Which side is Jesus on? In being on the side of each and all, Jesus takes no side at all. Instead of reducing Jesus' message to a particular political platform, it is for politics to conform itself to Jesus' message. When it does so, you will find a truly radical politics, one that is more than likely to vex the mighty, raise the humble, and discomfort the comfortable. Which begs the question: is the transcendental ethic merely meant to be stated, as a never to be realized ideal, something entirely without practical implication in an irredeemably fallen state of politics? To answer in the affirmative is to indulge in a blatant Christian apologetics for the status quo, of the kind that has led Christianity into bad repute time immemorial. What happens on this Earth is not without significance to God, which is the reason Jesus was sent down here in the first place. The radical disjuncture between Heaven and Earth is a crass piece of theological illiteracy masking a political intent.
This is what the LORD says: "Heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool. Where is the house you will build for me? Where will my resting place be?
Isaiah 66:1
We are charged on Earth with the task of housing the sacred. That's a very different notion from having an exclusive interest in the interest in the victory of one side over another in politics, of course. But it has political implications in that it involves a radical transformation of the earthly condition. Even an anti-politics is a politics, and is certain to antagonize Romans of all persuasions. Jesus was executed as an enemy of Rome's law and order.
I've seen this graphic being shared on social media, and it is worth speculating on what the intent behind it could be. Without a supporting argument setting out terms and context, this kind of statement is troubling.
As a denial of attempts on the part of political platforms to claim Jesus Christ as their own, it's fine, except more than a little question begging. That message should apply to all political platforms. Why single out Trump in contradistinction to socialism in denying that Jesus' message and example comes with any political implications? To give the impression of equivalence between the two, and of balance in their rejection, of course, when taking out the real target of this political disclaimer - socialism. I may be wrong here, given the vociferous support that Trump is receiving from some Christians in the US. That's a very dangerous situation for Christianity, making its health and viability conditional upon the vicissitudes of politics. All political careers end in failure, as the adage goes. Religion, as concerned with the spiritual domain and the transcendent ethic, needs to be clear of temporal failure. It needs to inform the temporal sphere without becoming identified with it, either in general or in terms of its particular platforms. Any association and identification with politics should be resisted on the part of those subscribing to a religion ethic. Christianity hitched a ride to power on the back of Rome. This was a both political success and a spiritual disaster. We should resist Christianity, feeling defensive in face of secularizing forces, attempting to defeat its enemies by proxy by allying with political forces that can only be detrimental to its long-run health. Christianity has sufficient resources within to press its case forcefully, without the crutch of a highly dubious, contentious and divisive politics. To do otherwise is to play right into the hands of Christianity's enemies, investing their increasingly sterile secularism with renewed significance. Don't do it! Resist the identification of politics and religion, preserve the health and vitality of the latter in its own terms so as better be able to inform, orient and guide the former.
Note well that this opposition of left and right leaves the political mainstream out of view, a mainstream whose deep institutional failures are inviting the turn to "extremes" in politics. Note well that there is absolutely no equivalence between Trump and socialism. People who claim that Jesus was a socialist may be mistaken, for reasons I give later, but, as I shall also explain, the mistake is one that could easily be made, given Jesus' evident concern for those in need, the excluded, the oppressed, and the marginalized; Jesus nourishes those who thirst for justice, those who hunger for peace.
Let me first of all say that, as a lifelong socialist, I bitterly resent being considered the counterpoint of a man such as Trump, with all that he represents in politics - including the long-standing institutional failures he is reacting against. There is no equivalence at all here. To bracket Trump and socialism together can have no other purpose than to tarnish socialism with the bad odor of Trump's divisive politics and abusive rhetoric. Let me also say that I consider Trump to be a symptom of a deeper malaise in society and politics, not its architect. I don't let the liberals of the right and the liberals of the left off the hook at all. Let me further say that Jesus Christ has routinely been claimed by the conservative and, indeed, liberal mainstream in politics, so any statement in this regard would carry more weight if this fact is referenced, rather than merely singling out Trump. But I note the extent to which Trump inspires a loyalty from people who identify as Christians that is worrying. I don't doubt that the hostility Trump has attracted would incline his supporters to feel themselves to be threatened, and rally all the more to the embattled President's side. I don't doubt, either, that Trump's deliberate decision to set politics up as a Manichean struggle between 'us' and 'them' on issues rendered 'black' and 'white' invites this very thing. It works on both sides, with many leftists critical of Democrat stances being vilified and demonized for paving the way for Trump. In a divided society you have to choose which side you are on and defend it with all your might. That can involve a considerable emotional and psychic investment. Some are putting their soul on the line and throwing their religion into the fray. Insofar as the graphic cautions against that, I agree. Jesus would be on none of these sides.
