Too often in any discussion between a people of Faith and our socialist comrades is religion automatically dismissed in our current time. From those of us who have maintained an abiding Faith in a living Christ and from whom we obtain sustenance from this Faith, we nonetheless believe in common good of all, and in sharing all that was intended to be shared as it to be propagated through Socialism. Because of the cold war between the Soviet Union and the United State, and because our comrades have made it fairly certain that atheism is a doctrine of Socialism and none other postion is acceptaible, many in the Church questioned socialism altogether and chose instead to find a bastardized form of Christianity which rejects the original purpose of the full life in Christ and accepts capitalism and liberal democracy as being justified forms of social mechanisms by which Christians can live.

However given the clear evidence of the new teatament community and the early Church Fathers testament, such is not reconcilable for the the community life of being Christian. Baptism still means being brought into a universal family and communion, the sharing of the body and bread of the body of Christ implies community i.e., socialism in a much more deper and profound manner than mere materialsim. Indeed we cannot accepts the limitted dualism of scietific materialism by itself and must recognize the unifying aspect of the Spirit of God which is not only and by itself expressed through scripture but is evedenced through history, through nature and hence discoverable by science (and which some areas of advanced physics is beginning to explore in particle theory, and chaos theory).

As for economic theory and the dynamics of history, the Christian Socialist is free to choose the theories of Marx over so called capitalist laws of profit and gain, which includes the social darwinism and elitism of the market. In so doing realizes that in todays practice of capitalism is inconsistent with the explicit rejection of materialism and consumerism which we as Church are mandated to do. Such narrow forms of materialism and consumerism are forms of and justification for greed which is contrary to compassion, community and sharing. Hencw aomw have sought to define and express what has benn defined as liberation theology. And even those who do not accept a more strictly Marxist version, the 'Be;oved Community' ideal of Dr Martin Luthe King Jr and his explicit rejection of materialism, militarism and Racism from the Riverside Church sermon called Beyond Viet Nam should be an adequate enough manifesto.

The problem is that Karl Marx's beliefs are reflected in Karl Marx's own writing, "The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo."

And that is exactly what each country that has ever sought to fully implement Marxism, in my understanding, has set out to do. State atheism is the vehicle that was used and it resulted in the democide of 262 million people last century. This number does not include the maimed, the injured, the displaced that survived, those committed to the gulag that survived, those committed to mental institutions that survived (everyone that believes in God must be crazy according to the state atheist) nor does it take into account the children torn from Christian parents and put into state run orphanages. Then there is the great destruction of historical artifacts and cathedrals simply because they were religious.

Karl Marx was an atheist who believed in no ultimate morality beyond the state. He taught the abolition of religion because he didn't believe in it and felt it dulled people's production in this life. To date, I am not aware of Marxists ever achieving power and restricting their implementation of Marxism strictly to economics as seen in Democratic socialism which seeks to establish an economy based on economic democracy by and for the working class opposing centralism and the revolutionary vanguard party of Leninism.

My reading of Democratic socialism is that though considerable ground is shared with Marxists and Communists on economic and social issues, they are not the same thing and never have been. For example, they've never advocated the persecution of religious people simply for being religious or been supportive of political terror in the form of secret police organs or gulags; however, they have been very liberal socially advocating abortion on demand, hate legislation/anti-free speech laws, support homosexuality and feminism, a desire to restrict religion, etc...

Not many Christians want to get behind increasing goverment authoritarianism and less personal liberty in the areas of speech and religion while promoting homosexuality and what Christians view as modern "radical feminism."

It's a tough row to hoe. Here you have Karl Marx calling for the abolition of religion by whatever means are most efficient, as an atheist, and his committed followers attempting to do exactly that wreaking massive human suffering on one hand.

On the other hand, in order to have a humane society you need to implement some socialism. Let's be honest, any government-owned, -funded, or -subsidized operation is a socialist program including publicly owned airports, sports arenas or government-funded universities, to Social Security and Medicare to Medi-Cal and now healthcare. These have been very desirable and helped a great many people that would have suffered terribly and died without them. It's easy to see how they have stabilized society (Note: the problems with social security are a result of blatent mismangement by politicians voting to rob the funds and never pay them back. They are not a result of the programs themselves).

