Christian communism
[1] Many advocates of Christian communism and other communists, including Karl Kautsky, argue that it was taught by Jesus and practised by the apostles themselves.
[3] Christian communism was based on the concept of koinonia, which means common or shared life, which was not an economic doctrine but an expression of agape love.
[8] The early Church Fathers, like their non-Abrahamic religious predecessors, maintained that human society had declined to its current state from a now lost egalitarian social order.
An early 12th century proto-Protestant group originating in Lyon known as the Waldensians held their property in common in accordance with the Book of Acts but were persecuted by the Catholic Church and retreated to Piedmont.
[17] Around 1300, the Apostolic Brethren in northern Italy were taken over by Fra Dolcino, who formed a sect known as the Dulcinians, which advocated ending feudalism, dissolving hierarchies in the church, and holding all property in common.
"[19] In the 16th century, English writer Thomas More, who is venerated in the Catholic Church as a saint, portrayed a society based on common ownership of property in his treatise Utopia, whose leaders administered it through the application of reason.
[20] Several groupings in the English Civil War supported this idea, especially Gerrard Winstanley's Diggers,[21] who espoused clear communistic and agrarianist ideals.
[29] In the words of historians Max Stanton and Rod Janzen, the Hutterites "established in their communities a rigorous system of Ordnungen, which were codes of rules and regulations that governed all aspects of life and ensured a unified perspective.
[30] Criticism of the idea of private property continued into the Enlightenment era of the 18th century through such thinkers as the deeply religious Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
[33] The Owenites in England and the Fourierists in France were considered respectable socialists, while working-class movements that "proclaimed the necessity of total social change" denoted themselves communists.
[34] Weitling was the leader of the Christian communist League of the Just whose stated goal was "the establishment of the Kingdom of God on Earth, based on the ideals of love of one's neighbor, equality and justice".
[citation needed] In the earliest years of the Mormon movement, Joseph Smith promoted the law of consecration and the concept of the United Order.
[36][37] Christian socialism was one of the founding threads of the Labour Party in the United Kingdom and is said to begin with the uprising of John Ball and Wat Tyler in the 14th century.
[39] Igal Halfin of Tel Aviv University argues the Marxist ethos that aims for unity reflects the Christian universalist teaching that humankind is one and that there is only one god who does not discriminate among people.
[40] In 1914 the American socialist leader Eugene Debs declared that "Pure communism was the economic and social gospel preached by Jesus Christ, and every act and utterance which may properly be ascribed to him conclusively affirms it".
[41] Early 20th century science fiction author and socialist Olaf Stapledon stated that "Marxism and Christianity spring from the same emotional experience".
[42] Fidel Castro believed, "Christ chose the fishermen because he was a communist",[43] In his book "Fidel and Religion", Castro states that there is a "great coincidence between Christianity's objectives and the ones we Communists seek, between the Christian teachings of humility, austerity, selflessness, and loving thy neighbour and what we might call the content of a revolutionary's life and behaviour".
[45] Nicaraguan Sandinista activist, priest and former Minister for Culture Ernesto Cardenal was a proponent of the idea of Christian communism, saying "Christ led me to Marx...for me, the four Gospels are all equally Communist.
Bonino wrote: "Is it altogether absurd to re-read the resurrection today as a death of the monopolies, the liberation from hunger, or a solidary form of ownership?"
Bonino and Miranda argue against the belief that "Scripture has various meanings", which in their view allow Western conservative theologians "to prevent the Bible from revealing its own subversive message", and that "use the Biblical text ... to defend the status-quo of a pre-revolutionary situation", as summarized by Andrew Kirk.
While modern capitalism had not yet formed in the time of Jesus, his message was overwhelmingly against the love of money and greed, and in support of the poor.
A concrete example are the Paraguayan landless movement Sin Tierra,[70] who engage in direct land seizures and the establishment of socialized agricultural cooperative production in asentamientos.
[77] In a September 1962 sermon, Martin Luther King Jr., a democratic socialist and social gospel advocate,[78][79] said that "no Christian can be a communist".
The Communist Manifesto might express a concern for the poor and the oppressed, but it expresses no greater concern than the manifesto of Jesus, which opens with the words: 'The spirit of the Lord is upon me, because He hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; He has sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captive, recovering the sight of the blind; to set at liberty them that are bruised, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.'
[84] In 2024, Pope Francis argued that Christians and Marxists, socialists, and communists shared a common mission and expressed support for the Marxist-Christian dialogue group Dialop.
[86][87] Christian communists also share some of the political goals of Marxists, for example replacing capitalism with socialism, which should in turn be followed by communism at a later point in the future.
"[90] In 1960s Communist Czechoslovakia, dialogue between Marxist and Christian philosophers and theologians was co-organized at Charles University by Milan Machovec in Czech and German, with notable participants including Ernst Bloch and Erich Fromm.
Some people contend that Marxism borrowed its main ideas from Christianity and Judaism and reconstructed them as secular ideology, but I think that is extremely simplistic – the relationship is much more complex.
While stating that "in itself, the expression 'theology of liberation' is a thoroughly valid term",[1] the prefect Cardinal Ratzinger rejected certain forms of Latin American liberation theology for focusing on institutionalized or systemic sin and for identifying Catholic Church hierarchy in South America as members of the same privileged class that had long been oppressing Indigenous populations from the arrival of Pizarro onward.
[84] In 2024, Pope Francis argued that Christians and Marxists, socialists, and communists shared a common mission and expressed support for the Marxist-Christian dialogue group Dialop.