Let me finally say here that very many socialists want naught to do with religion. Trump and his supporters are the ones making a big thing of having Jesus on their side, socialists are much more cool when it comes to claiming religious sanction. Only recently at a socialist festival I heard a member of the Socialist Party of Great Britain denigrating the idea that 'baby Jesus' will come and save us, arguing that salvation lies in our own powers of self-activity and self-organisation. Very many socialists argue that if you are of a religious persuasion you cannot be socialist. I am somewhat in a minority in arguing for the compatibility of the religious ethic and socialism. It doesn't help my case for an explicit denial of socialism to be put in the mouth of Jesus Christ. It merely reminds my socialist friends of how Christianity has walked all too often in the company of reactionary platforms in ethics and politics.
It can be a very short step indeed from having Jesus declare "I am not a socialist" to the statement that if you are a socialist you cannot be a Christian. The right, having thought they had religion sewn up, have clearly seen the rise of a Christian Left and are getting worried. I am waiting for accusations of people of leftist persuasion being merely 'nominal Christians,' using religion merely for political purposes. Not like the right, of course. To single out socialism here is somewhat galling given the extent to which God, Jesus and religion have been appropriated, exploited and perverted by the right in politics so consistently for so long, doing utmost damage to Christianity, effectively making the case for secular liberalism and atheism far more effectively than secularists and atheists could ever do.
A statement of Jesus Christ's political innocence would carry much more weight if it was made against all those right wing, frankly reactionary, forces that have weaponized the Christian message against all the emancipatory platforms they despise (which are many). I'm not enamored of identitarian politics and have frequently criticized libertarian positions aimed against the idea of moral codes and constraints as inherently repressive. But here is precisely why various groups have had to fight to assert diversity and difference.
But the long history of Jesus being appropriated by the right in politics is ignored. Instead, it is socialism that is singled out, betraying a political motivation that is less than innocent. The reasons are not hard to understand. Socialism is back and is inspiring millions who have known only the failures of the conventional political system. And, of course, there are people out there who are virulently anti-socialist, and have no compunction in mobilizing Jesus in their political cause, even as they deny that Jesus had any politics. Be clear, that statement of Jesus' non-politics comes with very definite political implications.
Jesus' message is so very close to socialism that you can understand the nervousness of more conservatively minded religious folk when the common folk read simple words very simply, and understand them perfectly. Of course, the link is quickly broken as soon as the dreaded "state" is introduced. Jesus would have naught to do with Caesar's realm, you see. He was respectful, but very far from supportive. OK, agree ... but there is a bitter irony here, not to say blatant hypocrisy, in this conservative trump card against notions of a 'socialist' Jesus. Marx is palpably not a state socialist; he identified the state as an alienated social power to be practically reappropriated on the part a self-organizing, self-governing society. Marx argued for commune democracy, something which is the very antithesis of state control. He made it abundantly clear that "the abstraction of the political state" is a "modern product" (Marx Critique of Hegel's Doctrine of the State). The state and capital arose together as part of the same process of abstracting power from social community, and they exist in symbiotic relation.
If conservative voices insist on associating Marx's name with state socialism, then I will insist back that from first to last Marx affirmed a thoroughgoing democratization of all social and political institutions, making the form of government subordinate to the popular will. Don't use the state as an argument against socialism, not least because, as an alien, external force, the state is an institution produced by the existing social order.
It is therefore utterly illegitimate for conservative defenders of the status quo to cite "the state," this abstract, centralising force, as a criticism of socialism, when that institution is a product of the very capital system they defend. Down with Caesarism! Marx and any socialist acquainted with his work would most certainly agree.
