USAican RW Christians misunderstand "socialism"

 The other day on Mastodon, I came across an article about left-wing politics and Jesus. It appears to have been written from a Christian-nationalism sort of perspective and, well it seems so far off: it's a straw-man misunderstanding coupled with prejudice.  I feel it deserves comment at least for my own interest. The first para is odd, really, an 'argument' that needs unpacking to see that it is more a pretext for a prejudice, I think. 

"One of the most bizarre arguments for “Jesus was a socialist” comes from people who say, “Jesus healed and fed people for free; therefore, He was a socialist.” When governments can feed people for free by multiplying loaves and fishes, heal people by touch or a word from a government agency, or raise people from the dead, then I’ll become a socialist. The thing of it is, people who want free college and free healthcare and politicians who promise such things believe that government is god and can turn stones into bread. Our nation’s motto is “In God We Trust” which means in practice “In Government We Trust.” As often as they try, governments can’t perform miracles."

There are several things going on in this. First, though, I think that I've not really come across Jesus offering 'free healthcare' as an argument for socialism in the way laid out there. The argument doesn't get made that way; the author is mischaracterising the thinking for the sake of dismissing a label. I think that perhaps the author has seen some people taking issue with right-wing perspectives which seem to argue that there's a Christian moral imperative not to have government providing things like healthcare for free. 

Some rhetorical responses do indeed suggest that the Jesus that right-wingers purport to follow did actually give this away for free at the point of need. It's not an argument for socialised healthcare when used like that, it's a device to indicate that the right winger has a potential incompatibility hidden in their presuppositions. It is to suggest that there may be more discussion to be had and that perhaps the right-winger has missed something about how the values they espouse might actually need more consideration. 

The actual arguments for socialism from a Christian value base lie elsewhere and are more widely drawn. So to dismiss 'socialism' this way fails to deal with the main arguments of Christian Socialists and contributes to a straw man approach which may make supporters feel like they are 'owing the libs' or something, but really fails to convince people who actually do hold the position.

There's also a practical theological issue about the matter of miracles and healthcare (or other things that a government might do). I think my concern about the gesture towards a position outlined in that blog post could be illustrated as a big contribution to problematising the position as stated.

I have known several Christian medical doctors and health workers during my life. They believe the healthcare they offer and the health improvements they bring about by their service and efforts are God's work. They consider that in some way they are continuing the healing work of Jesus albeit by normally non-miraculous means. They are using their God-given talents to bring about a life which is more abundant for those they treat. Is that not God's work? Or does only 'miraculous' healing count? The lack of 'miracle' (and what is that exactly?) to accomplish something does not mean it's not something that God wants. I think that feeding hungry people using logistics  to transport and distribute food from places that have enough to share is godly. I don't dismiss it as a Christian simply because it doesn't involve miraculous multiplication. I don't dismiss God's provision because the money arrives in a bank account as a result of a contract rather than from the mouth of a fish.

Assuming that we are happy to acknowledge that a medic's work, in broad terms at least, is God's work, then the next matter to consider is this. Is it good or not for them to seek to work in such a way that the poorest of their patients are able to access their help? Is it a bad thing for their care to be free at the point of access? Or are we going to be comfortable with situations where only the relatively rich can benefit from good healthcare? As a Christian I can't be comfortable with that latter situation. 

-And by the way that's not, strictly speaking, 'socialism' -many who are not socialist in parts of the world that have systems of healthcare that are free at the point of use nevertheless consider that it is right and proper to have free healthcare, right wingers included. In my own country, even right wingers make arguments about healthcare provision explicitly reassuring their audiences that they think it should be free at the point of delivery. They have even framed it as helping people to participate in the (capitalist) economy.

Back to that article: it is simply not true that people who think that healthcare, education etc should be free at the point of access, believe that the government is God. Nope. Never happens. I know no-one, not one single person, who does. 