But back to the point, how do you tell Marxists not to implement Marxism... but only parts of it. It's like telling a Muslim to forget most of what Mohammad had to say in the Koran and implementing the rest. Very hard to do. Study binary opposition in sociology. People are just naturally inclined to transcendentalize beliefs and resulting systems.

Of course if Karl Marx had been a Christian, we wouldn't even be having this discussion. All would be well for the Christian socialist. State atheism would never have been coupled with Marx's economic ideas and sexual immorality never championed as "liberation."

*sigh*

But that certainly was not and is not the case though I admit that one party communist countries like China have developed a toleration of democracy (local voting) and religion over the past few decades. But as a one party authoritarian government, they could simply reverse those policies and crush any dissidence that resulted using their military, law enforcement, and secret police organs. They've done it before.

So we have this utopian idea of a Christian socialism (utopian to the Christian that is) which has scriptural support http://www.openbible.info/topics/socialism though admittedly simply arguing that socialist values work in any society and system including capitalism might be more on point from a Biblical view. But the Bible gets used as a propaganda tool for Christian socialism and then tossed away for the writings of the anti-religious atheist Karl Marx when it comes time to implement it.

What do you think? I'd like to hear from you.

I would argue that any government of the past century which assumed being the one and only Socialism based on Marx was a lie in the first place. Marxist Leninism was revisionist and had they been strictly Marxist theoreticians would not have been doctinaire in the exercise of thier platform.

Marx proposed an economic and historical approach that was theory, not a new doctrine of faith. As a theory, it would be subject to revision which Marxist Leniniists would not be open to. Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Trotsky and all the rest were new 'prophets' which promoted a new religion for humanity. The religion propagated was historical materialism, and the means to indoctination was democratic centralism. Whoever was the 'Chairperson' was the Pope of this new religion.

Marx's opposition to religion in general and his criticism of religion had these very same features, but the religion he spoke out against was the 'other worldly' doctrine which suppressed peoples sensibility about the oppression and exploitation happening to them and doped them like a powerful drug, an opiate of he masses. To become free, to cast off the chains of wage slaviery, it was neccessary to cast off religion. The Marxist-Leninist doctrine became the very thing which Marx criticized, but instead of the other worldly opiate, it was the oppression of worker over worker in this world.

There were many Anglo-Catholic ministers and priests during Marx's day who advocated socialism and who worked side by side with the working class in advocating that the Church had a duty and responsibility to advance socialism. And who were also critical of those Christians who preached only the other worldly doctrines and who refused to preach about liberty from the capitalists as a social obligation of faith. See http://www.anglocatholicsocialism.org/acindex.html

I'm well aware of the 19th and 20th century social Gospel movements of which you speak; however, my first assertion is that Karl Marx was an atheist who saw Christianity as a myth the ruling class used to keep the worker ensnared in escapism. He advocated state atheism and the complete abolition of all religion including Christianity.

“The first requisite for the happiness of the people is the abolition of religion.” -Karl Marx

"...the state can and must proceed to the abolition of religion, to the destruction of religion; but only in the same way as it proceeds to the abolition of private property (by imposing a maximum, by confiscation, by progressive taxation) and the abolition of life (by the guillotine)... The perfected Christian state is rather the atheist state." -Karl Marx

My next assertion is that is exactly what his followers set out to do in the 20th century and it resulted in the democide of 262 million people in a mere century while impoverishing entire populaces and robbing them of their liberty.

The Victorian Christian Socialists, on the other hand, acted from a belief in ultimate morality... not godless state atheism with its crushing presupposition that the state was the ultimate authority sans-God in existence.

Their priorities were moral and religious first and foremost, but also economic and political though they were slow to realize it. They were about the betterment of mankind which was the essential inspiration for social reform, first from the pulpit and then later to the street once they realized this was also a political battle though it came late.

But godless state atheists like Karl Marx wanted none of them and in the end they sought to eliminate them... to work them to death and kill them if they could not frighten them into recanting their Christian belief in God and an afterlife.

The philosophy of Karl Marx is exactly what the Christian socialist should NOT be following. From a Christian perspective, Karl Marx was as deceived by the devil as Hitler and Stalin and as a result... wrong about a great many things. Jesus, not Marx, is our model of what a Christian socialist is to be.