What is Christian Socialism?

[mayfly]

Did you know USA slaughtered off all Indians and erased them off history?

Killed them ALL? I didn't know that.

 

[Slave2Righteousness]

Did you know USA slaughtered off all Indians and erased them off history?

now not to understate the injustices suffered by the Native American Indian populations of the US and Canada because of official government policy, but atrocities were common on both sides, the USA certainly didn't slaughter off all Indians or erase them from history (pick up a history book).

Did you know Indian rights in Canada and USA is really non-existent and they are suffering because we killed their tradition, literally?

umm.. did you know that they enjoy every single civil liberty that normal US citizens do, and have the option of living on reservations with people from their tribes which are self-governed, seen as sovereign nations, and they don't have to pay taxes if they live on one? They have all the rights of citizens and then some. Tribal colleges and universities even receive federal government funding. Ironically enough, the one thing that Native American Indian population is suffering from is just that-government assistance which has led to people being trapped on reservations where they are federally assisted and alcoholism is a huge problem.

Did you know capitalism is forcing millions of workers, worldwide, into slavery with $0.02 per hour?

Consumerism is creating a WORLD MARKET for it, you can't blame capitalism one bit because everyone buys from China. The oppressive governments of 3rd world countries (many of which are socialist) are forcing people into labor. Look up the difference between consumerism and capitalism, because there is one.

Eh...yeah
It has everything to do with policy & ethical conduct.
Capitalism kills more babies lol

wow... worst statement ever if you look at the abortion levels of China and the USSR. People who can feed kids don't average 5-7 abortions per woman like the USSR did.

And considering China is averaging somewhere between 5-10 million REPORTED abortions a year, they certainly take the trophy for most babies killed, not capitalism.
http://www.usembassy-china.org.cn/sandt/ru486.html
what, don't believe me? Here's the link to a US Embassy report from Beijing.

 

[YoungJoonKim]

I believe you.
China limited a child per couple. You can't blame this at socialistic ideas because its also a part of government policy.
It has everything to do with policy and consciousness of the government. Who is in charge and who is not in charge. Hitler's economy was free-market economy, corporate ran economy.
And letting corporation to run around in free-economy, promoting unjust profits from third world countries while its own country loses means of productivity, only profit. Who gets the benefits? Man in Charge, not average working Americans. The fact the government does not offer its citizens fairness and just from corporation is unethical and is evil. There has to be control.
And its the corporations that builds factories in China....etc.
corporations are as much as responsible for violating human rights as China. Tax breaks for big corporation ~

lol sorry, I was sleepy, my typing slipped. no excuse for my exaggeration though, so I apologize again.
I don't believe that rich getting rich and poor getting poor is coincidence.

 

[Slave2Righteousness]

I can't argue that money doesn't go to money a lot easier than it goes to the poor in a capitalist economy, but I believe that it is fair. Those who have money should be able to risk and invest it how they choose and profit from it. That being said, I also believe that capitalism offers the most opportunities to those in the lower and middle classes. The only limit is how far they can carry themselves.

The real problem with cheap overseas labor is that it has very real economic benefits to the consumers. We're in love with stuff and with consumerism running rampant, we would have to drastically change our spending habits in order to get by without the cheap goods that 3rd world countries flood the world market with. At the same time this means that lots of unskilled manufacturing jobs have gone overseas (which if you look at it, started happening as progressive workplace reforms took place to put regulations on workplace conditions and child labor in the US and European producers). These jobs have largely been replaced in the US do to a long-developing shift in the job market from production to service industry. Child labor, under payed workers, and poor conditions are nothing new. It is a problem as old as the beginning of the industrial revolution in Britain and a stage which all developing countries have gone through until they were stable enough to adopt policies governing safety and child labor standards-which are mostly good, although rarely intrusive. From that point China is only doing what the currently 'industrialized' nations had to go through, but the reality is that they are doing it in a much more effective manner with government consciously ignoring human rights abuses because they know it means long term success for the country's industry. As they grow more and more developed they have and will continue to become more capitalist by allowing more private ownership of business and more western thoughts and culture because that is what the people will want-choice.

 

[mayfly]

Quote:
Did you know USA slaughtered off all Indians and erased them off history?

slaughtered off all Indians???

You mean ALL Indians are dead now? Not even ONE Indian survived? No not ONE?

No, I did not know that ALL died!

Do you suppose the people running all those gaming casinos know?

