Christian Fundamentalist Marxist Theology. What would it look like?

[Soviet dude]

I have been thinking for awhile about what a fundamentalist, but also Marxist, Christian set of beliefs would look like and how it would justify itself in Biblical terms (as fundamentalist Protestantism must). Naturally, this could serve any number of purposes, from trolling Christians forums, making a career as a preacher, on the spot counter arguments to right-wing religious people, etc. I've thought of a few things, but I haven't fleshed out an entire theological framework around it. A few things I've thought of:

1. You can be pro-gay marriage by arguing that Paul only advises men to marry because they can not control themselves (unlike Paul himself, who said he could). Since Jesus says looking at a woman in lust is equal to adultery, you similarly equate the sin of homosexuality, but add on top of it the charge of hypocrisy to heterosexuals who obviously engage in lusting after each other ("Even while in Church!"). Since even looking at women with lust is a sin, and gay sex is a sin, making it less sinful via marriage is good in both cases.

2. Of course, harp on all the anti-rich stuff in the Old and New Testament. You can use the book of Acts as a basis for opposing private property, be anti-debt by citing the the Jubilee stuff, etc.

3. I would think, to add an anti-Zionist aspect, you might engage in polemics that could be construed as anti-Semitic, regarding Jews killing Jesus or whatnot. In any case, developing some kind of parallels between modern Zionism and the Pharisees would be useful. You could also harp on the once good Jews that are now bad and punished, as a lot of the old Church Fathers used to do.

4. Pretty much all of Revelations, the book of Daniel, all the end of the world stuff, is re-interpreted as always being about the US and the bad shit it is doing. Possibly even taking this as far as saying things like Satan is in charge of America, denouncing other right-wing Christian groups as working for Satan, etc.

5. A lot of Christians point out that even Demons who know Jesus is the Son of God are going to hell, so belief is not sufficient. This would probably be largely a way to push people toward activism, but in an argument sense, it could be interpreted to praise the good works of people who are not Christian (namely the socialist countries).

6. If you had to believe the world is only 6,000 years old and still wanted to be pro-science, I guess you could somehow justify theologically that God created an adult and matured Adam, so he created an 'adult' universe, complete with appearance of age.

7. Jesus, while still being the Son of God, is mixed with the portrait of Jesus as Revolutionary as much as possible. Jesus is the Revolutionary Che-like Son of God, fighting off imperialist Romans and comprador Jewish leaders to free the people and save their souls. If you were going to make a congregation, make money with faded red and black Jesus face shirts, like the Che ones.

Anybody got any more ideas? Wouldn't it be hysterical to create a fully worked out radical-fundamentalist theology, post it online, and then like a few years later, someone actually starts a movement based on it?

[Hit The North]

None of what you write above is Marxist, though, is it?

Plus, Marxism does not - and cannot - justify itself in Biblical terms.

[Soviet dude]

Marxist in the technical sense, no, but in a practical sense of developing a Christian fundamentalist theology that supports everything Marxists tend to. I think you know what I meant.

[Hit The North]

Well, I think you're trying to mate a chicken with a fish. It'll be neither one nor the other and no one will want to eat it. Adding the mysticism and absurdity of fundamentalist Christianity to Marxism will reduce it to confusion.

I mean who is this supposed to appeal to?:


Jesus, while still being the Son of God, is mixed with the portrait of Jesus as Revolutionary as much as possible. Jesus is the Revolutionary Che-like Son of God, fighting off imperialist Romans and comprador Jewish leaders to free the people and save their souls. If you were going to make a congregation, make money with faded red and black Jesus face shirts, like the Che ones.


Confused Christians or confused revolutionaries? Whomever it is, you'll only add to their confusion.


Wouldn't it be hysterical to create a fully worked out radical-fundamentalist theology, post it online, and then like a few years later, someone actually starts a movement based on it?


No. No it wouldn't.

[khad]

While this thread seems like it was started in jest, it's important not to dismiss it out of hand. After all, we should recall the role liberation theology has played in getting support for leftwing movements in Latin America. There's certainly room to figure out how to win over otherwise religious people to the left.

It was an interesting thought experiment. I laughed.

[Communist]

.

