David Bentley Hart, who translated The New Testament, concludes that “the early Christians were communists”.

By Nazarul Islam

If you are comfortable with the thought that communism is a modern invention….Consider this: “At the very first, when he returned to the country from overseas, he had ordered that no one in the society should possess anything of his own, that everything should be held in common and distributed to each according to his needs.”

This is not about Bernie Sanders’s return from his 1988 trip to the Soviet Union, nor even Lenin’s return to Russia from exile, several decades earlier. It’s certainly not about Marx or Engels. The eminently communist exhortation to hold everything “in common” and to distribute wealth “according to his needs” is a quote from the most influential Father of the Church, Saint Augustine, who died in the year 430.

But even in Augustine’s time, the idea was old.

He was following in the footsteps of the early Christians, who, we learn in the Acts of the Apostles, “owned all things communally”, and “sold their properties and possessions, and distributed to everyone, according as anyone had need.” David Bentley Hart (whose translation of The New Testament I use here) cannot but conclude that “the early Christians were communists”.

Except, of course, that they were not — not in our shallow sense of the word – For Christianity was so much more than a political revolution; it caused a tectonic shift in the mind. Like any major religion worth its salt, Christianity involved taming the power-hungry, self-assertive, greedy animals that humans, by their nature, are. Yet it went one step further and offered the highest prize to those at nature’s losing end: the meek, the wounded, the vulnerable and the unfortunate.

And since so much in the human world revolves around material wealth, the religion’s founders struck at its source: our acquisitive instincts.

You really want to be perfect? Jesus Christ recommends a life of utter destitution: “Go sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you shall have a treasury in the heavens, and come follow me.” The result was a religion so “radical”, as Hart calls it, that it was impossible to put into practice in the real world.

There was only one Christian, Nietzsche quipped, and he died on the cross. To be a true Christian must be unbearable.

But Christianity didn’t have to be put into practice to have an impact on the world — trying was enough. By trying hard to be Christians (even without ever succeeding), people in the West and elsewhere have, in time, brought forth a major anthropological revolution: a new way of seeing the world and humanity, a new ethical vocabulary, an enhanced and expanded individual subjectivity.

And there was something remarkably dynamic about this new subjectivity — one never content with itself, never at ease, always on the move, always having to navigate a perilous inner landscape: temptation, sin, guilt, dread of eternal damnation, remorse, repentance, state of grace.

Read More: Early Christianity was the communism of its time

Not that Christians were much better beings than others. They could be just as bloody as the heathens, if not worse. But they were always thinking about what a better humanity would be like. And in the process, they were taught to seriously distrust “this world,” and to stay away from its “traps”. Above all, they were sensitized against material wealth.

So, when the Industrial Revolution (which was all about material wealth and how to multiply it) came to pass, many Christians recognized it for what it was, and found themselves equipped to deal with it.

Capitalism was a wonderful thing, they thought, except that it went against what the Gospels had taught, by fundamentally favoring the wealthy and the strong, the self-assertive and the unscrupulous, at the expense of the poor and the weak and the humble. And to oppress the latter was to hurt Christ personally: “inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.”

That’s why, from John Ruskin and Leo Tolstoy all the way to Pope Francis, from that brand of British Laborism that was dubbed “more Methodist than Marxist” to the Social Gospel in the US, from Italy’s cattocomunismo to “liberation theology” in Latin America there has always been a serious concern, among reflecting

Christians, about the damage that the incessant pursuit of material wealth can do to the soul -The wealthier we become, the poorer our spiritual health.

All this is not — or should not have been — surprising. What is more surprising, perhaps, was that even overtly atheist rejections of capitalism — of the “religion-is-the-opiate-of-the-people” variety — were similarly informed by a vigorous Judeo-Christian social vision.

For here, too, the rejection of capitalism was done on behalf of its victims: the poor and the powerless, “the least of these my brothers.” For all their anti-religious rhetoric, Marx and Engels’s works make for excellent theological reading. The radical solution they proposed — overthrowing the wealthy and the powerful, enthroning the poor and the downtrodden in their place — is not very different, in its spirit, from the one we find in Christianity, where, you may recall, God has “chosen the destitute within the cosmos,” and offered them his Kingdom.