Ironically, of course, it can appear that the kind of nationalism espoused by RWers seems to raise questions about idolatry -of nation. (And it's not enough to claim that a nation and its government are enacting God's agenda -because that's a claim that can be made, and has been made, for other nations and forms of government. It's only the start of a discussion not an end).

So what does drive many Christians toward 'socialist' approaches to thinking about public life and government policy?

Well for most it's rooted in considering the outworking of loving others as oneself, loving neighbour. Let's recall that such love is about willing and working towards the best for our neighbours. To be a bit more explicit: loving others as ourselves? -Well, on the whole, I exercise a degree of care towards myself by going to a medical appointment when something is 'up'. I therefore think that loving my neighbour as myself means making sure that they can do the same. (I vote accordingly and I lobby politicians and involve myself in political debate to try to retain that situation and to have it improve if possible; I see that as part of the outworking of Christian discipleship in pursuit of Christian values.) 

I note that this is still not 'socialism' but socialism is one of the political options that it is compatible with. However, a further consideration is a critique of capitalism. Let's say to start with that for Christians on the left, capitalism looks a lot like 'Mammon' and the 'love of money' -which 1 Timother 6:10 reminds us is "a root of all kinds of evil". Left-leaning Christians, then, on the basis of Jesus' and apostolic teaching are decidedly skeptical about letting what appears to be the idolatry of wealth be in the societal driving seat. It's hard to read James 2 and not feel that supporting making the rich richer and further impoverishing the poor is a major incompatibility with Christian discipleship and constitutes giving a pass to the moral hazard wealth clearly is in Christian teaching -don't forget James is merely expounding Jesus's warnings about wealth, selfishness and the value of each person including the poor and marginalised. 

Note also that James 4:1-6 seems to suggest that wealth is, in effect, stealing from the poor. It is the result of power relations that enable the haves to further extract value from the have-nots to their detriment. That passage implies that God considers that even the humblest in society are due the means to live dignified lives. Jesus's teaching and ministry indicate that the poorest are at the heart of God's concern (and incidentally, this fulfills the teaching of the Hebrew scriptures). To maintain an argument for the Christian-ness of capitalism, it has to be be convincingly argued that it both places the poorest and improving their lot at the heart of policy and concern across society and that there are effective and present ways to mitigate the moral hazard relating to wealth accumulation.

Coming back to James ... "Ah but...!" "Well, actually ..." Yes, yes: there is more to be said to close the gap between then and now and the circumstances in view. But let's note that the RW Christian perspectives often need similar further investigation and more careful extrapolation too. I'll not do that here and now. But I have written about related matters and will continue to do so. Suffice to say, for now, that I think that the most natural politics to come away from Jesus' teaching with is a politics that places improving the lot of the poorest at the heart and which is very skeptical about allowing greed and wealth accumulation to be in the driving seat of society. It also adds weight to the observation that 'trickle-down' economics doesn't seem to happen in practice. This is not only an observation of the last 40 years of western governmental policies, it is an observation of several thousand years.

Christian England? Maybe not...

I've just read an interesting blog article from Paul Kingsnorth. I've responded to it elsewhere with regard to its consideration of the idea of the soul of a nation (specificially England).

Here I'd like to pick up a few other matters in it.

I think that I should take issue with this claim. "The 2021 census revealed that, for the first time in a thousand years, most people in England are not Christian"  Well, I think that is simply not correct in any helpful sense. Not because I want to deny that the census revealed that now less than half of the English are Christian but because I think that the idea that for the previous thousand years we/they have been. I actually think that a big part of what the census reveals is that people are now more ... honest? ... about their spiritual allegiances; rather than by reflex putting "CofE" people who would have done so 20... 30... 40 years ago, now put 'no religion'. The figures now, then, are more reflective of where people have actually 'been' spiritually for decades. I tend to think that the figure for numbers of Christians is likely to be closer to the numbers of those reasonably actively affiliating to churches. 