To Religion, from Theory.

Moved.

.

[Soviet dude]

Well, I think you're trying to mate a chicken with a fish. It'll be neither one nor the other and no one will want to eat it. Adding the mysticism and absurdity of fundamentalist Christianity to Marxism will reduce it to confusion.

You're not adding fundamentalist Christianity to Marxism, you're adding Marxist-politics to fundamentalist Christianity.


I mean who is this supposed to appeal to?

Confused Christians, obviously.


No. No it wouldn't

Why not? Seems pretty hysterical to me, and not impossible.

[Raúl Duke]

What is this, I don't even...

Well, on a serious note,


Christian Fundamentalist Marxist Theology. What would it look like?

It would look like a confused fuck up thing.

Look, we already have liberation theology when it comes to "religion and leftism," please no more and especially not this.

[Soviet dude]

I don't think you people seem to understand what a thought experiment is.

[Lenina Rosenweg]

Although they are ultimately opposed, the needs that give rise to religion are similar to those that gave rise to Marxism. As others have mentioned, there is Liberation Theology. My experience is that the Mennonites are basically Christian fundamentalists, but they seem to be left wing politically. In Canada there are Hutterite communities and several Russian derived sects all of which are at least partially socialist.

The Mormons in Utah, around 1900, had an alliance of sorts with the IWW, opposing the "American Party", a front for business interests which wanted to control the state.

My understanding is that part of what became US Christian fundamentalism-the Chautauqua movement, various church groups, were originally left wing, if not Marxist.
From around 1900-WWI or so the SP was big in Oklahoma. Their competition were evangelical preachers, who would fulminate against socialism in huge revival tent meetings. The Socialists borrowed these techniques.Eventually the two movements seemed to merge. There were fundamentalist preachers calling each other "comrade". Michael Harrington, the US social democrat, mentions that there was a Baptist minister who said something like "the feeling of liberation I got when I read Das Kapital was the same feeling I got when I accepted Jesus as my saviour".

I read (I forget where) that for a time in the 1920s the majority of bishops in the black Southern Baptist church were in the CP.

Marx himself uses a lot of biblical metaphors.

In some areas in Latin America, Che has become a folk religion saint and in rural China Mao has become absorbed into the complex web of Chinese folk religion as a god or guardian deity.

Cadre on the Long March at times half seriously prayed to Marx.

A Christian fundamentalist Marxism might work. Of course there would have to be "St. Ernesto the Liberator", "St. Vlad", "St. Anthony, the Martyr of Milan", "St. Rosa", and (depending on your tendency), "St. Leon".

Maybe a "St. Josef of Belgrade".

The October Revolution would be the "Miracle of Petrograd".

BTW I am not at all mocking the revolutionaries I referred to. They are my heroes. Except for Tito.

This is interesting

http://home.earthlink.net/~lrgoldner/afroanab.html

[Hit The North]

Originally posted by Lenina Rosenweg
In some areas in Latin America, Che has become a folk religion saint and in rural China Mao has become absorbed into the complex web of Chinese folk religion as a god or guardian deity.

Cadre on the Long March at times half seriously prayed to Marx.

A Christian fundamentalist Marxism might work. Of course there would have to be "St. Ernesto the Liberator", "St. Vlad", "St. Anthony, the Martyr of Milan", "St. Rosa", and (depending on your tendency), "St. Leon".

Maybe a "St. Josef of Belgrade".

The October Revolution would be the "Miracle of Petrograd".

BTW I am not at all mocking the revolutionaries I referred to. They are my heroes. Except for Tito.



You don't free anyone by pandering to their most backward ideas.

The October revolution was not a miracle summed up by God, and you rob it of its revolutionary content if you pretend it was. The same goes for the mock canonisation of revolutionary figures. You end by raising them above history and the masses who make the revolution and you rob the revolution of its humanity.

Scientific socialism stands in opposition to religion and mysticism. Trying to combine them only leads to distortion.

[Adi Shankara]

You don't free anyone by pandering to their most backward ideas.

It begs to ask though, who is the spokesperson for the world when they decide what's a backward idea or not? and why would it be a backward idea? because of dialectical materialism? Because not everyone believes in that.