By the 19th century, then, the ethics, social vision, and philosophical vocabulary of Christianity were simply inescapable for anyone in the business of thinking. No matter what theories one hatched, however secular or un-Christian, one had to employ Christian categories, assumptions, and patterns of thought. Even to attack Christianity itself, one had to resort to Christian language, as Tom Holland has explained in these pages. That fact, of course, can be seen as a great victory for Christianity, if one achieved on the cusp of death.

Communism as an actual political system may have been a failure of historic proportions, but that does not mean that the idea has lost its appeal. Not only do today’s enthusiasts seem to ignore everything about the first attempt’s abject failure in the Soviet Union and elsewhere; they are also, for the most part, blissfully ignorant of the distinctly Christian sound of much of what they say.

Elite schools seem particularly good at teaching this kind of ignorance. Secular or even noisily atheistic academics recycle a social vision that has been at the core of the Christian message for some two millennia: a commitment to the victims of any forms of injustice and oppression, to the poor, the weak, and the humiliated — “the least of these.” Their ethical language, too, is radically Christian, centered as it is on guilt and an irrepressible need for repentance, remorse, and reparation.

Privilege” is the new name of the original sin of old: you are born with it, no matter what you do or say or think, you will always remain “privileged,” and will pass your condition on to others. The much derided woke apology seems just another reiteration of the Christian confession: admit that you have sinned in thought, word and deed, say that you are unworthy and show contrition, promise that you will change your ways, and you will be forgiven.

If the zealots had it their way, the implementation of this parodic Christianity, centered obsessively as it is on purity, guilt and repentance, accompanied by an incessant hunt for reprobates, and an orgy of punishment and exclusion, would make Calvin’s fundamentalist Geneva look like a pretty low key operation.

But perhaps I’m being naïve. What if this is just another trick the elites use to preserve the status quo, maintain their privileges, and get rid of their potential competitors? People in power have always done that, no matter what religion, ideology and political philosophy they have employed in the process.

It’s no accident that this woke brand of radicalism flourishes especially in the Ivy League environment, where students have the means and the leisure to play professional revolutionary. Those at community colleges are too busy just trying to stay afloat.

The space within which the elites now operate has, after decades of intense globalization, become more crowded than ever. Since the more people get in, the more competitive it gets, to move ahead one needs to get inventive. By adopting such a radical rhetoric and instantiating themselves as the exclusive representatives of the underprivileged — or even their most trusted spokespersons — these trust-fund revolutionaries hope to get a competitive advantage on the political market. “I am already representing the downtrodden, all of them, and brilliantly.

There is no role for you to play, so step aside – Holier and way more revolutionary than thou.

However, in so doing, they resort to an ideology steeped in Christian values and language — rather than, say, to social Darwinism, which would be a far more accurate representation of what they are doing, and would come more naturally to them. They may despise Christianity with a passion, but they cannot do without it. And that’s another Christian victory, if a posthumous one.

For, as far as Christianity itself is concerned, this is not life but a form of death. For something to exist socially, it needs to be named by its name. Indeed, this is no ordinary death, but a degrading, humiliating, highly embarrassing one. Here Christianity is used and abused and then casually discarded.

But, then again, this is only too fitting, because that’s precisely what makes it such a Christian death; Christianity’s founder died the most humiliating death imaginable in the ancient world, so bad it was reserved only for slaves and social pariahs.

To complicate things even further, at the other extreme of the political spectrum, Christianity is in no better shape. True, on the far Right it is acknowledged and proclaimed, ever more loudly and more perfunctorily. Christ’s name is everywhere: used shamelessly by politicians as a rhetorical device, political slogan, and dirty trick. Here Christ is emptied of any meaning, glued to the car’s bumper, and left there to rot. That’s another way Christianity is dying — and quite another story.

Over the last two millennia, Christianity has died countless deaths like this. Which is perhaps only appropriate for a religion predicated on death — one that has chosen a cruel execution method as its symbol. In the end, it must be death that has given it such a tremendous vitality.

