man rather arrogantly said he had kept all of them. Jesus therefore added:

If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven. And come and follow me.

Nearly every biblical commentary that you read denies that God requires this of Christians! Thus John Gill says “not that either the law of God, or gospel of Christ, require this to be done of all men, and at all times. For, though it is a duty binding upon all, and always, to relieve the poor and the needy, yet a man is not obliged to give all that he has to them”. John Gill explains what God incarnated as a man and therefore speaking from his own lips says explicitly in answer to the question “what must I do to be saved” as being other than what Jesus, the Christian God incarnate tells us!

To “follow me” said by Jesus means to be a Christian. He is plainly saying that anyone who desires to be a follower of Christ must aspire to perfection—the Jewish scriptures call it being holy (Leviticus 19:2). To be perfect or holy, according to Christ, one must love God by loving your fellow men, and being poor too, like them. Only then can anyone be a Christian! Gill and his fellow deniers of Christ justify themselves by citing the letters of Paul, merely a man, not God, nor perfect, to rebut God’s personal teaching.

Having commended the expert in Luke, Jesus told him he would be saved by doing just as he said. Hoping to retrieve some dignity, the lawyer asks, “Who then is my neighbour?”, to which Jesus relates the Parable of the Good Samaritan. People who help other people is his revolutionary response—one’s neighbour is anyone in need, even people we might be expected to shun. Samaritans were seen by Jews in the way most Americans today see Moslems. Usually they hated each other.

Just in case anyone should doubt all this, let them read Christ’s description of the Last Judgement in Matthew 25:33-46, a passage that is fundamental to Christian Socialism. In summary, God says to the sheep at his right hand whom He has blessed—approved for salvation:

I was hungry and you gave me food. I was thirsty and you gave me drink. I was a stranger and you made me welcome, naked and you clothed me, sick and you visited me, in prison and you came to see me.

How could it be that these virtuous people ever actually saw God and helped him in those ways? Puzzled, they say to him in reply:

Lord when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and gave you drink? When did we see you a stranger and make you welcome, naked and clothe you, sick or in prison and go to see you?

And God replies to them:

In so far as you did it to one of the least of my brothers, you did it to me.

To the goats gathered at His left hand, the sinners condemned to hell fire, God says:

Go away from me, with your curse upon you, to the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you never gave me food. I was thirsty and you never gave me a drink. I was a stranger and you never made me welcome, naked and you never clothed me, sick and in prison and you never visited me.

Equally puzzled that they had ever met God face to face to have been able to wrong him in this way, they ask:

Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty, a stranger or naked, sick or in prison, and did not come to your help.

And God replies to them in the same vein as before:

In so far as you neglected to do this this to one of the least of these, you neglected to do it to me.

If you are a Christian and consider Christ to speak with the authority of God, because he is God, then just what could be clearer than this description of how to be saved? And what could be clearer than that God considered any human being, even the least of them, as being Himself? To abuse or fail to help any human being is to do the same to God, and only by helping your fellow human beings are you displaying your love of God. 1 John 4:20-21 confirms this precisely, remembering that “brother” in this context is “brother human being” or “fellow”. Christians were of the fellowship or brotherhood of man:

If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar, for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen? And this commandment have we from him, That he who loveth God love his brother also.

Similarly:

Whosoever doeth not righteousness is not of God, neither he that loveth not his brother.

1 John 3:10

Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God. And everyone that loveth [others] is born of God, and knoweth God.

1 John 4:7

It follows that everyone that does not love others is not born of God and cannot know Him, and that is just what John says in the next sentence:

He that loveth not knoweth not God, for God is love.

1 John 4:8

God incarnated as Christ has little or nothing to say about attending mass, or saying prayers, or having faith, or lighting candles to be saved. Christ’s teaching is altogether more moral than all that mumbo jumbo, and more practical. God is Everyman! You cannot separately love God, you can only love Him through loving people! He says “thou shalt”. It is an order, a commandment. Faith and all the rest might help, but it cannot replace what Christians must do to be saved. They have to love others. Full Stop! Why do Christians confuse this simple message with all the mumbo jumbo? The answer has been, since Paul tried to convert gentiles, that it is too hard for most of them. Paul had to make it easier to convert worldly gentiles, substituting abstract, invisible faith for practical, visible love. It follows that most “Christians” are nothing of the kind, particularly those who are most demonstrative of their beliefs like Bush and Blair, the Constantines of the modern day, maybe.

Paul the apostle, who succeeds for Christians in replacing love as the important Christian virtue with faith, because lack of it is much easier to conceal than lack of love, holds on to Christian teachings up to a point. The law is summed up as “love your neighbour as yourself” (Romans 13:9; Galatians 5:14), and “he who loves his neighbour has fulfilled the law” (Romans 13:8). Paul’s enemy, James the Just, also repeated the central message to love one’s neighbour as yourself, calling it the Royal Law (James 2:8).

In the “Sermon on the Plain” (Luke 6:20-21), Jesus says:

Blessed be ye poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are ye that hunger now, for ye shall be filled. Blessed are ye that weep now: for ye shall laugh.

The parallel in Matthew is the “Sermon on the Mount” (Matthew 5:3-10), where similar blessings are given to the poor, hungry and downtrodden.

What then does the New Testament have to say about the rich? James the Just, who is called the Brother of the Lord, echoed Christ’s view of the rich criticizing them fervently:

Come now, you rich, weep and howl for the miseries that are coming upon you. Your riches have rotted and your garments are moth-eaten. Your gold and silver have rusted, and their rust will be evidence against you and will eat your flesh like fire. You have laid up for treasure for the last days. Behold, the wages of the labourers who mowed your fields, which you have kept back by fraud, cry out, and the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts. You have lived on the earth in luxury and in pleasure, you have fattened your hearts in a day of slaughter.

James 5:1-6

Now although the Church was quickly corrupted when it entered the Roman empire, it was not a single unit, and among the different churches some adhered to the teachings of Jesus longer than others.