As for people who claim that Trump has anything in common with Jesus' messages, they are just plain wrong and not worthy of further comment. There is no equivalence between socialism and Trump, and the only people who could make that equivalence are either conventional liberals seeking to caution against the turn to extremes in politics. In which case, this variant of the 'neither left nor right' fantasy could be designed merely to reassure anxious liberal "centrists" panic-stricken by the rise of populism. But, of course, the presence of the religious element makes it something much different and deeper, and something that is potentially far more sinister. As I noted in a blog from a year ago, where once the political right had thought they had religion sewn up and under their control, they have come to see left voices, such as Chris Hedges, winning adherents by pointing out the radical nature of the religious ethic. I warned then of a backlash which could threaten to unleash a thoroughly nasty religious war that, frankly, would finish off religion far more effectively than atheist criticism ever could. I warned of those on the left who believe in God and subscribe to a religious ethic coming to be abused as "nominal Christians," Christians in name only, merely using religion to peddle politics. Pretty much what dominant sections of the religious right have been doing for a long, long time. In an age of atheism and secularism, there are much easier ways for left voices to present their political views. The bulk of my friends are either atheist or agnostic and have told me numerous times that religion is just plain ignorance, myth, and apologetics. I think they are mistaken. But maybe these right-wing backlashes are, for all of their crudity, very politically sophisticated in being designed to put their political opponents off religion for life, thus cutting ideals, principles and values off from the transcendent sources that give them their substance and motivational force. I speculate.
Let me address the line: "my kingdom is not of this earth."
Without some sharp qualifying remarks which make the scope and status of politics clear, this kind of statement serves as a deliberate delegitimation of politics, that is, as a denial of the legitimacy of politics as the means by which people seek to remedy social ills and govern their common affairs democratically.
If Jesus' kingdom is not of this earth, then what on earth was he doing down here? God was not indifferent to human affairs. Indeed, he was so concerned with earthly matters that he gave his one and only Son. There is no radical separation between Heaven and Earth. What we do down on Earth matters a great deal. Somewhere along the line that will have political implications. There is a caution against an absorption in political affairs and identities which is prudent. Beyond political divisions there is a greater force that unites us. But politics is not unimportant for all that.
Religious folk need to be very, very careful when engaging in this kind of denial of politics. If you force people to make a choice between a religion whose focus is exclusively on another world and a politics that concerns matters in the here and now, then people in the overwhelming majority will quite rightly choose politics and discard religion. Because a religion that has nothing critical or practical to offer people in their everyday lives is of no use at all. Such a religion exists only as an attempt to rationalize unreasonable arrangements and pacify actionable evils. And, since that is so, the denial of politics is anything but politically innocent. It doesn't look good, and people are alive to it.
When an ethic is defined as to be so other-worldly as to have no connection with earthly concerns, then it becomes the plainest denial of the legitimacy of politics as the common endeavour by which people come to shape their common affairs and determine the terms by which they order and govern their existence. Now that may fall far short of Heaven, we live in a fallen state after all. But it's precisely in being fallen that politics, the practical means of determining how we are to live well together, qualifies as a noble mission, for all of its flaws. An ethics of clean hands is no ethics at all, it is an evasion, and it always good to ask precisely what it is that the innocents are trying to avoid or avert.
Jesus may be without a party label or identity, but is he without any political implications at the same time? The danger with these kind of statements is that, in the minds of some, they easily conflate the two, failing to see the distinction, sliding from the denial of Jesus' association with a particular political identity or movement - which is right - to the denial that Jesus comes with any political implications - which is wrong.
Something about the choice of words in this caption intrigued me. Note that it has Jesus saying "I am not a socialist" and then saying "I did not vote for Trump." Actually, if Jesus is universal, then he is actually a socialist; there is something of everything, certainly everything of good will, in Jesus. He may not vote for any of these political platforms, but all of them, containing some aspect of the good, will be represented by Jesus to some extent.
Leaving the precise party label to one side, I am more interested in the politics of an anti-politics. The denial of the dignity of politics is effectively a denial of popular claims for the redress of social evils through common effort. Who benefits from this denigration and devaluation of politics? The rich and the powerful, the comfortable and the complacent, are, of course, very happy with this religious devaluation of the political, precisely because it leaves them fettered only by a moral constraint that possesses no critical or practical purchase whatsoever in the worldly realm. But be clear, this non-politics or anti-politics in the name of liberty itself involves a very conscious and deliberate political commitment – and when associated with religion, it entails a politics in Jesus’ name.
I can say for certain that Jesus would have naught to do with such blatant hypocrisy. And I can say for certain that he would not appreciate false and deceiving words being put into his mouth.
Jesus' kingdom may well not be of this earth, but the values of the Kingdom are not without practical significance in the earthly realm of politics all the same. And that involves some very radical implications that cannot but discomfort those content with the arrangements of the status quo.
