Came across these earnest thoughts of a 22-year-old while sifting through old files. At the time I was also embroiled in a very public debate with Catholic writer turned reactionary John Braine.
Any attempt to identify Christianity with political revolution is likely to be viewed with scorn in today’s secular society. Church history certainly tends to belies any such identification.
For too long Christian Churches have compromised with prevailing social, political and economic systems to the detriment of Christian values, and with a consequent disregard for the livelihood of mankind. In sanctioning the ‘imperialism of money’ they have profited from the resultant exploitation. This insane concern with the status quo has led to Churches becoming oppressors, whereas Christ intended his people to be liberators.
Christianity is about the discovery of a liberating way of life, a social pattern which will enable man to realise his human worth, and not be exploited for his economic value. To lose hedonism in altruism, to be independent of materialism and fear; to lose self in others. Christianity is about communication not power.
Christ devoted his life to the destruction of secular values and set up in their place a community formed in mutual love and compassion – agape. His own commitment to others found consummation on the cross. Not only was his life revolutionary, but his bodily resurrection revolved the accepted human life-cycle. By becoming the perfect, incorruptible man he achieved that ultimate communication which is the intention faith.
We aspire to this sort of reality by fulfilling our human potential – extending our humanity beyond social and cultural limitations. This can only be done, however, by rejecting the premises on which society is based, and revolving accepted social and political patterns; to replace them with a more insightful and positive appreciation of man’s purpose.
What Christ proposes is a radical transformation of values, on the personal and global scale. The process of conversion, so-called, is a revolution-within-the-revolution; the ‘leap of faith’ which creates a novel situation of commitment to a supreme ideal – the brotherhood of man.
The politics of the Christian life are not to be found in institutions, nor should they be different things to different people. In ‘Gospel and Revolution’ the bishops of the Third World, calling for social justice, insisted that ‘True socialism is a full Christian life that involves a just sharing of goods and fundamental equality’.
This is no more than a logical extension of Christ’s plea that we should love others as we love ourselves.Evidently we cannot do so where capitalist enterprise encourages the exploitation of human resources for profit and power and enforces rigid class structures.
Christ’s life provides us with a critical standard against which we can measure our own efforts and the values of society. The Christian duty is to project Christ’s message into the contemporary situation through both example and positive action. This entails a serious political involvement in order to further communication between people.
In today’s world this must mean a revolution in all aspects of living: an overthrow of the capitalism regime, a redistribution of wealth, and a just equalitarianism which will recognise the commonalty of men.
The twentieth century Christian had a crucial idea to assert – that it is humanity that matters and not economics.
First published as an introduction to a bibliography of radical and Christian-Marxist literature in the Spring 1969 edition of the University of Sussex magazine ‘Schism’.