Basil of Caesarea (c 330-379 AD), patriarch of the Eastern monks and then Bishop of Caesarea, continued the Essenic traditions of Christ and the original Christians, and continued by some monks right into the middle ages, providing refuge for travellers, caring for the poor and sick, living humbly and frugally themselves, and condemning fraudsters and the wealthy:

Who is the covetous [greedy] man? One for whom plenty is not enough. Who is the defrauder? One who takes away what belongs to everyone. And are not you covetous, are you not a defrauder, when you keep for private use what you were given for distribution? When some one strips a man of his clothes we call him a thief. And one who might clothe the naked and does not—should not he be given the same name? The bread in your hoard belongs to the hungry, the cloak in your wardrobe belongs to the naked, the shoes you let rot belong to the barefoot, the money in your vaults belongs to the destitute. All you might help and do not—to all these you are doing wrong.

Basil of Caesarea, Sermon on the Rich Fool

John Chrysostom confessed his attitude towards the rich and wealthy:

I am often reproached for continually attacking the rich. Yes, because the rich are continually attacking the poor.

Christian Brotherhood

If we all came of the same father and mother, of Adam and Eve, how can they say or prove that they are better than we, if it be not that they make us gain for them by our toil what they spend in their pride?

John Ball

From S Augustine of Hippo’s City of God through to S Thomas More’s Utopia major Christian writers had expounded upon views that socialists found agreeable. Of major interest was the extremely strong thread of egalitarianism in the New Testament, as we have seen.

The word egalitarianism is derived from the French word égal, meaning “equal” or “level”, and so often is written as “equalitarianism”. Egalitarianism is a moral philosophy that every human being is equal. Christian egaliterianism is Christian equality—the Christian moral doctrine equivalent of Egalitarianism. So far as He is concerned, God created all human beings as equals. God made us all from mud, but in His image, and so identical in substance and morality. That to Christans is signified by the fact that we are all brothers and sisters of the same father, and brotherhood necessitates socialism:

• All ye are brethren.
  Matthew 23:8


• Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.
  Matthew 22:39


• All things whatsoever you would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them.
  Matthew 7:12


• Let everyone who possesses two shirts share with him who has none, and let him who has food do likewise.
  Luke 3:11


• Give to every man that asketh of thee.
  Luke 6:30

In God’s sight, we are all equal irrespective of sex, religion, race and ability. That does not mean we are all indistinguishable in respect of skill, interests, intelligence, health or physical strength, but that we are all equally valuable. Sociality requires co-operation and co-operation allows us all to contribute to the common good, to the best of our ability. But co-operation with others has to be voluntary or we are slaves, and so anyone who feels they are not being treated fairly has to be able to withdraw their co-operation. It is what capitalists call a strike, and try to stop by law! The Christian egalitarian holds to the fundamental equality of women and men of all ethnic types, and all age groups. Paul wrote:

There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female, for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.

Galatians 3:28

Where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free, but Christ is all, and in all.

Colossians 3:11

“Christ is all, and in all” is a repetition of the truth that God is all of us, and in all of us, for Christ is God, Christians tell us. It follows that robbing, abusing, defrauding, mocking, or otherwise harming any other person is harming Christ and God. As the intrinsic equality of us all is that God created us all in His image, we have to dedicate whatever abilities we have to the service of our fellow human beings. One Christian egalitarian community writes:

We believe in the equality and essential dignity of men and women of all ethnicities, ages, and classes. We recognize that all persons are made in the image of God and are to reflect that image in the community of believers, in the home, and in society. We believe that men and women are to diligently develop and use their God-given gifts for the good of the home, church and society.

Christians for biblical Equality

One of the failings of Christianity is that it does not primarily base its code of behaviour on the teaching of Christ. Since the crucifixion, Christ’s teaching has been watered down to allow it to fit more easily with the lifestyles of others in the wide world who could not live the life of Christ.

The spallation of Christianity then continued until now there are literally myriads of Christian sects, each of which has found some fault with the plain socialistic teaching of Christ. Many of these Christians place themselves above God by declaring the impossibility of all men being equal. A child cannot be considered equal to its parent, they say, because the parent must have the authority to teach the child the proper way to behave in society. Similarly, some people commit crimes or sins, and have to be punished, so cannot be considered as meriting equal treatment.

But everyone is subject to their parents at some stage in life, so they are not being treated unequally through the need to obey their parents when, temporarily, they are children. Nor is anyone who is so unloving as to choose to harm others in society free of social justice—society is entitled to restrain them to prevent those who behave in a brotherly way from being harmed. Brotherhood requires brotherly love, and those who infringe the trust of others deserve punishment, but with compassion—that is justice! Social justice is not arbitrary, or applied at the whim of one or a few people, but is meted out with loving concern for the welfare of both the person and society as a whole.

An interpretation of the parallel passages, Matthew 20:25–26a; Mark 10:42; Luke 22:25:

Ye know that the princes of the gentiles exercise dominion over them, and they that are great exercise authority upon them. But it shall not be so among you…

…suggests that Jesus even forbids any hierarchy in Christian relationships.

Christian Sharing—Communism

Christian communists consider that the teachings of Jesus Christ compel Christians to support communism as God’s preferred social and economic system. Christian communism is the same as Christian socialism, but those particularly who have studied Marx see the first Christians as responding to the social imbalances of the Hellenistic Roman world by attempting to live a communal life by returning to the primitive communism of early men, which has conditioned our social instincts. They do not agree with secular Marxists that religion is inevitably wrong, but they do not necessarily reject Marx’s dictum that religion is the opium of the people, in that Christianity has been misused as a psycho-social drug to take people’s minds from the troubles that Christ sought to end through his egalitarianism.

So, many of the historical, political-economic and social aspects of Marxist communism are acceptable as compatible with the practical aims of Christ’s moral teaching. Christ valued love, justice, kindness, mercy, and the character to be able to serve other people. Our capitalism society values diametrically opposite qualities in people—greed, selfishness and ruthlessness. Christ’s answer was communal living—communism.

It is hard for anyone who has read the gospels to comprehend how Jesus can be seen as supporting capitalism in any way at all. He told Christians to provide for the sick and the destitute, demonstrating in person what sort of good deeds that meant. Even Christians who persist in denying the thrust of Christ’s teaching accept that Jesus wanted Christians to provide for the needy. Yet the capitalist system ultimately causes poverty among the mass of the people. If it has seemed not so in the West since WWII it is only because the poverty was exported to the third world where already poor people were robbed of their resources, precisly as the Romans did at the time of Christ.

