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This Forum is a place for respectful discussion and debate of political issues, by Roman Catholics, in the context of the Roman Catholic Faith.
Lawrence Reed’s Was Jesus a Socialist? is both a great introduction to why socialism fails and an engaging challenge to Christians to let go of utopian myths.
“If anyone was ever a socialist, it was Jesus,” at least if you ask Kelley Rose. Rose, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, is not alone. The relationship between socialism and Christianity has been strained, to say the least, ever since Engels called Christianity the “opium of the people;” and socialist regimes throughout history have attacked the Church. But our Marxist brothers have also upheld Jesus as a model of socialism when it has been convenient, and many others find their arguments convincing. The socialists in Germany have run with the motto that the Messiah “would have voted for us.” Even one or the other Christian conservative has come out arguing that socialism would be worth a try.
In Was Jesus a Socialist?, Lawrence Reed disputes these claims head-on, arguing that Jesus was perhaps not a political figurehead at all. He was not a socialist or a “capitalist. Neither was he a Republican or a Democrat. . . . Jesus offered no blueprint for earthly government and the laws of politicians.” As Daniel Hannan argues in the foreword to the book, Christ was “primarily interested,” not “in the social or political structures around him,” but in ways that humans could live holy lives on earth and obtain eternal life hereafter. “Although he was in our world, he wanted us to think about a different world.”
Continued below.
Was Jesus a Socialist? - Public Discourse
Lawrence Reed’s Was Jesus a Socialist? is both a great introduction to why socialism fails and an engaging challenge to Christians to let go of utopian myths.
“If anyone was ever a socialist, it was Jesus,” at least if you ask Kelley Rose. Rose, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, is not alone. The relationship between socialism and Christianity has been strained, to say the least, ever since Engels called Christianity the “opium of the people;” and socialist regimes throughout history have attacked the Church. But our Marxist brothers have also upheld Jesus as a model of socialism when it has been convenient, and many others find their arguments convincing. The socialists in Germany have run with the motto that the Messiah “would have voted for us.” Even one or the other Christian conservative has come out arguing that socialism would be worth a try.
In Was Jesus a Socialist?, Lawrence Reed disputes these claims head-on, arguing that Jesus was perhaps not a political figurehead at all. He was not a socialist or a “capitalist. Neither was he a Republican or a Democrat. . . . Jesus offered no blueprint for earthly government and the laws of politicians.” As Daniel Hannan argues in the foreword to the book, Christ was “primarily interested,” not “in the social or political structures around him,” but in ways that humans could live holy lives on earth and obtain eternal life hereafter. “Although he was in our world, he wanted us to think about a different world.”
Continued below.
Was Jesus a Socialist? - Public Discourse
