Christianity, poverty, and socialism or communism. [View all]

A good friend of mine just completed his master's degree in theology. He let me read his thesis. The theme was a Christian perspective on socialism. The gist of the paper was that for socialism to work well it needs to be married with Christianity. It's a lot more complicated than that, the paper was 65 pages, and involves theories on false consciousness and liberation contemplation, but that's the general vibe. It's not really a new idea, he just goes into the topic much more in depth than you'll hear ordinarily. I think the first major iteration of Christian socialists and communists in America occurred in the 1930s. It resurfaced again in the 60s with the hippies. Socialism and communism are often associated with atheism since Marx appeared to be an atheist, and that influence carried over into communist countries. I think my friend sees that as a major flaw in left wing ideology.

I've been reading Thomas Merton's New Seeds of Contemplation. Merton thought of Christ's teaching as communist. He doesn't say a whole lot about it in the book, but he doesn't mince words about what he does say. He also thought that to truly live in a spiritual way then one should know something of poverty from first-hand experience. He said that wealth beyond our basic needs of food, clothing, and shelter and what it took to obtain those things was detrimental to spiritual life. He was a promoter of that old camel through the eye of a needle metaphor.