Scientific socialism stands in opposition to religion and mysticism. Trying to combine them only leads to distortion.

If that was true, religion would've ceased to exist hundreds of years ago. Truth is, while I believe in S. Jay Gould's principle of non-overlapping Magistria, I think the idea "scientific socialism stands in opposition to religion and mysticism" is kind've misleading, because it's not like those concepts support really atheism either.

[Bud Struggle]

Scientific socialism stands in opposition to religion and mysticism. Trying to combine them only leads to distortion.

I wonder if one needs to be so "protective" of Communism. If it's a good idea it's principles will out in the end. If it is so prone to distortion (as admittedly it has been in the past) then that is just the nature of the beast.

[Hit The North]

I wonder if one needs to be so "protective" of Communism.

I'm not so much being protective of communism, as I am protective of Marxism as a body of knowledge and a tool for emancipation.

I have no particular problem with liberation theology, if it helps to raise people up so they can fight for their freedoms.


If it's a good idea it's principles will out in the end.I lack your optimism in this regard. Particularly when those principles become empty shells into which is packed a hot-potch of reactionary ideas and social delusions. When Mao becomes deified, it is precisely at that moment he loses any value to the people who hold him in adulation. He becomes the formal appearance to the same old lousy essence. Another imprint on the face of God.

[Hit The North]

It begs to ask though, who is the spokesperson for the world when they decide what's a backward idea or not? and why would it be a backward idea? because of dialectical materialism? Because not everyone believes in that.


I have a simple rule: does an idea contribute to the emancipation of those who hold it, or does it contribute to shackling them to their oppression? If its the former, the idea is progressive; if it's the latter the idea is reactionary. Simples.



If that was true, religion would've ceased to exist hundreds of years ago. Why on Earth does that follow from what I said? Its like claiming that scientific socialism cannot be opposed to capitalism, otherwise capitalism would've ceased to exist!


Truth is, while I believe in S. Jay Gould's principle of non-overlapping Magistria, I think the idea "scientific socialism stands in opposition to religion and mysticism" is kind've misleading, because it's not like those concepts support really atheism either.By scientific socialism I am referring to Marxism. Marxism can only function as form of atheism, because the importation of religious and mystical ideas would only fuck it up. Suddenly people would be wondering whether the mode of production was God-given or not and these pointless metaphysical arguments would reduce Marxism to gibberish.

[Nolan]

What about Anarcho-Nazi-Maoist Zionism?

[Lenina Rosenweg]

You don't free anyone by pandering to their most backward ideas.

The October revolution was not a miracle summed up by God, and you rob it of its revolutionary content if you pretend it was. The same goes for the mock canonisation of revolutionary figures. You end by raising them above history and the masses who make the revolution and you rob the revolution of its humanity.

Scientific socialism stands in opposition to religion and mysticism. Trying to combine them only leads to distortion.

I agree with you. It occasionally happens that I am wrong about things. Not often mind you, but it has been known to happen.

Anyway we still can't discount the human needs that drive people to religion and we shouldn't turn away people who are religious.

[Lenina Rosenweg]

. Marxism can only function as form of atheism, because the importation of religious and mystical ideas would only fuck it up. Suddenly people would be wondering whether the mode of production was God-given or not and these pointless metaphysical arguments would reduce Marxism to gibberish.

I'm not sure about this. Marxism isn't atheism or theism, its an a set of tools to analyze capitalist society and the self emancipation of the working class.

The Marxist method implies a rigorous critique of religion and for that reason most Marxists are not religious believers but its not an atheist system.

Much of Marx can have spiritual, not religious implications. Humanity overcoming alienation and involved in a "senous, creative" relationship w/the world. Something like that in his writings on Feurbach.

[Mahatma Gandhi]

Communism is based upon Christian principles like common ownership, rights of the poor and oppressed, liberation of the workers, equality and social justice, and such. Only it 'clothes' the whole thing in technical jargon. Communism is simply Christianity in action ... in the world of politics.

[Dimentio]

All ideas are prone to distortion and will eventually be distorted when confronted by reality. Just look at the development of christianity from Jesus to Constantine.

