Christian Socialism!

​What a second here! Isn’t that a contraction in terms? I mean, isn’t the very concept of socialism anathema to good American Christians of the Nationalist variety? The very worst term before the Berlin Wall fell was of course Communism. But since then, the ”C” word has taken a back seat to that awful “S” word. But don’t Christian Nationalists also tend to believe that a literate understanding of the Bible is required as the inerrant Word of God? 

So what do these poor Christians do when confronted by the following passage in the Fourth Chapter of the Acts of the Apostles (Acts 4:32-35):

Now the whole group of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one claimed private ownership of any possessions, but everything they owed was held in common. With great power the apostles gave their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all. There was not a needy person among them, for as many as owned land or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold. They laid it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to each as any had need. (New Revised Standard Version)

Wow! This sounds so much like Marx’s dictum of “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.”

Well, I know how at least one Christian, and not even a Christian Nationalist, dealt with this conundrum. So back in the mid-70s my family and I were living in the Near North Chicago suburb of Lincolnwood. We looked for a liberal Lutheran church close to us which had the latest Sunday morning service. (My German wife was a cradle Lutheran from the Old Country.) The joke turned out to be on us, however, because soon my wife and I were recruited to the senior choir and had to get us and our kids to Trinity Lutheran, a few miles to the north in Evanston, prior to the early service for rehearsal and to sing in it. Anyway, a few years into our membership there, our then senior pastor, one Waldo J., a Scandinavian Lutheran from the Motherhouse of such in rural Minnesota, was leading us in a men’s Bible class. The subject was the Book of Acts. Well, we all knew Pastor J. to be an old-fashioned conservative Republican. So when I questioned him on the passage just cited, his response was, in effect, that was then and this is now.

But given the bulk of Jesus’s teaching, from the Golden Rule to helping widows, orphans, and strangers in the land, this sort of Christian Socialism seems to follow. And of course, lots of communitarian experiments, from traditional Christian monasteries and convents, to more secular collectives of the 19th and 20th centuries have followed this principle of mutual support and sufficiency. And although after my German wife died in 2006—I was Roman Catholic at the time—I discerned at a Benedictine Monastery in D.C. with a thought to become a monk, it soon became clear to me that that was not to be my path. Still, the idea of a religious-based socialism has continued to appeal to me. What do you think?

Photo credit: Freepik.