"THE COMMUNIST PARTY AT PRAYER"??
In this year of worldwide elections and our own general election the sooner the better, I wish the leaders of the early church were on the ballot paper! Here is their “manifesto” as published in the New Testament book of The Acts of the Apostles:
“all the believers were one in heart and mind. No-one claimed that any of their possessions were their own. They shared everything they had. God’s grace was so powerfully at work in them all that there were no needy persons among them”
“they had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need”
Do those verses remind you of anything?
In 1875 the German philosopher and economist KARL MARX advocated an ideal form of society in which would be asked a contribution “from each according to his ability”and in which would be given sufficient “ to each according to his needs”.
Were the early Christians closet Communists then?
Well, certainly not in the sense of the corrupt and repressive regimes of Stalin, Khruschev or Brezhnev in the Soviet Union. Not in the sense of the ruthless regimentation in the China of Mao-Zedong or Tsi JinPing .
Russia and China seem to indicate that all man-made attempts at pure communism fail sooner or later because of the lust for power in those who fight their way to the top and the consequent denial of freedom to the masses. I think in these cases it’s something to do with size of population.
Attempts at communism in smaller countries have sometimes worked in the short term. I’m thinking particularly of Castro’s Cuba and other Latin-American states. But this part of the world suffers from physical proximity to that wealthy, powerful, fearful, hysterically anti-communist thing called the United States which has systematically interfered whenever possible to impose puppet dictators like Pinochet in Chile to snuff out democracy.
OK. The mention of the U.S.A leads me on to the opposite of Marxism – the ideology of CAPITALISM, so rampant in an unbridled form close to home. Worship of the free market.
Remember the behaviour of the early church? Sharing everything they had, God’s grace ensuring there were no needy members?
Contrast that with what people used to call the Church of England – “the Conservative party at prayer” !!
So cosy, conjuring up a 1930s or 1950s rural scene with an old stone church, the local squire and his circle in reserved box pews at the front and the forelock-tugging yokels herded at the back while the doddery vicar recited Mattins.
Statistically, I gather, those who put “C of E” as their religion on census forms etc are still mostly conservatives - not particularly active politically, apart from calling for tougher sentences for criminals and, I’m sure Rishi Sunak desperately hopes, supporting the deportation of asylum seekers to Rwanda.
Interestingly, though, these census-form C of E Tories are only occasional churchgoers!
So it’s not so much a case of people besieging the church to actively promote Conservative policies then but more the keep politics out of religion and religion out of politics brigade. The ones who say the Bishops in the House of Lords should shut up and not meddle in affairs of state.
I suppose that’s why Justin Welby felt it necessary to assure the nation in his Easter sermon that the C of is not party-political!
When I challenge this attitude of not mixing religion with politics, I often get the biblical story of Jesus and the coin with the Roman emperor’s head on it quoted back at me. “Should we pay taxes to Caesar or not?” was the trick question. “Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and unto God what is God’s”, Jesus replied.
And they want this answer to mean that service of God has nothing to do with rich or poor, nothing to do with politics, economics or taxation, public life or money – that’s all Caesar’s domain, nothing to do with God and our worship of Him.
How utterly ridiculous.
When Jesus says “Render unto God what is God’s, He means everything: your life, your hopes, your fears, your possessions, your tax returns, Caesar’s stupid little coin, Caesar’s stupid great empire, the whole kitchen sink.
How can we possibly separate politics and religion?
They are both vitally and intimately concerned with the very way we live together and relate to one another.
Now if that’s right, then can we still dare hope that greed-driven free-market capitalism might someday lose its allure? Pigs might fly? Well, it may seem pretty unlikely but I tell you one thing:
the gospel is uncompromising. God favours the poor. God has a bias to the poor, as Bishop David Sheppard famously wrote.
The grotesque and ever-widening gap between the poor, the not managing, the just-about-managing and the OBSCENELY wealthy has become an ugly status-quo which we are brainwashed into thinking is inevitable. “Regrettable” perhaps but normal.
RUBBISH!
Do you know what a billion is? It’s one thousand million.Think about it. How could you own that? How could you spend that?
And yet there are actually over 3,000 billionnaires. They own more than half the world’s riches.
How can capitalism have been allowed not only to let this happen but even to encourage it?
The very idea is profoundly unChristlike, unChristian and utterly at odds with the spirit of the church Christ founded.
I suppose you could describe the early church as portrayed in the Acts of the Apostles as “the Communist party at prayer”! Why not?
Too idealistic? But that’s the whole point. Idealism. It was still a small movement encouraged by the Holy Spirit to gain strength by living together in fellowship with & for each other.
Inevitably as the movement grew larger, it gradually became more and more of an institution – eventually the official religion of the entire Roman empire under Constantine. Something of a spiritual death-knell. The idealism faded away.
And what about the dear old C of E? Idealistic? Hmm. Hardly.
It is now an unwieldy, bureaucratic body. Management-speak. A field-day for administrators. Struggling parishes are not flavour of the month. They are phased out wherever possible.
What about the people in a parish like mine?
If our precious little community is to live Christ’s gospel, then we must allow the Holy Spirit to make us idealists. I know we can’t literally live in a commune like the early Christians – there are too many of us! - but there is no reason why we can’t share their idealistic spirit.
Whether the world , the flesh and the devil like it or not, GOD LOVES THE POOR. There is a constant divine BIAS TO THE POOR. So that every single Christian, every one of us, is called, in however modest and humble a way, to love each other, to love our neighbour and especially to love the poor. Whenever we have the opportunity, we must SPEAK TRUTH TO POWER, WEALTH AND GREED.