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Should a class conscious world-wide socialist movement ever gets under way, can religious people, lay and ordained alike, have a significant and edifying role in it? As you likely know, Glenn Beck went after "religion" the other day, inciting a chorus of protest from various sectors, including some conservative and liberal religious professionals. He coupled 'social justice' doctrines preached in many sects with evil Communism and Fascism. So far, none of Beck's detractors I've read, heard or seen has defended communism from the implied slur against it. In this, they play it safe while ceding considerable ground to Beck. I presume that most of you reading this understand that communism and fascism are irreconcilably and diametrically opposed the one to the other. I would argue that even Soviet 'communism', in spite of its apparent similarities with Fascism, was ideologically and in practice a world away from National Socialism. But this is a tangent, really It would be more interesting (to me, at least) to discover if Marxian Socialism owes anything to Judaism and Christianity. >From the SLP I learned that the early Christian church had organized itself under a system of common ownership, as illustrated in the Acts of the Apostles. I suppose that in those days any viable form of communism meant a more or less equal partnership in a subsistence economy. Vows of poverty, once so common in most major religions, especially Christianity, perhaps became doctrine as a result of this realization. Anyway, my beef with this latest Glenn Beck flap started out because I expected someone, anyone, of his public detractors to point out that Liberation Theology has been largely accepted by at least one of the major branches of Christianity. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberation_Theology -- View this message in context: http://old.nabble.com/Glenn-Beck%2C-%27Social-Justice%27---Liberation-Theology-tp27898399p27898399.html Sent from the Marxism mailing list archive at Nabble.com. ________________________________________________ Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