 

[YoungJoonKim]

You must understand my exaggeration and I explained to you before, I was nuts lol.
And it is only fair they run the casinos..
but we should not forget what we did to these people for the sake of so-called "free country" we destroyed most of their culture and tradition. Their religion is almost non-existence..but this is off topic lol

Slave2Righteousness:
I do share the view, I do.
Everyone given opportunity and prosperity. And it is only fair, yes.
However, many are left behind. And those who are left behind are struggling and equal opportunity is almost non-existence.
Yes...its the poor (especially African-American).
With this being said, rich are getting rich and poor are getting poorer. Is this just coincidence?
No, big Uncle Corporates are suppressing these 15% of Americans who live below poverty line. They are living in welfare posed by corporate which is not enough for a poor family. How will these people see the end of their struggle?
NONE.
Nobody knows them and everybody is after their own benefits of this economy.
Somebody has to do something, effectively. Government can do that. Government can make rich, poorer and poor richer.
This is about social justice, not freedom.

Consumerism was inspired and controlled by capitalist economy. Corporations and businesses are convincing people to buy, buy, buy, buy...buy. From younger generation to older generation.
Where the **** is ethical practicing of consuming?
Who is promoting this? Corporations and business? LOL no
No one is.
Everyone wants to be rich and prosper and people are the target.


But the fact is, current government in USA is not effective to help poor people. Its corrupted by so-called "free corporate"
Capitalism allowed too much freedom to economy. As a result, its the people who are suffering, people who are born poor and stay poor. Possibly, even poorer.
In Germany, unethical conduct of corporation is radically disposed of. However, in USA, its not....Enron *cough*.

China is evil, their policies and unethical conduct of manufacturing is shame to socialists. However, so what?
Americans had this, they had slave labors.
capitalists are not NOT excuse from this either.
...in fact, slave labor is even lower than China's treatment to its people.

I agree, I agree that capitalism allows prosperity and its good form of economy. It improves standard of living, as shown in South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, and many other Asian nations.
however, there will be a point where economy must wait and think where its heading and it must be now because economy can't be prospering forever and ever and some social control as to be made to control the economy before going nuts.





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[Slave2Righteousness]

I don't think the government manipulating people's economic situations is just.

I do believe some government restrictions are in need to regulate business, and I believe they are and have been for some time.

 

[gluadys]

I disagree with the previous statements that the Bible supports socialism. The ideas of socialism are great. Equality. Everyone helping everyone. It would be nice, I must confess, but the reality of it is far different than the philosophy behind it and the Bible cites examples of where people came together to offer their belongings to the church to glorify God and help spread the gospels, not build a socio-economic system or government.

Doesn't the practice of capitalism fall far short of its ideals too? Didn't kingship in Israel and Judah fall far short of the ideal of kingship?

Does that mean the bible is opposed to ideals? Does that mean it is opposed to kings? or business? or social justice? Or the constant quest for ideals?

Since when has falling short of our ideals been a reason to give up on them?

So the ideals of socialism are good? Equality is a good ideal? Enough for all is a good ideal?

Are these ideals supported in scripture?

If so, that makes socialism an ideal for Christians to strive for.

And when a concrete historical attempt at socialism fails, we no more give up on it than ancient Judah was told by its prophets to give up on kings. Giving up on kings was not the prophetic recipe. Reclaiming the ideal of a just king was.

And for us today, giving up on socialism because of historic failures is not the prophetic recipe. Reclaiming the ideals of socialism is.

I'll tell you a personal true story. Take it or leave it as you wish.

I was at a table in a shopping mall in the early 1980s promoting a Nuclear Weapons Freeze and these two guys came up to me trying to convince me how wrong I was, how I was being a Commie dupe and all that.

I told them then that we didn't need nuclear arms to fend off Communism. Communism in the Soviet Union would begin collapsing of its own accord when its own children started trying to put its ideals in practice.

My theory was this. As long as Soviet leadership was in the hands of those who could remember Czarist times, the current Soviet regime would seem preferable. I mean, look at the huge advances that the ordinary person enjoyed in Soviet Russia as compared to Czarist Russia.

But anyone could see it wasn't the ideal. When those who could not remember the past measured the present against the ideals they had been raised with in school, there would be an irresistible call for reform.

A decade later we got Gorbachev, the first Soviet leader to have been born and raised entirely under the Soviet system. And what was his first priority? Reform the system. Make it more flexible and humane.

Of course, after so many years of dictatorship, no tinkering was possible. The whole collapsed.

Does that mean the ideals were wrong? Does it mean it is or was wrong to strive for them?

Every human work will be imperfect. But we must still strive for the ideal of what is right. And the ideals of socialism are quite solidly rooted in scripture.

