I was interested in Cornel West’s description of himself as a socialist Christian. Two quotes/articles that may shed some light on this will be helpful:
A seminary level treatment of the “ownership” topic from the Bible:
And a great article about whether or not Jesus was a socialist:
From a FaceBook discussion:
Acts is a specific instance in time, and place. Richards explains
✦ “What Acts is describing is an unusual moment in the life of the early church, when the church was still very small. Remember this is the beginning of the church in Jerusalem.”
In addition, we know that other early churches had different arrangements. Take, for example, the Thessalonians. Peter taught that people who will not work do not deserve any wealth whatsoever, not even wealth in the form of food.
✦ “For even when we were with you, this we commanded you, that if any would not work, neither should he eat. For we hear that there are some which walk among you disorderly, working not at all, but are busybodies. Now them that are such we command and exhort by our Lord Jesus Christ, that with quietness they work, and eat their own bread.” (1 Thes. 3.10-12)
(Proverbs 10:4 says, “Lazy hands make a man poor, but diligent hands bring wealth.” Proverbs 14:23 says, “All hard work brings a profit, but mere talk leads only to poverty.”)
Let me understand you correctly James. You are saying the Church (universal — all Christians) should privately practice this “helping the poor.” You are not advocating Christian redistribution, but that one should give from his ability, right? Are you agreeing with me that all Scripture teaches that government has no jurisdiction to redistribution of wealth, and Jesus neither compelled people to give accept out of one’s free will. We may agree more than you think?
One last note from a great article on this topic:
✦ “But did not the early Church of Jerusalem in Acts 4:32-36 sell all their goods and “distributed to each as anyone had need”? Yes, they did do this. But we must note again that their participation in this community was voluntary (Acts 5:4). This same communal Church of Jerusalem, incidentally, was unable to withstand the worldwide famine that occurred during the Roman Emperor Claudius’ reign. In fact, Christians in other cities, amidst the same famine, had to provide a “stimulus package” to the communal Jerusalem church (Acts 11:27-30). This is not to assert that communal living was the absolute cause of the Jerusalem Church’s fiscal shortfall. It is merely to say that their socialist structure was found to be insufficient in times of natural disaster.” (christiancapitalism.net/was-jesus-a-socialist-2/)
For more clear thinking like this from Larry Elder… I invite you to visit: larryelder.com/
One may be interested to see also why I left a church of 12-years over similar issues; and my chapter from my book on this. Also this knock-out quote I love! Take note even in this day that Chicago was sort-of an epicenter to liberalism and Christianity:
… As Dr. Carl F. H. Henry pointed out: “The Chicago evangelicals, while seeking to overcome the polarization of concern in terms of personal evangelism or social ethics, also transcended the neoProtestant nullification of the Great Commission.” “The Chicago Declaration did not leap from a vision of social utopia to legislation specifics, but concentrated first on biblical priorities for social change.” “The Chicago evangelicals did not ignore transcendent aspects of God’s Kingdom, nor did they turn the recognition of these elements into a rationalization of a theology of revolutionary violence or of pacifistic neutrality in the face of blatant militarist aggression.” (Cf. Dr. Carl F. H. Henry, “Evangelical Social Concern” Christianity Today, March 1, 1974.) The evangelical social concern is transcendental not merely horizontal.
We must make it clear that the true revolutionaries are different from the frauds who “deal only with surface phenomena. They seek to remove a deep-seated tumor from society by applying a plaster to the surface. The world’s deepest need today is not something that merely dulls the pain, but something that goes deep in order to change the basic unity of society, man himself. Only when men individually have experienced a change and reorientation, can society be redirected in the way it should go. This we cannot accomplish by either violence or legislation” (cf. Reid: op. cit.). Social actions, without a vertical and transcendental relation with God only create horizontal anxieties and perplexities!
Furthermore, the social activists are in fact ignorant of the social issues, they are not experts in the social sciences. They simply demand an immediate change or destruction of the social structures, but provide no blueprint of the new society whatsoever! They can be likened to the fool, as a Chinese story tells, who tried to help the plant grow faster by pulling it higher. Of course such “action” only caused the plant to wither and die. This is exactly what the social radicals are doing now! And the W.C.C. is supporting such a tragic course!
We must challenge them [secular social activists] to discern the difference between the true repentance and “social repentance.” The Bible says: “For the godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation and brings no regret; but worldly grief produces death” (II Cor. 7:10). This was the bitter experiences of many former Russian Marxists, who, after their conversion to Christ came to understand that they had only a sort of “social repentance”—a sense of guilt before the peasant and the proletariat, but not before God. They admitted that “A Russian (Marxist) intellectual as an individual is often a mild and loving creature, but his creed (Marxism) constrains him to hate” (cf. Nicolas Zernov: The Russian Religious Renaissance). “As it is written, there is none righteous, no, not one…. For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God” (Rom. 3:10,23). A complete change of a society must come from man himself, for basically man is at enmity with God. All humanistic social, economic and political systems are but “cut flowers,” as Dr. Trueblood put it, even the best are only dim reflections of the Glory of the Kingdom of God. As Benjamin Franklin in his famous address to the Constitutional Convention, said, “Without His concurring aid, we shall succeed in this political building no better than the builders of Babel.” Without reconciliation with God, there is no reconciliation with man. Social action is not evangelism; political liberation is not salvation. While we shall by all means have deep concern on social issues; nevertheless, social activism shall never be a substitution for the Gospel.
Lit-sen Chang, The True Gospel vs. Social Activism (booklet. Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Co: 1976), 9.