Jesus was aware of the oppression and bondage of the poor existing in his day. “The good news” (gospel) brought by Christ was the liberation of the poor from captivity and oppression:

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.

Luke 4:18–19

Many biblical passages support communism as the most ethical social system and so necessarily that of the kingdom of God on earth. In Luke (1:49–53), Mary delivered the following description of the works of God:

He hath put down the mighty from their seats, and exalted them of low degree. He hath filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he hath sent empty away.

One of Jesus’ most famous remarks regarding the wealthy can be found in Matthew 19:24:

It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.

Do not be misled by your pastor—this passage is saying rich men cannot get into heaven. The same metaphor of a camel going through the eye of a needle is common to both Matthew and Luke, it also being used in Luke 18:25. It follows in logic that the nature of the kingdom of God is such that to be able to enter it a rich man must cease to be rich. However, Jesus Christ goes on to say that what is impossible with men is not impossible with God (Matthew 19:25–26; Mark 10:26–27; Luke 18:26–27), implying that the grace of God can save a rich man, for instance by enabling rich people to willingly surrender the riches which should otherwise exclude them from grace. Christians have diluted this so much for the benefit of the rich that there is no effective restriction now on rich men getting to heaven, according to modern clerics of most Christian sects, many of whom are using Christianity as a way to get rich themselves.

Communistic attitudes and implications can be found in Leviticus 25:35–38:

And when your brother has become poor, and his hand has failed with you, then you shall help him. He shall live with you as an sojourner and a tenant. You shall take no interest or increase from him, and you shall fear your God and the life of your brother is with you. You shall not give silver to him with interest, and you shall not give your food for increase.

This is the Law of Moses, God’s commandment not merely an exhortation or option. It bears on the question of compulsory or voluntary relinquishing of wealth as an entry requirement to Christian communities or a way for God’s will to be realised in our societies.

Thomas J Haggerty, a Catholic priest from New Mexico, USA, and a founder of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) is an example of the Christian communist. Haggerty became a Marxist before his ordination in 1892 and was later influenced by anarcho-syndicalism. Haggerty’s archbishop suspended him from the Church when he was touring mining camps in 1903 for urging miners in Colorado to revolt.

Communal Living in Acts of the Apostles

Christian communists find all the evidence they need in the bible to suggest the first Christians, including the apostles, lived as communists in the years following Jesus’s death and resurrection. Acts 2 and 4 are evidence that the first Christians lived in a communist society. It follows that as disciples of Jesus, that it must have been taught by him and practiced by them during the period of his ministry:

And all the believers were together and had all things common. And they sold possessions and goods and distributed them to all, according as anyone had need. And continuing steadfastly with one mind day by day in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, they shared food in gladness and simplicity of heart…

Acts 2:44–47

And the heart and the soul were one of the multitude of those who believed. And no one said any of the possessions to be his own, but all things were common to them. And with great power the apostles gave testimony of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all. For neither was anyone needy among them, for as many as were owners of lands or houses, selling them, they bore the value of the things being sold, and laid them at the feet of the apostles. And it was distributed to each according as any had need.

Acts 4:32–35

No interpretation is necessary from any pastor here. No one among them was needy because those who had land and houses to sell brought their value into the community. That is socialism in practice. Acts 5:1–10 is additional evidence that the apostles and early Christians were all communists:

But a certain man named Ananias, with Sapphira his wife, sold a possession, And kept back part of the price, his wife also being privy to it, and brought a certain part, and laid it at the apostles’ feet. But Peter said, Ananias, why hath Satan filled thine heart to lie to the Holy Ghost, and to keep back part of the price of the land? While it remained, was it not thine own? and after it was sold, was it not in thine own power? why hast thou conceived this thing in thine heart? thou hast not lied unto men, but unto God. And Ananias hearing these words fell down, and gave up the ghost: and great fear came on all them that heard these things. And the young men arose, wound him up, and carried him out, and buried him.

And it was about the space of three hours after, when his wife, not knowing what was done, came in. And Peter answered unto her, Tell me whether ye sold the land for so much? And she said, Yea, for so much. Then Peter said unto her, How is it that ye have agreed together to tempt the Spirit of the Lord? behold, the feet of them which have buried thy husband are at the door, and shall carry thee out. Then fell she down straightway at his feet, and yielded up the ghost: and the young men came in, and found her dead, and, carrying her forth, buried her by her husband.

Ananias and Sapphira were struck dead for keeping part of their wealth for themselves even though they had joined the Christian community. It is strong evidence that the sharing of all wealth was obligatory on pain of death for early Christians. Peter explains clearly enough that the pair need not have joined the community and so could have kept their wealth. But, to be a Christian, they had to give it up to the community, just as Essenes did. Consequently, some communist Christians think refusing to share their wealth disqualifies people from being Christians at all. It did not mean that none of them had possessions. Some sayings of Jesus make it clear that Christians were entitled to some possessions to serve their personal needs, their scrip and their clothes, for example, though anyone was required to share even a spare coat if another had none.

Anticommunist Response

The anticommunist, W Cleon Skousen, thought Acts 2 and 4 did not support apostolic communism. Anti-communist Christians believe that while Jesus meant Christians to provide for the sick and the destitute, he did not require them to share their goods. They assert that Acts 2:44 says that those who “had all things in common” chose to do this because they were among those that believed (pisteuo, have faith). They claim those that believed were only a part of the early Christian brotherhood. This implies there must have been Christians among Christ’s followers who did not believe! Is that credible? What does it mean? They did not believe in God? They did not believe in what Jesus was teaching them? This pronlem is averted elsewhere, “believed” being translated as “agreed”!

Skousen, in similar vein, argues that Acts 4:32 implies that only those who “were of one heart and of one soul” had “all things common”. Therefore, in the anticommunist view, a communistic lifestyle was an optional choice made by devout Christians—it was not a requirement. Again, it implies that some of these Christians were not of one heart and one soul, but the verse is clear that the multitude of them were of one heart and one soul. It is another way of describing those who believed, and those who believed must have believed in Christ. They were Jews. They believed in God.