A Galilean carpenter who washed the feet of women and fought against honour killings ---> a Roman emperor who made it a capital offense for women to be raped.

[Hit The North]

Communism is based upon Christian principles like common ownership, rights of the poor and oppressed, liberation of the workers, equality and social justice, and such. Only it 'clothes' the whole thing in technical jargon. Communism is simply Christianity in action ... in the world of politics.

Christianity may have passed through its communitarian phase, but for most of its history it has being a doctrine which preaches original sin, hell for non-believers, second class status of women, condemnation of homosexuality, witch-burning and holy war. Only this week the Vatican declared that any attempt to ordain women would be considered a 'grievous crime'.

So actually, Christianity doesn't need communism to act as its proxy in the world of politics as it has always had a political presence in its own right - and usually a reactionary one.

[Hit The North]

Anyway we still can't discount the human needs that drive people to religion and we shouldn't turn away people who are religious.

I agree, but we shouldn't dress up Marxism in religious robes just to attract them.


The Marxist method implies a rigorous critique of religion and for that reason most Marxists are not religious believers but its not an atheist system.

Agreed. It is not an atheist system in that it does not even consider the question of the existence of God as important. Nevertheless, it is in opposition to religion as both an explanation of the world and a basis for social action. Marx's critique of religion is from the point of view of its actual intervention in the world, it's not a theological critique.


Much of Marx can have spiritual, not religious implications. Humanity overcoming alienation and involved in a "senous, creative" relationship w/the world.
I don't know how loosely you're using the term 'spiritual' but my understanding is that the "sensuous, creative" relationship is a practical, physical and embodied social relationship - the opposite of a spiritual one.

[Adi Shankara]

Agreed. It is not an atheist system in that it does not even consider the question of the existence of God as important. Nevertheless, it is in opposition to religion as both an explanation of the world and a basis for social action. Marx's critique of religion is from the point of view of its actual intervention in the world, it's not a theological critique.

Reading "Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right", I got the feeling that Marx wasn't so much opposed to spirituality or even the belief in a higher power as much as he was to organized religion and religious structure, and the belief in religious salvation (of which very few religions believe in outright salvation):


Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions.so it sounds like while critiquing religion, he's defending it. Considering his thorough analysis of political economy, he was surprisingly vague on religion. (or maybe it was on purpose?) He does take the Hegelian approach to religion in some instances (i.e, that religion was the natural approach to misunderstandings around human beings) but even so, he advocated religion as a necessary reflection of human consciousness in society, even to the point of denouncing the Blanquists who were outright anti-theist.

http://hirr.hartsem.edu/ency/Marx.htm

interesting article here; it's kind've funny, but in an ironic sense, anti-theism is against Marxist principles (as marx didn't want anti-religion; just the conditions that would make religion rise out of the poor, thus making religion obsolete in a sense)

[Lenina Rosenweg]

I agree, but we shouldn't dress up Marxism in religious robes just to attract them.



Agreed. It is not an atheist system in that it does not even consider the question of the existence of God as important. Nevertheless, it is in opposition to religion as both an explanation of the world and a basis for social action. Marx's critique of religion is from the point of view of its actual intervention in the world, it's not a theological critique.

I don't know how loosely you're using the term 'spiritual' but my understanding is that the "sensuous, creative" relationship is a practical, physical and embodied social relationship - the opposite of a spiritual one.

I define "spiritual" as an aesthetic, ethical, and even "psychic" apprehension and relationship w/the universe. Its hard to explain but its the feeling I got when I worked in my garden this morning, a feeling of connectedness and participation in larger, vast processes. Its the feeling I get reading John Keats theory of aesthetics. Its the feeling I get looking at a Paul Klee painting or listening to Bach's Brandenburg Concerto. Its jumping out of the ego or finding oneself part of a larger, non-human process.

Contrary to what this may sound like, its not otherworldly at all. No "higher planes", no channeling or horseshit like that. Its just a feeling of being an active part of the universe. Its active and physical, not contemplative.It can be embodied in social action but doesn't have to be.Its more common in things that empty out the ego.

Religion comes about as an alienated form of this.

"Spirituality" is broader than Marxism but it is certainly contained within it, in so far as we are social animals cooperating to wrest a living from nature.