You have to be careful not to define your ethic as so other-worldly as to be irrelevant to the legitimate concerns of people in the here and now. Such an ethic neither motivates nor obliges. It may pacify people who are already believers, but it will make no more converts, and will lose many more besides. It's a dead-end for religion, people are becoming increasingly wise to the political use of religion as the plainest apologetics for dominant social arrangements. That would amount to a highly political denial of politics. The rich and powerful have much less need than the poor and powerless of collective action through politics, of course, and so have ever evinced a tendency to preach religion as an other-worldly morality. But that ruse has long since been rumbled. It can only backfire badly upon religion. The only people who could engage in such a practice could only be false prophets out to damage and destroy religion, part people from true values, take Jesus away from the people. I'd challenge people who put the words "I am not a socialist" in Jesus' mouth to give me one text from the New Testament where Jesus says something comparable. And I mean comparable. I don't mean Jesus denying he is any kind of political being in particular - we know he eschewed politics - I mean where Jesus emphasised his distance from a socialist politics in particular. You see, the reason that people get confused on this is because the things that Jesus says come remarkably close to socialism. I know the differences, I want the people behind statements like this to spell them out. Because I know the similarities too. I want to know if those same people do and have the nerve to admit them.
I wouldn’t divorce Heaven and Earth so radically, either, the very idea seems utterly irreligious. There is such a thing as incarnate spirituality. "For God so loved the world he gave his one and only Son." People will be indifferent to any ethic that is indifferent to them. Jesus preaches no such indifference. And God is not indifferent to the state of the world and the condition of the people.
And that means there can be no divorce between a transcendent ethic and a worldly ethic.
It's not a case of moulding the former to the latter, whichever political ideology we favour, but of doing our best to ensure that the latter, our very earthly and very legitimate common affairs, conforms to the former, always being aware that we will more than likely fall short. I remember a debate in the UK at the time of the 1987 General Election when the question was asked as to which party Jesus Christ would vote for if he were alive today. The Conservative said he would vote Conservative, of course, and the Labour fellow not unnaturally said Labour, and the Liberal/SDP fellow said Liberal/SDP. And a Green chap commenting later said he would vote Green. (I wrote on this a few years ago. The Green guy was Jonathan Porrit, someone I have a lot of time for. But I criticized his view, saying Jesus Christ would vote no party and would be busying himself with other things of deeper concern, things which would enable us to do politics well, however we voted). Each of these figures could see something in Jesus they could agree with, something they could call their own. Together, those particular somethings amount to something universal that embraces all people equally, something we could all draw upon in politics, without it being monopolized by any political side. Something irreducible, then, something transcendent, existing outside of human creation in time and place. This is my view. Of course, Jesus is not a member of any political faction or party, and of course, Jesus wouldn't vote for this party or that. The relation here is one between the universal and the particular. The one is not to be reduced to the other. You just have to be careful at the same time not to make this transcendent ethic so other-worldly in its denial of politics as to become entangled in a highly political apologetics for an unjust and iniquitous world full of remediable ills. A Jesus that does not speak of the ills people face in the here and now will be a Jesus that people will turn their back on, for the precise reason he has been seen to have turned his back on them.
There is a fake antinomianism behind this kind of religious heresy. That tendency to divorce ethics and politics is expressed to in the assertion of love against law. It all depends. To the Jews, the law embodied love, protecting the weak and the poor against the strong and the rich. The law could be the difference between life and death. Those strong enough to look after themselves and their own have no need of law. But the wisest minds recognize the need for both love and justice to ensure that all are looked after, not just those known to us as one of our own.
St Paul understands perfectly well that the Mosaic law is the law of love and justice. Take, for example, the Book of Isaiah. This opens with Yahweh telling his people that he finds their solemn assemblies and sacrificial offerings an abomination; 'incense is an abomination to me,' he says. He is tired of routine demonstrations and declarations of piety, and counsels them instead to 'seek justice, correct oppression, defend the fatherless, plead for the widow'. Good Old Testament stuff, of course, where Yahweh is forever having to remind his pathologically cultic people that salvation is at least as much a political affair as it is a religious one. Yahweh himself is a god of the 'not yet', one who signifies a social justice which has yet to come; he cannot even be named lest he come to be turned into just another fetish by his compulsively idolatrous devotees. There is an idolatry of words just as there is an idolatry of things. And God is the enemy of all forms of idolatry. Such a God is not to be bound to the pragmatic needs and interests of the status quo, nor will such a God look away from the pain and suffering of people subject to that status quo. He will be known for what he is, he informs his people, when they see the stranger being made welcome, the hungry being filled with good things, and the rich being sent empty away.
He has brought down rulers from their thrones but has lifted up the humble. He has filled the hungry with good things but has sent the rich away empty.