For “unless the grain of wheat falling to the ground dies, it remains alone; but if it die it bears plenteous fruit.” Christianity’s victory lies always in defeat.

Nazarul Islam

The Bengal-born writer Nazarul Islam is a senior educationist based in USA. He writes for Sindh Courier and the newspapers of Bangladesh, India and America. He is author of a recently published book ‘Chasing Hope’ – a compilation of his 119 articles.

The post Christianity’s victories lay in its defeat… first appeared on Sindh Courier.

When a country with less than five percent of the world’s population has nearly half of the world’s privately owned guns and makes up nearly a third of the world’s mass shootings, it’s time to stop saying guns make us safer. If guns don’t kill people, why do mass killers arm themselves with guns?

Firearms can’t ensure safety in the society, only open arms can. And that is the absolute truth!!!

By Nazarul Islam

Our love affair with guns has nothing to do with tyranny, or militias, or self-preservation. Just ask any NRA member the following: If Jesus Christ himself were to come down off the cross and grant you one wish, would you opt for a world without guns—or the one we live in now?

If every gun owner truly feared for their life and liberty, the answer would be obvious. But it’s not about life and liberty. It’s all about the sheer hard-on of owning a gun.

Two incidents of mass shootings in less than a week in the US underscore yet again the constant threat of gun violence in American society. Last week, a gunman shot dead eight people, six of them women of Asian-American descent, at three spas in Atlanta.

Then, on Monday, a shooting at a supermarket in Colorado left 10 people dead. Monday’s was the seventh mass killing in the US just this year. As with previous incidents, the recent killings have evoked grief, horror, anger and terror. It has also triggered a heated debate on what prompted these killers to go on shooting sprees. Some are describing the Atlanta killings as a hate crime that was driven by anti-Asian racist feelings.

Others are drawing attention to the killer’s frame of mind; the assailant was reportedly a sex addict. Still others maintain that even if the underlying reason was a mental health problem, racist stereotypes that associate Asian women with hyper-sexuality resulted in the perpetrator venting his anger against women of Asian origin. No matter what the motivations were, what enables these mass shooting sprees is the easy availability of automatic weapons to the general populace.

We lose at least eight children and teenagers to gun violence every day. When a mysterious virus suddenly started killing eight of our children every day, America had mobilized teams of doctors and public health officials. We had moved heaven and earth until we found a way to protect our children – But not so with gun violence (?) Why??

The right of citizens to bear arms is granted by the Second Amendment to the US Constitution, arising from a conception of how to secure the right to personal security, liberty and private property from another age – 1791. Many Americans believe even today that the right to bear arms is the ultimate protection of their individual rights, even of democracy. Over time, it has transformed into a deadly ‘gun culture,’ going from pistols and rifles for self-defence to many now owning military-grade automatic assault weapons.

While the Second Amendment forbids federal and state governments from impinging on citizens’ right to bear arms, gun ownership laws are badly in need of reform. It must start with banning automatic weapons and strictly prohibiting individuals with criminal records or the mentally ill from owning any guns at all. Some measures – such as background checks and restricting sale of automatic weapons—have been put in place in recent years, but these have not been hard to bypass.

The powerful National Rifle Association and the Republican Party have prevented much positive reform. But Democrats now control both the House and the Senate, and President Joe Biden has called for stricter controls on assault weapons and background checks. The President and the US Congress must determinedly move America from 1791 to the 21st century in this respect.

When a country with less than five percent of the world’s population has nearly half of the world’s privately owned guns and makes up nearly a third of the world’s mass shootings, it’s time to stop saying guns make us safer. If guns don’t kill people, why do mass killers arm themselves with guns?

Firearms can’t ensure safety in the society, only open arms can. And that is the absolute truth!!!

_____________________

About the Author

The Bengal-born writer is a senior educationist based in USA. He writes for Sindh Courier and the newspapers of Bangladesh, India and America.

The post The future mourns our children…. first appeared on Sindh Courier.