Christianity under Socialism?

[Questionable]

I was reading the thread asking about Christianity being compatible with socialism. The general conclusion was that it was, but was incompatible with the scientific nature of Marxism. That got me thinking about something.

Will Christianity continue to exist under socialism and communism, albeit in different forms, or will the abolition of class conflict remove the impetus for religious thought?

Christianity and other religions have shown themselves to be able to adopt to the economic mode. Under feudalism you had the brutal legalist Christianity that mirrored the rule of kings and landowners, while under capitalism we get this vision of a God who loves you to death but sometimes makes bad things happen to you and it's best not to question why, also more focus on put on individual goodness and effort to follow Christian teachings, seemingly a mirror reflection of the bourgeoisie's rule. There's also the rise of "liberalized" religion, a huge push for open-mindedness and anti-dogmatism among Christians, Muslims, and other denominations.

So will Christianity undergo another evolution under socialism/communism, or will the end of class conflict make it obsolete?

[sixdollarchampagne]

The churches existed in the old USSR (even with Stalin in power), and they also survived in the Eastern European states; the churches' response to one-party rule varied from compliance and the mouthing of "progressive" slogans (the journal of the Russian Orthodox Moscow Patriarchate once hailed a deceased Soviet leader as a partisan of peace) to outright defiance (as in Catholic Poland). I am not aware that Christian theology changed very much in those churches, (certainly not in Eastern Orthodoxy and probably not in Catholicism) and I would be willing to bet that religious faith will survive handily in future post-capitalist societies, if those arise. Going out on a limb here, I think that a materialist explanation of religion probably does not exhaust that subject.

[Jimmie Higgins]

Religion as a set of ideas is flexible and always reflects the world in which it operates and exists. I think spirituality might still exist to some extent, but I think it would be more unrecognizable to us than a modern prodestant church service would be for a monk in the 1200s.


Personally I think that after a revolution, churches with openly oppressive or counter-revolutionary views and practices would have to be prevented from becomeing organizing sites for counter-revolution just like any other organization with such positions. I also think it would be important for churches would loose the privilaged position they have in many countries and have to exist just like any other mutual collective group in worker's society; religions as basically amature astronomy clubs.

I think revolutionary workers can also appeal to their religious fellow workers by arguing that rather than attacking religion, this actually would free religion from class entanglements and propaganda, religion would exist not as a way to get people to behave, as it often is under class society, but an exploration of theology and spirituality.


I'm not religious and haven't been from a pretty early age, but I think any revolution is going to involve lots of workers with religious ideas and so I think it will be an important subject for revolutionary worker movements to tackle.