Socialism Isn’t Scary

This is Father Jared Cramer from St. John’s Episcopal Church in Grand Haven, Michigan, here with today’s edition of Christian Mythbusters, a regular segment I offer to counter some common misconceptions about the Christian faith.

Some nights, watching the news, I feel like I’ve stepped into a time machine. Accusations of communism are flying again, aimed at schools, city halls, even churches. I half expect someone to lean into a microphone and ask, “Are you now, or have you ever been, a member of the Communist Party?”

That question was asked again and again during the Red Scare of the 1950s. Careers were destroyed on rumor. Teachers were fired, screenwriters were blacklisted, and thousands of federal employees, including many gay and lesbian public servants, were purged. Most of us now see that era as a warning about what fear can do to a free people.

So, this week let’s break the myth that socialism and communism are the same thing, and, while we are at it, let’s take a swing at the myth that any Christian who wants us to care for one another a little better is secretly trying to overthrow the country.

First, let’s get our terms straight. Communism, as Karl Marx imagined it, sought to abolish private property. In practice, the regimes that claimed the name, like Stalin’s Soviet Union and Mao’s China, became one-party police states that crushed dissent and seized land by force.

Democratic socialism is something else. It works through elections, not revolution. It keeps markets, businesses, and private property, while insisting that some things, like health care, education, and a secure old age, are too important to leave entirely to profit.

Many ideas once called dangerously socialist are now simply part of American life. In 1912, the Socialist Party called for a shorter workday, an end to child labor, women’s suffrage, unemployment insurance, and old-age pensions. Each was fiercely opposed. In 1961, the American Medical Association distributed a recording by a young actor named Ronald Reagan, warning that health insurance for seniors would cost us our freedoms. Medicare passed four years later… and I don’t hear many people saying they want to get rid of it.

This is always a strange conversation for me as an Episcopal priest, because my own Anglican tradition includes a robust Christian Socialist movement. In the 1800s, English priests insisted the gospel had something to say about the misery of factory workers. William Temple, Archbishop of Canterbury during World War Two, helped popularize the term “welfare state” as a good thing. And here in America, Frances Perkins, a devout Episcopalian and the first woman in a presidential cabinet, became the chief architect of Social Security. Our church now remembers her on its calendar of saints.

Now, let me be clear about what should frighten us. Authoritarianism, the state seizing control of our bodies, our goods, and our services, strikes at the root of our democracy. Christians of every political stripe should resist any government, left or right, that silences dissent, punishes the vulnerable, or demands loyalty above conscience.

But believing we can sometimes do things better together, especially to protect the most vulnerable, isn’t scary. Neither is the conviction that not everything should be left to the free market, or, more accurately, to the power of a handful of billionaires.

As I read the Bible, a society that cares for the least of these sounds an awful lot like the prophets. Jesus began his ministry by announcing good news to the poor and release to the captives. He told us that whatever we do for the hungry, the stranger, the sick, and the prisoner, we do for him.

I don’t think Jesus was a socialist, or a capitalist, for that matter. Those are modern categories, and his kingdom is bigger than any political platform. But it is a kingdom where the hungry are fed and the lowly are lifted up. That isn’t scary. It sounds a lot like the gospel.

Thanks for being with me. To find out more about my parish, you can go to sjegh.com. Until next time, remember: protest like Jesus, love recklessly, and live your faith out in a community that accepts you but also challenges you to be better tomorrow than you are today.