This is Richard Wolff from Democracy at Work with another response to an AskProfWolff question
sent in from our Patreon community.
This question comes from Dan Testin.
Dan asks whether if Jesus returned today he would be a socialist?
And more generally, what is the relationship between Christianity or even religions in
general and the struggle between those who favor capitalism and those who think that
we can do better and want to move on to socialism?
This question arises often and particularly inside religious communities for perfectly
understandable reasons.
I want to mention them because they're the answer to the question.
Religion has been a social force from the beginning of the records we have of human
communities.
Religions are about how people relate to one another, how they understand their place in
the universe, how they connect human beings with other kinds of beings, both spiritual
non-material beings to the degree they believe in those, and with the rest of the animal
world and so forth.
Nature in short and religions differ and religions, being the product of human development, at
least that's what I think.
I understand there are others who think of that in the opposite way: that human institutions
are products of something pre-human or beyond human, or spiritual, or a greater power, etc.
But that's not the debate I want to engage in now.
I just want to make it clear that all religions to the degree that they reflect the societies
in which they function reflect also the disagreements in those societies: the different points of
view, the different philosophies, and so forth.
For example, take ancient Roman Catholicism back in the time of the Roman Empire for many
many of the early centuries of the Christian religion.
It was a religion of the poor.
It was a religion of the oppressed.
It was a religion that was persecuted by the authorities of the time.
Many of you, like I, was also, were taught as children about the stories, the Bible stories,
and so on about that difficult early time of Jesus's life and in the immediate aftermath.
One of the reasons some people read Christianity understand it as a religion of the poor, a
religion of the oppressed, a religion of the persecuted is because of its origin.
Those people who feel persecuted, who feel oppressed, to this day can find easily in
the Christian religion and indeed in all religions’ texts, leading figures’ sermons, and so
on that are the expression of people who want change in society because they don't want
to continue to be poor or oppressed or discriminated against or persecuted.
So religions have that in them: in Christianity or Judaism or Islam, they all have that in
them.
If you search you will find it.
But they also have another part of society.
Let me go back to ancient Roman Catholicism in the 4th century during the reign of the
emperor Constantine.
Roman Catholicism was taken up by that emperor and made into the official state religion
of the Roman empire in which case the church changed from being hunted and persecuted by
the government.
It was funded by the government.
It was protected by the government.
But of course, not for nothing.
In order to get that exalted position, it had to be comfortable with the authorities.
It had to render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's.
In other words, the Roman Catholic church went from an enemy or an opponent or a critic
of the dominant system into the partner of the dominating institution.
In the fourth century that would be the Roman emperor but in subsequent centuries Roman
Catholicism for example accommodated itself to feudal kingdoms and then had to accommodate
itself when society changed again to capitalist businesses and business rich people.
In capitalism, the rich are dominant whether they were masters of slaves in ancient times
or lords of feudal serfs in the middle ages or employers of vast armies of employees.
Those dominant groups wanted a different kind of Christianity from what was wanted by the
dominated groups: the slaves, the serfs, the workers.
So there's a tension inside all religions between those who read it through the eyes
of a dominating group, a dominating social class, and those who want the religion to
reflect and serve the needs of those at the bottom of society.
Which way would Jesus go?
I don't know.
I think whether Jesus returns or not or whether any religions’ leaders or futures or directions
go this way or that, the conflict between different readings of the religion, different
interpretations, different emphases, will always be there to the extent that society
is a place where class conflict is real and a part of society as it is today.
So I'm not surprised that there's liberation theology as well as conservative theology;
that there are fundamentalist protestant sects; that are socialistic sects and those that
are very gung-ho celebrating capitalism, free markets, and all the rest.
The church is not immune (whatever the church is) from the rest of society.
It reflects, it filters, it mediates the conflicts that show up inside religion as different
interpretations of what the great leader or the great texts have to say.
This is Richard Wolff for Democracy at Work responding to another AskProfWolff question
from our very much appreciated Patreon community.