Anticommunist Christians, like Skousen, say Peter was not disturbed because Ananias and Sapphira failed to share all their wealth, but because they had lied to God. They note that Peter made it clear that the wealth belonged to Ananias and Sapphira to do with as they wished, and so supported the notion of private property. They deliberately do not notice that the wealth was their own private property until they became Christians, but not thereafter:

While it remained, was it not thine own? and after it was sold, was it not in thine own power?

Peter could have had no objection to the pair keeping part of the price if it was merely a gift, and it was acceptable for them to keep the rest. There was no need for them to have lied by pretending it was all that they had unless poverty was an obligation for the first disciples. Plainly it was. They were “The Poor”, “the Ebionim”. By being poor, they were blessed! By pretending to be poor they were not blessed, and had lied to God and the Holy Ghost.

The firm stance taken by Peter (or God) in the story, killing the pair, shows that not fully committing to Christianity was right from the beginning a serious business. All wealth had to be shared with the Christian community. God ordained it as a Christian duty. It may suggest that Christians were to live apart, separated, that is, from the profane population, as the first ones evidently did, but it is not necessarily so. The predecessors of the Christians, the Essenes, had both communities that were separated and shared everything, and “members” who lived among the profane but retained their beliefs, and had rules and regulations about interacting with them.

Some think sharing applies only to those living in Christian communes. What then when a Christian decides to leave the commune? Do they remain a Christian and do they get back what they put in? Certainly the apostles lived in such communes, and the story of Sapphira and Ananias shows that sharing all wealth was compulsory for anyone who joined the commune. The story implies also that anything given to the commune was retained by it, Peter speaking of it being within Ananias’s “power” (ownership) even after it had been sold, but not, evidently, after he had joined.

Nothing explicit in the canon text declares the practice of selling possessions and distributing them to the poor was optional. Just remember the young man who asked Jesus what he should do to obtain eternal life. Jesus replied, “keep the commandments”, but when pressed further, Christ told him (Matthew 19:16–24): “If thou wilt be perfect, go sell what thou hast, and give to the poor”. The counter argument that no one is perfect is not what Christ said. He was saying that perfection (or holiness), whatever else it requires, requires the one seeking it to be poor.

The real point is that Christians were meant to be saints, role models for other people. How could Christ’s ideals be transmitted at all, if the Christians themselves did not practice them? Of course, Christians now do not, except perhaps some monks and nuns, but they were expected to then. The disciples of Christ were meant to be Christs themselves not merely “Christians”.

The traditional Christian view that Christ was no socialist, is that Christ was merely suggesting how people might live! He was not ordering them, or using compulsion, but just encouraging them. So he was not threatening them with damnation when they treated their fellows badly as did the rich man Dives who found himself in hell looking up to the poor man begging by his gate who was now above him in heaven? He was not really blessing the poor and merciful signifying that their destiny again was heaven but was simply patting them on the back and saying “you should be all right, my friends”? Nor could he have meant it when he is reported as saying:

Whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple.

Luke 14:33

Jesus Christ was a mendicant. He never owned anything himself, and it should be remembered that he admonished the young man in Matthew 19:16–24 with these explicit words, “If thou wilt be perfect, go sell what thou hast, and give to the poor”. Even so, Christians remain divided about this need of sharing everything, thereby becoming a Poor One.

A Capitalist Parable?

More obfuscation comes from the sheer incompetence or deceit of Christian commentaries and commentators who assume that a parable is always positive, so to speak. They are meant to commend the action described. Yet that is not always so, and it is clearly so to those who see Christ as recomending socialistic living for his hearers. One such is the Parable of the Talents in Matthew 25:14–30.

The parable deals with a man who entrusted different sums of money—talents, a huge sum of money!—to three different servants while he went on a long foreign journey. Upon his return, the servants with two talents and five talents had “multiplied” (doubled) their money but the last one given a single talent returned it with no profit. The master blesses the first two and curses the third.

Christians like W Cleon Skousen, keen on capitalism, see the story as commending entrepreneurship. The rich man, a lord, evidently is considered to be Christ himself or God, so that the actions of the servants are justly commended. But see how the careful servant, who does not risk the talent he was given, addresses this man considered to be God or Christ:

Lord, I knew thee that thou art an hard man, reaping where thou hast not sown, and gathering where thou hast not strawed, and I was afraid, and went and hid thy talent in the earth. Lo, there thou hast that is thine.

Matthew 25:24-25

Proving that the “wicked slave” was not just bad mouthing his lord, the lord admits his faults precisely:

Thou wicked and slothful servant, thou knewest that I reap where I sowed not, and gather where I have not strawed. Thou oughtest therefore to have put my money to the exchangers, and then at my coming I should have received mine own with usury.

The servant’s lord turns out to be himself a wicked man, a thief, a usurer, and a “hard man”. Such a person cannot be commending anything commendable when he commends the first two servants. The lord speaks favorably of usury, telling the wicked servant that the least he could have done was to “put his money to the exchangers” so as to receive interest. Usury was against the Jewish law!

Jesus is quite obviously describing in his parable how one should not behave. It was how a rich ruler did behave. He was criticizing this lord, probably meant to be Herod or one of his sons, and the servants who did his bidding were publicans taxing the people excessively to raise such huge sums! The one servant who did not increase the rich man’s wealth was the one berated. The parable illustrates the rich man’s greed, and his effect on other men forced to behave in the same way, and injustice to the servant who refused to raise more money for he lord who had more than enough as it was, despite his fear of him, by simply returning what he’d been given.

Christians conditioned against socialism have to turn to the Jewish scriptures for many of their arguments, even though Jesus is considered to have abrogated the Jewish Law as it was by replacing it with the law of loving others, which served to encompass the whole of the law. They are therefore not being Christian in doing this, common though it is. So, from the Genesis account of the creation of mankind in the image of God, and the law of Moses, they argue that we must be free to own property Thus:

By creating man in His image, God gave every person control over their own faculties, and since individuals are not superior or inferior to one another, property rights independent of others are part of the order of creation.