Galatians 6:4-5 supports a way of living which is contrary to enforced socialism, "But let every man prove his own work, and then shall he have rejoicing in himself alone, and not in another, For every man shall bear his own burden."

So, who says socialism ought to be "enforced"? Democratic socialism is a better ideal than enforced socialism. In my experience, most people are quite happy to support socialism freely. They readily vote socialism in and rarely vote it out.

The aforementioned passages from Acts cannot readily be applied as socialism because they were in no way setting up a government which would rule over people-they were communing together to form the church.

Oh, but the church was to become the government. That was certainly the understanding of the church right into early modern times. The aim was to replace the kingdoms of men with the kingdom of God so that "Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven."

Study Calvin. Read the Insititutes on Civil Government and the Westminster Catechism on the duties of the Civil Magistrate. Go earlier and read Augustine on the City of God. Go to your own Puritan ancestors and read about their vision of the city on the hill.

And Catholicism and Orthodoxy have similar beliefs in the extension of the kingdom of God on earth through the extension of the Church.

It doesn't say give the man half of your things, it says more or less to put yourselves into the shoes of the unfortunate and do what you can do to help them in a humble fashion.

Indeed, to give only half is not enough. Jesus said to give all. And that is what the first church did. Its members gave all and called nothing their own.

Time and again, scripture honours those who give all. Like the widow in Sarepeth who gave her last oil and meal to make a cake for Elijah.

The Bible is a guide to how to live as a good person and I really don't think It endorses any socio-economic system over another,

No modern socio-economic system existed in biblical times, so it is right to say the bible does not endorse any of them. But it does endorse social justice to be practiced and upheld by whatever government there is. For most of Israel's history that was the king. But it is there in the Mosaic Law as well, before there was a king.

Social justice was one of the principal themes of the prophets. The Messianic kingdom they envisioned was kiingdom of peace and justice and prosperity for all.

We have different governmental tools, so we will use different methods of establishing peace, justice and prosperity for all. But that is the ideal to which the bible directs us.

but the Word does teach us to help one another, not to force others to help, to willing lighten one another's burdens out of love, and that we should not HAVE to bear the burdens of those who are unwilling to carry their own load.

Indeed, we should not have to bear the burdens of those unwilling to carry their own load. But who are these unwilling ones? Who are less willing to carry their own load than the rich and powerful, especially those who think they have a right to be rich and powerful while others starve? Jesus spoke truly of them in Matthew 23.

The burdens of the poor are overwhelmingly those imposed on the poor by those who lust for wealth and power and use it for their own benefit. To relieve the poor of that burden is social justice.

Diverting attention from the immense burdens these greedy overlords impose on us all to the petty theft of the "lazy poor" is a time-honoured tactic of the rich to avoid the just condemnation the prophets lay on them. Jesus too.

The fact is that when you study the lives of the poor, of what they actually do (Marilyn Waring has done wonderful time-studies on the lives of women of all socio-economic levels), most of them are just as hard-working if not more so, than most of your honoured industrialists or financiers. So refusing justice for the poor because a few are "lazy" (a loaded term in itself) is only heaping another injustice on them.

And in any case, scripture never says we are to give assistance only to the deserving. Rather we are to imitate the perfection of the generosity of God who never stints his giving to the unjust and the wicked, to all us sinners, as well as to the just and the righteous. Matthew 5:43-48

Forcing the worker to carry the load of the beggar is in no way a Christian ideal

What's wrong with carrying the load of the beggar? Someone reduced to begging surely needs help. It is most certainly a Christian ideal to carry the beggar's load for him. But carry it yourself, don't force another to do it.

Furthermore, the socialist ideal is not to force anyone to carry the load of the beggar either. The socialist ideal is a society in which no one needs to beg.

 

[YoungJoonKim]

Yes..I, forehand, is in favor of evolution of government and economy.
These has to be.
Just as humans evolved to become this very complex civilization, we must continue to change.
We must strive for better community and time for thoughts.
We must allow people to think for themselves, not motivated by money, jealousy, hatred, oppression, etc, but by pure reason and logic just as the fathers of America intended.
Obviously, Americans are working too hard (Average vacation time in USA..is 1 week to 2 weeks while in Germany, France, Italy, its like almost 2 month. ), therefore, no time for thoughts. With TV and so many entertainment up for grab of people heads, even less.
And oh yeah, no time for protest *wink*
We can't stay capitalists forever because not every country is gonna be rich, somebody has to be poor.
Capitalism cannot support stable economy forever and ever.
And during those unstable times, who KNOWS what will happen.