He has helped his servant Israel, remembering to be merciful.
Luke 1:52-54
I would suggest that if Christians were more concerned to act on this message, rather than preach an other-worldly quiescence that devalues the material world we live in, then they would be less upset by the sight of socialists practising what certain Christians - by no means all - only preach.
Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s. Every Jew of Jesus’ day would have understood justice as falling within God's province. Jesus’ words would have been understood as a demand for earthly justice. Of course, that's political. How could it not be? Even the denial that it could be political involves a highly political denial of the legitimacy of politics in shaping and determining the ends by which we live, ends which people, rich and poor, powerful and weak alike, ought to conform to – a point which applies most pertinently to the rich and the powerful, given their capacity to live by their own might, and to subordinate the poor and the powerless to that might.
I've always avoided claiming Jesus Christ to be an anything in politics, for the simple reason that the transcendent ethic stands outside of time and place, as a truly universal ethic that embraces all equally, setting a standard towards which the laws, institutions, and practices of time and place ought to conform. At the same time, however, that transcendent ethic does come with political implications, in that it serves as a standard to which earthly institutions, and people themselves, ought to conform. I find it very easy indeed to combine Jesus and socialism. And I don't suffer anyone telling me that if you are a Christian you cannot be a socialist (a view I have heard from both Christians and socialists).
What makes things a little more complicated is the fact that people like Marx, in denouncing the capital system as a dehumanization, have been practising a Christian ethic in the absence of Christians doing that very thing themselves. When Marx wrote, the Church had retreated from social and political affairs, leaving people in desperate need bereft. If Marx took a hostile view of religion, then it was nothing less than Christians deserved for their pusillanimity in face of the forces of Mammon and their complicity with the kingdom of the Beast. That point still applies in some quarters. I have criticized Marx on account of his lacking the transcendent ethic he needs in order to make good his emancipatory claims, and to prevent his humanist commitment to a limitless self-realization from becoming a self-consuming self-worship that turns in on itself as a universal self-hatred. God and religion are not about a power to be appropriated and exercised, but love, sacrifice and service to others, involving a humility and recognition of fragility and suffering. But none of that involves an apologetics; I do make people live up to their moral claims. Which, surely to goodness, is something Jesus Christ enjoins upon us all. There is no justification for the anarchy of the rich and powerful in Jesus Christ, and if it takes socialism to remind Christians of the ethic of their founder, then thank God for socialists! Apologists are no use to God, they are a menace to the kingdom. They do more to turn people to atheism than atheists could ever do.
Let's examine the "my kingdom is not of this Earth" line further. This all too easily degenerates into a highly political conservative apologetics for the status quo. If the ethics of Jesus Christ is merely other-worldly and nothing else, of no practical account to the lives of people in the here and now, of no relevance to their struggles for justice and freedom, their need for shelter and security, respect and dignity, then it stands revealed as a completely useless ethics that people will rightly discard. If that line is employed as an ethics that tells people that their this-worldly concerns don't matter, then it is the plainest conservative ideology employed by those who, for political reasons, seek to denigrate, devalue and disable politics, in a deliberate attempt to deprive people of the collective means by which they could come together and seek remedy for some very remediable social ills. And for that reason, it is utterly reprehensible.
Marx saw God as an ideal projection of the best human powers and potentialities which we are to reclaim and exercise and no doubt become Nietzschean supermen. There is an issue here of self-created values vs transcendent ethics, such is the choice before us. I have presented my views on this issue at length elsewhere. (A Home and a Resting Place, on Academia).
I would make another point here, too. Talking to atheist and agnostic friends over the years, a consistent criticism they make of Christianity, and of religion in particular, concerns the denigration of the Earth. There is no basis for this at all. God looked upon his Creation as he rested at the end of every day of its making and declared it ‘good.’ In the end, He looked upon the Earth and said it was ‘very good.’ It matters to God that humans look after the Creation – peace with the Creation is peace with the Creator. There ought to be no denigration at all of earthly affairs and concerns as such, just not an absorption in them. Preach an ethic that is other-worldly and no more, and you will find religion implicated in the despoliation and destruction of the social and planetary ecology – just as critics allege. Read back to Lynn White jr’s critique of Christianity in the 1960s, which he saw as culpable in environmental destruction. I argue this is wrong. But there is a definite sense in which an ‘other-worldly’ ethic cultivates an attitude of indifference to social and ecological concerns that also makes people and planet available to the predation of some all-too worldly forces.
