I’ve actually wondered if there is even one Evangelical Christian who is also a Marxist in the US. Those views are pretty incompatible but maybe there’s someone out there who’s trying to mash them both together like two dry play doh colors.
Stalin did nothing wrong because he accepted Christ the Lord into his heart on his death bed.
No but he went to seminary school because his mom wanted him to become a priest.
I do actually know a self described “Christian Fundamentalist” who is a leftist. The dude is some flavor of Baptist (can’t remember which denomination specifically) and is really rad. He explained it to me once by saying that fundamentalism means following the strictest and most literal word of something. Applied to Jesus and the Bible, that means helping the poor, feeding the hungry, and not trying to hoard wealth.
I’m curious, does your friend think that anyone who does not accept Jesus as their savior will spend an eternity in a state of eternal torment? To me that’s kind of the dividing line between the true “fundamentalists” and everyone else.
Before I deconverted, I tried to embrace Karl Barth Thought since he was basically universalist without explicitly saying so, and I liked a lot of what he had to say. But that part I was too far gone.
(btw Barth is also cool because he incorporated dialectics into his theology!
Edit: a more religiously inclined Marxist should write a book titled “Between Two Karls” about an imaginary conversation between Marx and Barth.
As a random aside, coming from my religious background I tend to cite the end of the narnia novels as a healthier view on the whole be saved or go to hell rhetoric. I personally kind of hate most of those books now but the final book does make it clear that people who do good works, regardless of faith, end up in heaven. Coming from a Christian I feel like it’s a good way to segue into talking about the injustice of a good a just divine figure damning people for being born into a different faith (or atheist) setting.
I guess what I’m saying is that the repent or be damned rhetoric can be wiggled around, but it comes down to how philosophical a Christian is at heart, or if they are just dead set in the rule as it seems to stand in their specific orthodoxy
Yeah, the whole “Hand yourself over to us or you’ll face eternal torment beyond anything you can imagine” thing always kind of seemed like dodgy salesmanship to me. A little too on the nose. A little too convenient for the one making the pitch.
I need the occasional reminder that there’re people out there who aren’t just the usual 700 club type and that there’s often significantly more depth to theology. One of the pitfalls of avoiding human contact whenever possible out of fear of the more reactionary elements of the populace.
I grew up in an evangelical family and I can say that while Christianity can mesh with Marxism, it’s pretty impossible for evangelicalism to do the same. There’s too much built in shit with the more realized concept of active good and evil divine forces being the driver to what’s wrong in the world, and essentially only god can come and fix what’s truly wrong (ala rapture, god establishing his kingdom on earth post apocalypse). This is in direct conflict with Marxist ideals, which are very humanist, essentially telling us that humans can establish a more just and equitable system ourselves.
My dad is an absolute end of the world nutter and while I can get him to believe in the realities of global warming and injustices under capitalism, his end solution is still divine in nature. It’s frustrating because he can see all of the same issues but evangelicalism doesn’t leave any wiggle room for humans to fix them
Bart Erhman is probably the closest I’ve come across, but I don’t think he entirely considers himself a Christian anymore
Personally, I struggle to see how one can continue to deal with the contradictions between Christianity and Marxism without ultimately either abandoning one or essentially being agnostic and admitting that much of their ingrained religious background is unimportant (besides the parts that are basically teaching self improvement and care for your community/world). Thats basically where I ended up
