Thor's Day: Socialism and the Christian Right

How can anyone be a Conservative and follow Jesus?

By Ed Rogers

Most Christians, if asked, will tell you that Socialism is anti-religion. Some non-believers call themselves socialist without other beliefs contradicting it, but almost any conservative Christian who calls himself a socialist is snared in a dilemma.
    From my reading of the bibles of the Christian religion, I find very few true Christians among the millions who profess to believe the teachings of Jesus Christ. There is no denying that Jesus and his merry band of men and women were socialists. They bordered on being communists, with Jesus assuming the authoritarian role and Judas Iscariot's serving as his trusted treasurer: receiving the money everyone turned over to him and handing it out depending on people's needs. Food and drink were also a communal affair. In every regard, Jesus and his followers placed the community's needs above the individual's: Socialism at its purist.
    I ask, WWJS [what would Jesus say] about his socialist brothers and sisters today? It gets old listening to so-called Christians crying about Duck Dynasty's Phil Robertson losing his job and about "the war on Christmas." Repeatedly it’s just the same hand-wringing over nothing, while they are cheering the cutting of food stamp programs and unemployment benefits. Robertson and his so-called clan will not miss a meal because he got fired.

Why is it that this godly community can only cry out when it's the wealthy who are called onto the carpet? The Robertson family is doing quite well. They were doing fine, financially, before the show. They would do fine without the show. However, millions are not doing well, and could use some Christian outrage for justice cried out on their behalf.
    Underlying all the crying about free speech is the total support of a bigot and a racist.
    I hoed cotton alongside blacks back in the fifties. With the sun setting in the western sky, we would walk that half-mile home. There was no singing. Hell, we were so tired there was very little talking. I would return to the white people’s house while my friends returned to a shotgun, with cardboard covering the cracks. In the summer, it was so hot they would sleep outside on quilts and in the winter, the wood burning cooking stove in the small kitchen and the small potbelly stove in the front room was all the heat they had. Their schoolhouses were a large version of the shotgun, which they called home. Their books and desks were hand-me-downs from the white schools. I spent many a cold day in their house and it was not fun. No matter how close you got to the potbelly stove, your front or your back would get cold. Try to learn anything while hungry and cold. This is the true picture of the “Jim Crow” south.
    In the summer, the white man that leased the land and the house from my great, grandmother, paid the black family for working the farm. Out of that pay, they would have to pay back the money, which, was loaned to them over the winter months when they could not work. There was no way they would ever get out of debt.

The reality is that far from being happy, they were no more than paid-slaves. These poor people were not stars in a Walt Disney movie with bluebirds landing on their shoulders, as Robertson would have the world believe and Conservative Christians espouse. Most worked themselves to death at a young age or died from cotton pesticides that farmers sprayed each year.
    The idiot Newt Gingrich compared Robertson to Pope Francis. Others have compared him to Martin Luther King, Jr. and Rosa Parks. Others warned of the End of Days. This is the face of the Christian religion. There came not a word—that I heard anyway—from the pulpits denouncing Robertson. Instead, churches called for supporting him with prayers.
    Christian apologists may defend their church's beliefs, but they are not crying foul against the right wing. The idea that Jesus would support corporations over poor people is insane, and I lay the blame at the feet of those who say they know the meaning of the Bible and its teachings.
    It's Christians who have walked away from Jesus's teachings and in the act driven the weak and the sick from their door. While thousands are going hungry, they may set up a food pantry and feed a few so they can drive home and feel good about themselves. And on Sundays they rush to their churches, close the doors, and listen lovingly to their preachers telling them the version of the Bible they're paying him to preach. Afterward, feeling all godly, they take the family out for the big Sunday Lunch and get home in time for a football kick-off.
    Jesus said to give away your wealth to the poor. Nowhere in the Bible is it written that Jesus said to cut food stamps and starve the poor. The big quote that so-called Christians like to throw out there is that Jesus said if you don’t work, nor shall you eat. Paul said this, not Jesus. [For more examples, see AlterNet's "Right-Wing Is Filled with Biblical Illiterates: They'd Be Shocked by Jesus' Teachings if They Ever Picked Up a Bible."]
    Where is the outrage? Christians ask us to believe in their God. Hell, they don’t even know their God. They should cut all the crap out of the Bible and read the words that are in red (at least in the editions that seek to call attention to Jesus's supposed utterances). Then they should ask themselves whether they believe Jesus was a Conservative or a Socialist. And if Jesus was a Socialist, how can anyone be a Conservative and follow him?
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Copyright © 2014 by Ed Rogers

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