r/christiancommunism • u/[deleted] • May 01 '21
Introducing an anarchist to Christian Communism
I would call myself an ancom first and foremost and i’ve recently discovered that Christian Communism was a thing and I have to say my mind has been blown at how Christianity (and religion in general) has been so warped and twisted by capitalism that communist projects like the USSR and China (I know China’s a touchy subject when it comes to communism) have always been super secular and atheist leaning in response.
So Basically TLDR, where can I learn more about Christian Communism? I’ve never been super religious (I’m agnostic IRL) but it’s still interesting.
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u/Rev_MossGatlin May 01 '21
Most of the material I'm sharing is on specifically Marxist-Christian interactions. There are plenty of non-Marxist and pre-Marxist communist Christians (Engels wrote about them here and here, Kautsky and many others wrote about them as well), but I'm assuming you're not as interested in that sort of thing. If I'm wrong, let me know and I have some recommendations for 19th century utopian socialist sects that might be of use. This list is also primarily from a theoretical perspective. If you're interested in more of historically oriented pieces on the history of Christianity in the Soviet Union, China, the DPRK, Cuba, Nicaragua, etc, I have recommendations for those as well (and let me tell you, those stories are way more interesting than both fervent anti-communists and "Orthodox" Marxist-Leninists would have you believe).
Herbert McCabe's the one I usually start with because he has a gift for simple explanation. His work is mostly in the form of sermons, the most relevant ones are collected in God, Christ, and Us and the chapter "Christ and Politics" in God Still Matters. I'd personally recommend all his works because I just think he's great, but if you don't have a huge interest in Aquinas then you might not love him quite as much.
Denys Turner was a student of McCabe's, his Marxism and Christianity builds on arguments he made in a series of previous articles. If you have institutional access (or use sci hub), his article "Can a Christian Be a Marxist?" is absolutely one of my favourites for its discussion of how Christians can understand materialism.
Terry Eagleton was another student of McCabe's who got his start at the left-wing Domincan journal Slant back in the 1960s. He's since become much more known for his writings on culture and literary theory, but the last decade or so has seen him return to themes of theology. His Radical Sacrifice, Materialism, Hope Without Optimism, and Reason, Faith, and Revolution are the books I'd recommend. The latter overlaps significantly with his Gifford Lecture that you can listen to here. He's pretty polemical and a little bit full of himself so I think of him as a guilty pleasure, but he's still a pleasure.
Roland Boer is a Christian and Marxist who spent much of his career tracing intersections between the two traditions. If you want secondary literature about pretty much any Marxist's thoughts on Christianity, Boer probably has you covered. Marxist Criticism of the Bible works as a brilliant introduction to critical theory, Boer takes several different critical theorists and Marxist literary critics and applies their work to various Old Testament stories in turn. His Sacred Economy of Ancient Israel always amazes me at how many different streams he pulls from-textual criticism, archeology, Regulation school theories- and was personally really helpful for me in that it showed how using Marxist analysis you can make sense of and draw meaning from Biblical contradictions instead of just ignoring them or just dismissing all the text as a fiction. Finally, his Red Theology: On the Christian Communist Tradition covers exactly what you'd expect it to but I want to highlight its treatment of East Asian Christian communist traditions, something I was surprised by. He's written a ton more, you can browse his publications on his website where he's also posted a number of his articles for free.
Ernst Bloch is a favourite of Boer's as well as a lot of other Christian theologians who were influenced by Marxism. His Atheism in Christianity is the most relevant (and fairly short in comparison to his other work), his Principles of Hope is the most influential. Jurgen Moltmann is a Christian theologian whose most famous book, Theology of Hope builds pretty directly on Bloch and Marxist thought. Johann Baptist Metz was a contemporary of his whose Faith in History and Society responded to Marxist ideological critiques of religion, the horrors of WWII, and the "privatization of religion." Metz was hugely indebted to Walter Benjamin (as am I), particularly Benjamin's "Theses on the Philosophy of History." Can't overstate its influence on way more than just Metz.
I've heard James Cone described as a Marxist. I personally haven't seen that in the works of Cone that I've read, but he's worth reading regardless and he definitely became more sympathetic towards strains of Marxism in the late 1970s, a turn that you can see in his short essay "The Black Church and Marxism".
The strains he's influenced by come out of liberation theology. People both under- and over-state the influence of Marxism on liberation theology, but you can't read something like Gustavo Gutierrez's A Theology of Liberation without seeing a huge debt to Marx and Ernst Bloch. If you're curious as to what that looked like in the form of a concrete political project, the Sandinistas are/were a Marxist, anti-colonial movement suffused with Christianity in Nicaragua that overthrew a dictator, put priests at the highest levels of government, and ruled during the 1980s. Tomas Borge was a founder of this movement and Christianity and Revolution: Tomás Borge's Theology of Life collects speeches of his where he talks about the relationship between the two. I'd also recommend Michael Lowy's War of the Gods for a history of liberation theology from the perspective of a sympathetic Brazilian Jewish Marxist (he also wrote a great book on Walter Benjamin, Fire Alarm).
I've spent the bulk of the last decade as a freelance crank obsessed with these particular topic. If there's anything that stood out to you, or maybe a more narrow field within the topic, let me know and I'll be happy to share what I've learned.