My advice is that if you are concerned with religion and spirituality, then you had better pay attention to the state of this world. That doesn’t mean taking sides in politics (it doesn’t rule it out, either). It does mean seeing that the transcendent standards involved in the religious ethic come to inform, guide and orient temporal affairs. It’s not a case of moulding the transcendent to particular platforms in the temporal sphere, but conforming the temporal sphere to transcendent standards. Alasdair Maclntyre has an interesting take on the relationship between society, morality and religion. As against the conventional view that holds moral behaviour in society to be dependent upon religion, MacIntyre holds that the strength of religion itself depends on the existence of a healthy and unified society. Moral coherence, in other words, depends upon social coherence. When community starts to divide and dissolve, rest assured that religion will soon follow suit. Whilst Jesus’ Kingdom may well not be of this earth, the health and viability of any religion that seeks to spread Jesus’ message very much depends upon the health and vitality of the communities in which individuals live in the here and now. The condition of society doesn’t alter the quality and content of the transcendent ethic, of course. But it does determine the extent to which people are responsive to that ethic, taking it up in their own lives, which is surely the point. Render that ethic so other-worldly as to be socially and historically irrelevant, and that is precisely how it will end up – irrelevant to the issues of practical living, hidden away in Heaven as an attic where people put all the things they can’t quite discard, but can’t quite find a use for in their daily living. Where social bonds and ties start to unravel, we start to lose the sense of a coherent moral community in a unified society. Rest assured that when that happens, religion will start to lose its hold on the lives of the people. Lose the company of others in society, and we lose religion. The view I express here takes a different view to the conventional argument that the decline of religion will bring about the decline of society through deviance and immorality. The conventional view makes the strength of religion a condition of a strong and unified society. If anything, the relation proceeds from the other direction, meaning that it is social decline and the deterioration in the quality of connections between individuals that will bring about the decline of religion. Religious folk have to take an interest in the earthly kingdom, however political that must necessarily be. For the condition of the earthly kingdom is not without implication with respect to the spreading of the religious message. The loss of social unity goes hand in hand with the loss of a coherent moral community. It follows from this that those concerned with spreading a religious ethic need to play close attention to the disruption or loss of community, and to the connection between social unity and moral coherence in the kingdoms of this Earth. In other words, the recovery of religious coherence and vitality is not in itself the condition of social unity and coherence, but a product of it, which in turn means that if you are concerned with the health and vitality of the religious ethic, then you need to be concerned with the health and vitality of the social bonds and ties constituting community in the earthly kingdom. Should the conditions of community start to unravel in the here and now, then the hold of religion on the people will follow in short order.
In light of this, the words of R.H. Tawney from The Acquisitive Society are worth pondering at length:
"He hath put down the mighty from their seat, and hath exalted the humble and meek." A society which is fortunate enough to possess so revolutionary a basis, a society whose Founder was executed as the enemy of law and order, need not seek to soften the materialism of principalities and powers with mild doses of piety administered in an apologetic whisper. It will teach as one having authority, and will have sufficient confidence in its Faith to believe that it requires neither artificial protection nor judicious under-statement in order that such truth as there is in it may prevail. It will appeal to mankind, not because its standards are identical with those of the world, but because they are profoundly different. It will win its converts, not because membership involves no change in their manner of life, but because it involves a change so complete as to be ineffaceable. It will expect its adherents to face economic ruin for the sake of their principles with the same alacrity as, not so long ago, it was faced by the workman who sought to establish trade unionism among his fellows.
It will define, with the aid of those of its members who are engaged in different trades and occupations, the lines of conduct and organization which approach most nearly to being the practical application of Christian ethics in the various branches of economic life, and, having defined them, will censure those of its members who depart from them without good reason. It will rebuke the open and notorious sin of the man who oppresses his fellows for the sake of gain as freely as that of the drunkard or adulterer. It will voice frankly the judgment of the Christian conscience on the acts of the State, even when to do so is an offence to nine-tenths of its fellow-citizens. It will have as its aim, not merely to convert the individual, but to make a new kind, and a Christian kind of civilization.
Such a religion is likely to be highly inconvenient to all parties and persons who desire to dwell at ease in Zion. But it will not, at any rate, be a matter of indifference. The marks of its influence will not be comfort, but revolt and persecution. It will bring not peace, but a sword. Yet its end is peace. It is to harmonize the discords of human society, by relating its activities to the spiritual purpose from which they derive their significance.