David Gernhard

It is typically tortuous, not least in the light of Jesus causing a disturbance at Herod’s Temple in Jerusalem by overturning the tables of the moneychangers and chasing them out of the court for making the Temple a “den of thieves”, according to Mark 11:17, Matthew 21:12–14; John 2:14–16:

And Jesus went into the temple of God, and cast out all them that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the moneychangers, and the seats of them that sold doves, And said unto them, It is written, My house shall be called the house of prayer, but ye have made it a den of thieves.

Matthew 21:12–14

Not only did God incarnated have no regard for the wealth of the money changers and animal sellers in the temple forecourt, he called them thieves! The accusation of a thievery is in the direct recorded words of God Himself, in the incarnated form of Jesus Christ. Proudhon said property is theft, but albeit unseen by traditional Christians, God said practically the same thing 1800 years earlier. And who can argue that all property was not originally stolen from the commons? God did not dole out property, it belonged to us all, until some gangs with might, main and the use of weapons stole it from people who held it in common. The Native Americans held the land in common until it was stolen from them by Westerners armed with guns, who partitioned it out to the highest bidder. Was this God’s will?

Tha violence is God’s violence. There was nothing illegal about these men being there to exchange money so that sacrificial animals could be bought by pilgrims in local currency, but they were not making honest exchanges. That is entirely the trouble with capitalism. The capitalists have to make increasing returns on their capital, but generally returns tend to fall, and desperate capitalists will then take desperate methods like crookery to succeed!

According to the Law of Moses in Exodus, the Levites are the tribe designated as priests, and so were apportioned no land in the division of Canaan to live on. Instead it was the duty of the other tribes to feed them through the animals and grain brought for sacriffice, part of which was allocated to the priests. This system had let the priests get very rich, by the time of Jesus. The priests, bar the occupying Romans, were the ruling class of Judaea. By overturning the tables devoted to their sacerdotal business, Jesus was objecting to their greed and corruption.

The Christians who try to justify capitalism by reference to the Mosaic law, having found some instances they want to cite, have a blind spot for a whole host of Jewish laws that they do not wish to see. For example, debts were annulled every Jubilee, including debts paid for by voluntary slavery, so that slaves were allowed to go free. We read God declaring:

The land shall not be sold for ever, for the land is mine…

Land is the basis of all capitalism. It was, so to speak, the original capital, and the age of capitalism was financed by the wanton robbery of the New World by the Spanish and Portugese in the sixteenth century, and merged into the landowning class, the nobility, by purchase and marriage. In Europe the common lands were stolen directly from the people by vio;ent eviction and enclosure. All of the people who did it were Christians including the clergy! So, no property belongs to those who call it theirs. As Christians, they know it belongs to God, and God created the world for everything in it. Then Christ emphatically said:

Blessed be ye poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.

Luke 6:20

Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.

Matthew 5:5

He did not say “blessed are the rich”, or “blessed are the overbearing”, and, whereas he does bless other groups of people, he does not include moneygrubbers of any kind. Quite the opposite. He says:

But woe unto you that are rich!

Luke 6:24

Luke’s list of beatitudes is shortened compared with Matthew’s, but he does include matching “woes”, and it is certain that for every blessing their was a “woe” in Matthew too, but they have been suppressed. Curious that!

Liberation Theology

Liberation theology is a movement in Christianity, initiating from South American Catholicism. The name came from Gustavo Gutierrez, whose book, A Theology of Liberation (1971), was influenced by historical Catholic organizations like the Catholic worker priest movement and the Christian youth workers of France. Gutierrez popularized the slogan “preferential option for the poor”, noting that God has a preference for people who are poor, meek and defenseless.

It sees the teachings of Jesus Christ as requiring the liberation of the poor from an unenviable social situation. Its advocates are inspired by Christ’s practical morality rooted in his words and acts in the gospels, but based on an objective analysis of the real social situation in which we live, to find through praxis the betterment of the poor and oppressed. Praxis is the application and refinement of theory through practice, and that means, for a Christian, actively doing God’s will as taught and demonstrated in practice by Christ, but applied to the reality of today. The realities of today are determined by Marxist anaysis so that the material basis for Christ’s teaching of a brotherhood of man can be realised, if necessary, and it commonly is, by expropriating the exploiters. Accordingly some critics deem it Christian Marxism, intending it pejoratively. But Jose Porfirio Miranda found Marx and Engels to be broadly sympathetic towards Christianity and towards the text of the bible, although neither believed in a supernatural god.

Liberation theology is a return to the gospel of Christ and the early church, and so is a form of Christian socialism or communism. Orthodox Catholics accept the Catholic Church as being of the establishment, even when the establishment is authoritarian, ever since the adoption of the religion as the official religion of the Roman empire by Constantine. In A Theology for the Social gospel, Rauschenbusch complains that the Church has concentrated on the duty of the individual in society but has allowed powerful people to hide behind powerful institutions which the Church has ignored:

It has not evoked faith in the will and power of God to redeem the permanent institutions of human society from their inherited guilt of oppression and extortion.

The Vatican siezed on this as doing the opposite, detracting from the individual’s sins in favour of systemic sin. In fact it was angry that the Catholic Church hierarchy in South America was seen being among the privileged class of exploiters that oppressed the people since the Spanish conquistadors. Outside Latin America, some of liberation theology’s chief advocates are Protestants like Jürgen Moltmann and Frederick Herzog.

Rauschenbusch felt that if the Christian churches continue to neglect institutionaized sin, it will fall to others to correct it! Christ taught of a kingdom of God, which churches have uniformly attributed to a spiritual heaven accessible only after death, but that is a huge error, as The Lord’s Prayer proves:

…Thy kingdom come.
Thy will be done in earth,
As it is in heaven…

Christ, absolutely without question, meant the kingdom of God to be realized in earth as well as in heaven! The was to be realized by the Golden Rule implemented by universal love—“in earth”! As all people are God, God knows every wrong done to him in human form. The instrument of its realization was considered by Christ’s immediate followers to be the Church, but the Church was corrupted by spreading into the Roman empire under the influence of Paul who watered it down to suit the gentiles. Rauschenbusch calls Christians back to Christ’s practical doctrine of “the kingdom of God in earth”. Necessarily today it is even more a revolutionary, social and political force than it was then. If violent social action were to be needed to change things for the poor, it is justified because that was Christ’s meaning in speaking of bringing a sword (Matthew 10:34; Luke 22:36).