While there are people in those numbers who may be there for more social-status reasons than discipleship, these might be offset by those who are fairly Christian but find churches hard to stomach. I suspect the proportions vary over time. However, there have been times when the label Christian and being seen at church were marks of respectability which sometimes had little to do with any active affilition to Christ and the Good Old Way. And of course, we've only had censuses since 1851.

What I'd want to suggest is that probably for the last thousand years, there has rarely been a time when Christians in the sense of active Christ followers has been above 50% of the English population. To be sure there are times abundant when people have used the label of themselves because they have been baptised, were part of a "Christian" nation and/or thought having an opinion that there is a God made one a Christian. But that's not being a Christian. And at a national level there has indeed been rhetoric claiming Christian allegiance but the practices of government both in relation to the people inside and to the people outside of the nation have been sub-Christian at many, many points. Machiavelli has been more influential in practice than Christ.

I seem to recall that before Wesley started preaching, the spiritual scene was reportedly at a very low ebb. England was Christian in name only. Most people were, it would seem, deists in opinion and many were licentious in behaviour and morals. Including those leading churches since the qualifications for doing so seemed to forget the most specifically Christian details relying instead on family connections and having a degree from Oxford or Cambridge.

Maybe it's actually that for the first time in a thousand years many people have understood that the label "Christian" is not fitted to them. There are many different reasons for that no doubt. Some because the cultural connotations of the label "Christian" are no longer prestigious. Rather many are distancing themselves from much of what has become associated with the label: Trumpism, pedophile abusers, socially maladroit weirdness, inability to be other than dogmatic... For others it is recognising that their spiritual heart is not in it; they may be 'spiritual' but not specifically religious; they respect Jesus but not such as to follow his Way.

A few sentences later in Kingsnorth's article, I find the possible connotations of this sentence quite disturbing but not for the reasons I think Kingsnorth writes them; "By the end of this century, most people living within the nation’s borders will not have ancestors who shaped it" I fear that this framing plays into the hands of nationalists and racists by seeming to collude with the idea that ancestry grants title, somehow. Let's note that we are all immigrants (there were no humans here when the country was covered by ice). My own ancestry on one side is refugees from French religious tyranny, and on the other side I probably have more title than people who could only trace ancestry as far back as Saxon, viking or Norman ancestors. -My point here being that I don't think I have any more or less 'title' to live here than anyone else who call it home.

Though perhaps I do him a disservice since he goes on to write: "the spiritual energy in England today is coming from those who are crossing its borders in such unprecedented numbers. Many of them are Christian; many more are not. Will those traditions ever become English, in the sense in which Ackroyd uses in his book? It’s quite possible." 

I can't speak to Ackroyd's conceptualisation, but I do welcome the acknowledgement that our nation changes over time. If those who make home here from birth or from later in life, work for truth, justice, mercy, fairness and so forth, then that's great.

And then Kingsnorth adds something that is a good critique in my estimation, drawing on an older text: "In the Bible, they call it Mammon. It squats now over England like a wheezing, warty old toad, and we pay it obeisance every day. It is a very old god, and it never dies. And yet nobody has to worship it, and this is the secret and the escape. You can turn back towards the light instead, England." 

Quite: the important thing is not about ancestral title but whether we serve a common good or a mammonist agenda that's important. That's more consonant with God's agenda while exclusivising nationalism is not. I note that the nations are judged, according to the parable of the sheep and the goats in Matthew 25, for their treatment of Jesus who identifies himself with the poor and marginalised.

At this time, England is doing really badly in that respect. Mammonry has increased inequality (quite noticeably over the last 4 decades), doubled down on demonising the most vulnerable among us and has been actively harming the marginalised and failing to help the exploited. England is surely under judgement but not for selling out so-called "Christian values", rather for painting very unChristian values as virtuous while using them as cover for doing the things that Christ condemns the nations for in that parable.