Tawney, The Acquisitive Society ch 11
Tawney was a Christian Socialist, not a marxist. He proclaimed social unity against class division. He was also a first rate historian who knew and detailed all the conservative evasions when it came to politics. He detailed the damage that such cowardice and cynicism did to Christianity over time. (Religion and the Rise of Capitalism). Call Tawney a 'nominal Christian' if you dare. It will rebound on you, but, of more concern to me, it will rebound on Christianity and religion much more.
Be careful, though, and note that Tawney's words do not speak of a politics of power. For the Old Testament, the non-god Yahweh and the 'non-being' of the poor are closely connected. Indeed, it is the first historical document to forge such a relationship. In a truly revolutionary reversal - quite distinct from Marx - in the Judaeo-Christian tradition true power springs from powerlessness. As St Paul writes in Corinthians:
'God chose what is weakest in the world to shame the strong. . . even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are.'
The whole of Judaeo-Christian thought is cast in this ironic, paradoxical, up-ending mould. And there is very good reason why this all gets so easily mistaken for socialism. The wretched of the earth are known to the Old Testament as the anawim, those whose desperate plight embodies the failure of the prevailing political order and its dominant classes. Judaeo-Christianity first emerged as a radical critique of the injustice and inequality of an aggressively commercialized society, a society in which the old, egalitarian tribal values of the stronger caring for the weaker members of the community were supplanted by the profit motive, the nexus of callous cash payment as Marx called it in a later age (when Christian voices became all too silent on the way an exploitative commercial society contradicted their Christian values). Any ethic which glides over the iniquities and injustices of a mammon-fixated society by a denial of politics as a means of collective redress has moved far, indeed very far, away from Jesus. But, of course, the prophets warned us all along that of all false idols, money and its personifications would be the very last one to fall. And fall it will.
CONCLUSION
There are a lot of words here, so I shall sum up in an attempt to distill the essence.
The problem with anti-political statements that put words in the mouth of Jesus Christ is that all too often such statements are designed to serve a very definite political purpose with an eye on preserving an unjust and iniquitous status quo. There is no radical distinction at all between a transcendent ethic centred upon God and earthly affairs, none. I repeat, the idea of Christianity as an other-worldly ethic teaching social and political passivity and quiescence derives from the way religion was used as a political tool to control the lower orders and take the sting out of social division and conflict. That cynical use of religion on the part of the ruling classes and their ideological servants has done untold damage to religion in general, and Christianity in particular, so much so that it is well-nigh impossible to get many people to see religion in any other light. To critics, religion is a matter of conservative apologetics, pure and simple. This is not my view. I believe in an incarnate spirituality. Just think on those words from John, “for God so loved the world he gave his one and only Son.” (John 3:16). God does not, and could never, turn His back on human affairs, and teaches the very opposite of moral indifference with respect to politics.
Establishing the right relation here, it is not a case of moulding the transcendent ethic to any of the political ideologies on offer in the temporal world but of ensuring, as we make our choices and undertake our acts, as political and moral beings determining the terms on which we are to live well together as social beings, that we bring our political ideals, laws, and actions into conformity with that transcendent ethic. There is a fine distinction here – existing outside of time and place, the transcendent ethic is not identified with or reducible to any specific political ideology, but it certainly serves to inform and orient each, any, and every one of them, insofar as they have the wisdom to allow it. And that can involve some very radical implications with respect to prevailing social and political arrangements. And if that discomforts those who are happy to take their ease in the realms of Zion and Mammon, then so be it. What else could we expect from an ethic whose founder was put to death as an enemy of law and order.
In fine, I would be very careful of sharply anti-political statements made in the name of Jesus. That can too easily sound like a clear delegitimation of politics as the collective means by which people seek to remedy remediable social ills and order their existence by political will. And, as such, it is a statement that delivered with a highly political intent, seeking to stymie the political efforts of others, silence or delegitimize their voices. And, as a political statement, it contradicts the anti-political message. It is also the purest hypocrisy that cannot but rebound badly upon religion.
Religion is fighting for survival against some powerful secular forces which see it as far more rational and grown-up for human beings to take morality into their own hands, discarding fading and failing myths that have all too often served as forces of social and mental control. Press religion into service once more in that way, and people will simply reject it as useless, meaningless and hypocritical. Force a choice between religion and politics in this way, and people will, rightly, choose against an ethic that silences and suppresses their legitimate concerns with respect to the here and now. In other words, state the transcendent ethic properly, as a morality that is binding upon each and all equally, establishing a critical standard that exists outside of time and place, a standard by which to critically evaluate temporal laws, institutions, and actions, and be prepared to accept the result, however radical it may seem. As Tawney warns, people will be rightly contemptuous of a religious ethic that seeks to soften the materialism of principalities and powers with mild doses of piety administered in an apologetic whisper. That was precisely one reason why the likes of Marx rejected Christian ethics as a blatant apologetics, in effect coming to practise a Christian ethics without God, on account of the failure of Christians to do likewise.