Liberation theology also sought to change the social organization of the church from that of a top down extended hierarchy, to an egalitarian model of Christian base communities—a bottom up movement of lay practitioners, rather than the Church hierarchy.

The negative attitude of the Vatican to Liberation Theology was nothing new. The Roman Catholicic Pope, Leo XIII (1878-1903), criticized socialism vehemently in his 1878 papal encyclical Quod Apostolici Muneris. Then his 1891 encyclical, Rerum Novarum or “On the Conditions of Labor”, began a series of pronouncements on social questions that continued through the twentieth century. In the face of their perceived threat of socialism, the pope was establishing an alliance with the bourgeoisie while simultaneously suggesting that unestricted capitalism and “the misery and wretchedness pressing so unjustly on the majority of the working class” was wrong. It “utterly rejected” “the main tenet of socialism”, social ownership, in favour of emphasizing the right to own property:

Hence, it is clear that the main tenet of socialism, community of goods, must be utterly rejected, since it only injures those whom it would seem meant to benefit, is directly contrary to the natural rights of mankind, and would introduce confusion and disorder into the commonwealth. The first and most fundamental principle, therefore, if one would undertake to alleviate the condition of the masses, must be the inviolability of private property.

Rerum Novarum

Pius XI (1922-1939) again led the Catholic sheep in an attempt to denigrate socialism in his 1931 epistle Quadragesimo Anno. He wrote…

…no one can be at the same time a good Catholic and a true socialist.

Catholic clerics were accusing socialists of attempting to overthrow civil society, and Christians, they argued, ought to defend the status quo, as was proper for disciples of a Prince of Peace.

Free Will

A criticism of Christian socialism is that socialism or communism infringes on people’s free will by denying them the freedom to do as they wish. The only justification for restricting freedom is to stop people from infringing other people’s rights, as when they are punished for some crime. Some go so far as to say people have to be allowed to choose good or evil for themselves! It is an extreme of libertarian freedom, and certainly one that no one enjoys in capitalist society, except perhaps the topmost capitalists themselves. For, if there are no restrictions on humans exercising their free will, then all crimes would have been legalized, at least to the extent that everyone would, like a dog, be permitted a first bite!

All law restricts freedom to a degree, and certain crimes are almost universally considered wrong—like murder, theft, and rape. People are never free to do just as they like, and few would want it any other way. Socialists and therefore Christian socialists see freedom as not being absolute or even being of one type. Poor and oppressed people are less interested in abstract freedoms to do things they cannot imagine being able to do ever, but are very interested in being free from certain basic needs—hunger and poverty, insecurity, ill-health. Freedom from hardship and misery is more important to those on the breadline—often because their rulers take from them more than they can afford—than having notional freedom to, say, start their own business.

The Christian opponents of Christian communists will emphasize the freedom they take for granted but which does few of them any good, freedom to do things, whereas the Christian communist wants people to be free from worry and toil, then and only then do they feel free to want to do whatever interests them. That is the beginning of the ultimate state—communism.

“Free will” as a universal human right was unknown for almost everyone in biblical times. How can a slave be free? Even among the ancient Greeks, considered the founders of modern democracy, no one was free except citizens, and they excluded slaves, foreigners, women and children. Essentially only property owning men were free citizens able to participate in the government of the city.

While traditional Christianity dominated—the Christianity that ignored most of Christ’s practical socialistic ethic—people undertood their own free will did not exist. Christians were slaves to God—as the followers of ancient gods usually were—and had to bow to God’s will. “Thy Will be done in earth, as it is in heaven…”. Even in the first chapters of Genesis in the Jewish scptures, Adam and Eve had to defy God regarding his order not to consume the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Our idea of free will came in the sixteenth century emerging from the Renaissance, the Reformation and the succeeding Age of Enlightenment.

Martin Luther, considered a founder of Protestantism, a rebellion against the Catholic Christian hegemony, condemned the peasants for rebelling in 1524 and 1525. The rebellion was against the German princes who were themselves dismantling feudalism, the economic system by which people were tied to the land which was notionally held on trust by the princes for God as long as the Holy Roman Empire continued. The princes wanted the land for themselves, particularly so that they could maximize the income from it in rents, taxes and tithes which previously had gone partly to the Church. Luther was a bit sorry for the peasants who were the source of income of the Church and the princes, and were losing what was again notionally for them their interest in the land as God’s provision for them. But their anger at the rich prelates and princes was too much for Luther and he wrote a diatribe opposing the peasants and justifying their slaughter by the nobility:

Whosoever can, should smite, strangle, and stab, secretly or publicly, and should remember that there is nothing more poisonous, pernicious, and devilish than a rebellious man… the gospel does not make goods common, except in the case of those who do of their own free will what the apostles and disciples did in Acts 4. They did not demand, as do our insane peasants in their raging, that the goods of others—of a Pilate and a Herod—should be common, but only their own goods. Our peasants, however, would have other men’s goods common, and keep their own goods for themselves. Fine Christians these! I think there is not a devil left in hell, they have all gone into the peasants.

Luther, Against the Robbing and Murdering Hordes of Peasants

The German princes obliged, turning their knights and footmen against the badly armed peasants and killing 100,000, around a third of them. It was not much longer before Luther’s own disciples, the Protestants, and the Catholics were vying with each other in the religious wars for the brutality crown of Europe. Fine Christians, those!

It is as hard to compare Luther with Christ as it is Paul. Both distorted Christ’s teaching.

Socialism

Sidney Webb, founder of the LSE and prominent Fabian, said:

It seems almost impossible to bring people to understand, that the abstract word “Socialism” denotes, like “radicalism”, not an elaborate plan of society, bnt a principle of social action. Socialism inevitably suffers if identified with any particular scheme, or even with the best vision we can yet form of collectivism itself. People become so much concerned with details that they miss the principle. “They cannot see the forest for the trees.” The moment will never come when we can say, “Now Socialism is established”.

It may be true. No one has a crystal ball that lets them see the future, but what distinguishes the human animal is that we can construct things in our imaginations, then try to bring them about. And we know full well what spocialism is broadly speaking, and that the Christian ought to be able to comprehend it, for the point of socialism is that everyone follows the Golden Rule in their daily lives:

As ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise.

Luke 6:31

Socialism means being for poor people and against anyone who wants to oppress them, for the poor and against the rich. Jesus repeatedly spoke of delivering people caught in the unjust system which exploits them:

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor… to preach deliverance to the captives.

Luke 4:18

The gospels telling the “good news” were partly stories about how the Christian incarnated God behaved towards those who lived on the earth with Him. These examples were included in the gospels because they were important examples of how we all we meant to behave. If you believe Jesus was God then you have been shown and taught directly by God how you should treat others. If only faith mattered then these lessons, by example and by parable are irrelevant.

Jesus plainly says it is impossible to love God without loving one’s fellow man, and that meant doing things to help them. Doing things is what theologians call “works”, and they have taught for centuries that works do not matter. Well, they can teach it, obviously, but everyone should be clear that it is not Christ’s teaching.

No true Christian can remain indifferent while hundreds of thousands of his fellow humans are ill-fed, badly housed, illiterate, and without proper medical care. Pained by the sight of so much suffering, many high minded Christians have turned to socialism as the solution.

Bertell Ollman, Socialism is Practical Christianity

The big lie spread by those Christians who took over the Church after Jesus had been crucified was that only faith mattered. Jesus’s life and teachings illustrated concern for other people, and that is shown by loving them! “Loving” means “caring for”, and “sharing with” these other people. The point of love is that everyone is secure when everyone does it! Love means co-operating to help each other.

By holding all of their possessions in common, no one goes in need, but no one needs to have an excess. Under socialism everyone is entitled to their own home, their own furnishings, their own personal belongings including personal family heirlooms handed down to them, and their own savings to spend just as they choose—except as private capital. Socialists do not object to any salaries that are earned. They object to incomes that are not earned, disproportionate and unfair rates of pay, bonuses, fortunes made by speculation in land and in stocks like oil, or by cornering in barrels of pork and grain! Moreover, everyone’s usefulness to society is what they can put into it to serve it for the good of everyone in it. That is the opposite of capitalism.

It is the gift of God to all men that they should eat and drink and take pleasure in all their toil.

Ecclesiastes 3:13

The opposite of capitalism is socialism. In socialism, everyone has an equal burden of work and shares equally in the good things that society has to offer. There is no poverty, because all the idle land and machines have been put to use to produce the things people want. Production is aimed at satisfying the needs of the masses rather than the profit interest of a few. There is no unemployment, because a plan has been created to put everyone to work. Illiteracy is abolished, and the diseases that plague people are reduced to the few for which advanced medicine has not found a cure. Each individual is given the chance of developing himself to the fullest, with everyone helping him in whatever way they can.

If someone works on their own as a hairdresser, a publican, a small farmer or a craftsman, they will continue to do so, or become a member of a local co-operative. So long as they remain small, employing themself and their immediate family, and therefore exploiting no one, the choice is theirs, and, no matter what they choose, socialism will bring them outstanding benefits by a fair price for their products, security during ill health and old age, improved educational, medical, recreational, and cultural facilities, and much else.

The road to socialism is through public ownership of large estates and factories—the replacement of private capitalists by the workers, the consumers, the local community, or the national Government. People will thereby own their places of work, either directly or through some body duly elected to represent them. Those who worked for large firms and estates will become the common owners of their enterprises because they will become co-operatives.

How is a communist society actually achieved by Christian communists? The answer is in just the same way as Marx envisaged. Violent revolution is not a sine qua non of communism. Non violence is always preferred, but the communist recognizes that no class holding on to power is likely to yield it easily, and certainly will not bow to a democratic verdict of the people unless they can see no way to resist. In other words, the revolutionaries do not will a violent transition, but the counter-revolutionaries will normally use violence to stop the revolution:

For the nation and kingdom that will not serve thee shall perish, yea, those nations shall be utterly wasted.

Isaiah 60:12

Christian communists commit themselves to nonviolence, but that includes passive resistance which can be very effective. When it is not being, however, it is idle to pretend that active resistance does not become necessary so long as justice is to be done. Isaiah thought so.

The expropriators have to be expropriated for they will not yield of their own will. So, the businesses that they own and run at a profit have to be nationalized or turned into co-operative societies. Christians who support capitalism call this theft, even though they know or ought to know that Christ accused the profiteers in the temple whose tables he violently overturned of being gangs of thieves. They were the capitalists of their time, legitimately using the temple and its cult to make money out of the pilgrims and those seeking atonement by sacrifice. So God declared economic exploitation institutionalized theft just as capitalists exploit workers by forcing them to accept in pay less than they have produced.

Socialism is brotherhood. It is fraternal. It is necessarily democratic. Undemocratic Socialism is a contradiction. Once people treat each other as equals, with repect and with lovingkindness, then democracy and socialism both exist. In co-operatives, socialism works in a microcosm.

Socialism does not mean what its enemies says it does. As it is, there are a few rich people. They own the banks, the mines, the factories and the distribution systems. They hate socialism, because it would take away their special privileges, the power of their money, and make them no better than us. These selfish people, who also own the press and the radio, try to scare people off socialism by telling them lies about it. Don’t be fooled. As socialism is practical Christianity, every Christian’s duty is to help bring it about quickly. And, inasmuch as it is practical Christianity, run by people committed to Christ’s practical moral principles, how can it be wicked as its enemies say it is?

I emphasize the word “practical” because the failing of Christianity is that too many people think they can be purely theoretical, or rather theological, Christians. Remember that Christ was explicit—no one can be a Christian unless they love their fellow humans in deeds, not just in words and thoughts. To win a victory for equality and brotherhood enough of us have to want it and to will it.

In practice, socialism is an end to capitalist injustice, opposed to the greedy rich:

Woe unto you that are rich, for ye have received your consolation.

Luke 6:24

No man can serve two masters… Ye cannot serve God and mammon.