But if this is conservative apologetics, it will only harm religion, not socialism. People will just see religion as lame and hypocritical, it just won't serve that old ideological purpose of pacification any more and people should just give it up.
I need to finish here, having so much work to complete and so little time. (One day, I swear, I shall have my books on Dante, Winstanley, and Rousseau out). So, if I may, I'd like to end with a long quote from an article reviewing Terry Eagleton's book, Culture and the Death of God. The article, and Eagleton's book, makes sense of where I am coming from on religion, from which everyone with a political axe to grind will have something to learn:
'In the life and death of Jesus, Eagleton discovers the most stringent and fundamental rebuke to capitalism, as well as the point of departure for any future revolutionary politics.
The itinerant and crucified Jesus, not his Dad, is the apotheosis of Eagleton’s political theology. To the curer of leprosy and blindness, pain and disease are “unacceptable”; misery and despair are not “enviable opportunities to flex one’s moral muscles.” Jesus mends without compensation or moral inquiry; he never tells the afflicted to learn the edifying lessons the Almighty is teaching them, however inscrutably. If there must be suffering, it comes as the price of personal and collective transfiguration; our condition is so awry that the only way out is through a turbulent journey of self-dispossession. As Eagleton explains, the Christian life as portrayed in the Gospels is not that of the pious, hard-working, familial accumulator dear to the conceits of suburban believers. It is rather “homeless, propertyless, peripatetic, celibate, socially marginal, disdainful of kinsfolk, averse to material possessions … a thorn in the side of the Establishment and a scourge of the rich and powerful.” In the life and death of Jesus—resurrection goes unmentioned—Eagleton discovers the most stringent and fundamental rebuke to capitalism, as well as the point of departure for any future revolutionary politics. It is in that crucible of downward mobility that “a new configuration of faith, culture, and politics might be born.” This is unvarnished liberation theology, and here Eagleton returns to the prophetic Marxism that animated his earlier career.
There are problems with this account, especially its omission of the indisputable fact that Christianity was harnessed to political repression well before Constantine. If the Gospels exhibit a salutary aversion to money, property, and “family values,” the rest of the New Testament is not so unaccommodating to the powers and principalities. It was Paul who told slaves to obey their masters and wives to submit to their husbands, and who believed that the Roman imperial government was a providential instrument of order. And in an era when, especially among Catholics, faith has been cast more in terms of propositional scrupulosity than commitment to justice, Eagleton’s gesture to liberation theology will be seen by many as a retrograde and sinister capitulation to unbelief.
Yet if the early days of Pope Francis’s papacy give any sign, hostility to the acquisitive ethos may be returning to the center of the Christian message, and fellowship with the weak and downtrodden may become the new politics of Christian love. By the terms of Eagleton’s theology, however, avarice is more than a grubby moral failing, and capitalism is much worse than a system of exploitation and injustice. They stem from a lack of trust in the basic goodness of creation; as Eagleton writes, they deny God as “friend, lover, and fellow accused,” who created the world out of lavish affection and will suffer anything to reconcile us. Christianity, Eagleton reminds us, is a radical humanism, rooted in the faith that a superabundant love is the leaven and marrow of the universe.
That faith will seem folly to secularists, however touching or even appealing they may find it; but if Eagleton’s story of unavailing surrogates is right, they might want, at the very least, to reconsider their indifference or animosity to theology. Secular liberals and radicals continue to speak in a moral and political idiom, originating in the Enlightenment, a lexicon of justice and compassion derived mainly from the Jewish and Christian traditions. Yet those traditions insist that justice and compassion are anchored in the very metaphysics that a secular left dismisses as superstitious at best and ideological at worst.
If Eagleton’s theology is right, then today’s apostates must insist that love widens the range and magnitude of moral and political possibility; but they can do so only if they affirm a very different account of the nature of the cosmos. In the coming age of political and ecological crisis, we may have no other choice but to embrace the vulnerability that comes with the eschewal of possession and domination. We may discover, contrary to the fraudulent realists, that the meek will inherit the earth.'