Matthew 6:24

And the bible describes the system that keeps people rich as “one soweth, and another reapeth” (John 4:37). That is as concise a description, and indeed an explanation, of capitalism as you can get. So we can say to that wealthy few who owned our large estates and factories, when we take them into public ownership:

You… reap that whereon ye bestowed no labor.

John 4:38

From here on in that robbery will cease!

Jesus gave a useful test of good and bad by using the analogy of fruit trees—“by their fruits ye shall know them” (Matthew 7:20). The good tree bears good fruit and the bad tree does not, but bears rotten fruit. The fruits of capitalism, however good they may seem temporarily, always end up bad. Capitalism goes through perpetual cycles of boom and bust, ending up in a major crash like the one of 2008 and the one of 1929.

But even when it seems to be working for us in the West, it is at the expense of poor people overseas who are impoverished by mass produced goods made in factories here. Then, at a later date, the capitalists will impoverish the people here by moving their production units to factories there, where people are so poor they will work for cents rather than dollars. So, unemployment is the fruit of capitalism, and poverty, disease, illiteracy, envy, and crime follow inevitably. Are these what Jesus and his Father in Heaven want Christians to cause by accepting the lie that they approved of the selfishness and money worship necessary for capitalism? Wendell Phillips said:

In combining, perpetual, legalized private wealth, lies our danger today.

Some ask, “where is the capital to come from to carry on public works?”. The answer is where it comes from today, from the workers. Only it would go into the hands of government, for the good of all, not into private pockets to be spent for trophy wives, diamonds and private yachts.

Socialism is necessarily democratic, being a fellowship—a fraternity and sorority. If the state is truly democratic, state socialism is possible. If the state is not truly democratic, state socialism is impossible. American governments (National, State or Municipal) are democratic only in name. Government in the USA has justly been called “a government of money, for money, and by money”.

What makes government corrupt today? The power of money amassed in a few private hands! This is what corrupts our parties, controls elections, bribes legislators, purchases legislature, not of necessity by open bribery, but just as truly and more effectively by making it the interest of electors and legislators to serve the interests of capital.

Rev W D P Bliss, What is Christian Socialism?, 1890!

The expansion of the state is socialistic only when the state is a true democracy, the organic unity of the whole people. Welfare capitalism is not socialism. It is statism. Under democratic socialism, government could not nake appointments. Managers and heads of departments would not be appointed, but elected by the workers in the division or department.

Socialism is justice:

Give and it shall be given unto you… for with the same measure that ye mete withal it shall be measured to you again.

Luke 6:38

Socialism and individuality are not contraries, nor are they principles to be applied to different things. They are complimentary principles. Socialism, without individuality, would be dead, a system that did not move. Individuality, without socialism, would be a universe with no orde—chaos. It is to chaos that individualistic business tends. We must be neither dogmatically, narrowly socialistic, nor individualistic; we must be both.

Those who fear that Socialism would check individuality, do not realize again how little true individuality we have today. On question of personal liberty, Mill surely may be allowed some weight, and Mill declares:

The restraints of communism (socialism) would be freedom, in comparison with the present condition of the majority of the human race.

If, by working a few hours a day, every man could earn an independent, honest income for himself and his family, as would be possible under socialism, it would do more to develop free individuality than any possible amount of mere individualism.

Capitalists tell us, and too many believe them:

There is no need of socialism today. If any man is poor, it is his own fault.

Those who say this have little acquaintance with our working classes. They have heard of a few cases of idleness, and they say the rest are the same. It is popular propaganda today. But Prof Carroll D Wright showed in a depression long ago that there were thousands in Massachusetts alone, able and willing to work who could get no work to do. That is still true. In the UK there are almost ten people seeking every job vacancy, so 90 percent of applicants will fail. And even when they do, the minimum wage is so low that many families can barely survive even frugally desoite having both adults in work. Just how Christian is that?

Under competition, weakness of any kind causes people to go to the wall. But what do we do then? Leave them to suffer? Socialism is the community caring for its weaker members, educating them, placing them in proper environment. When people say that the poor are unworthy, then that is all the more need to help them by policies like co-operation, profit sharing, a shorter working week, supporting trade unionism, enforcing arbitration, developing municipal socialism, and so on. The Christian socialist says:

Concentrate your energies. Do that by which you individually can do most good. Work for that which you see to be most needed in your community.

Business is conducted today on such a gigantic scale that only the state can control it. Small co-operative concerns, competing with one another, will never be sufficient alone. Large scale commodity production and communal services like health and education require large scale enterprises whether co-operative or state owned, and that requires political action. Municipalization of lighting and heating of cities, of house building, of public transport, the nationalization of telecoms and air coach and rail services, the establishment of public savings banks and postal services. All are necessary and urgent in a civilized sociaty. No one would be unemployed except those who choose to be to pursue a craft or be a writer or return to education, and they would be given a grant to live on. A R J Turgot, the liberal economist whom Matthew Arnold called “the wisest statesman France ever had”, said:

God, when He made man with wants and rendered labor an indispensable resource, made the right of work the property of every individual.

What Frederic W Robertson said of the clergy of the Church of England in his Message of the Church to Men of Wealth is true of every Church:

Alas, we, for centuries, have taught submission to the powers that be, as if this were the only text in Scripture. Yet for one text which requires submission and patience from the poor, you will find a hundred which denounce the vices of the rich. In the writings of the noble old Jewish prophets that and almost that only. That in the Old Testament with a deep roll of words that sounds like Sinai’s thunders. That, less impassioned but more calmly terrible from the apostles and their Master. Woe unto us in the great day of God if we have been the sycophants of the rich, instead of the redressers of the poor man’s wrongs…

In summary, Christ’s four core aims are:

1. fellowship—women and men are all equal
2. caring and sharing—using our abilities unselfishly, at home and in society, besides in church
3. fairness—ensuring justice for all humankind.
4. the kingdom of God—using our abilities to bring in socialism—

Christian socialists must place deeds above words—appeal to love by loving, to brotherhood by brotherly kindness, to service by service. As for equality:

If any man would be chief among you let him be servant of all.

This is Christian Socialism.