Photo of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. addressing the crowd during the 1957 Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom. Image: Public Domain
By Geoff Bottoms
Terry Eagleton suggests that we can interpret the Catholic eucharist as a kind of imaginative and inspiring prefigurement of revolutionary personal and social transformation. So how can we interpret other Christian teachings relating to the parables, the Crucifixion and Resurrection of Jesus, the Ascension, the Resurrection of the Dead etc. in ways which are consonant with progressive political beliefs?
Archbishop William Temple, a leading Anglican social reformer of the twentieth-century, argued that Christianity’s focus on the tangible reality of Jesus’s life, death, and resurrection makes it profoundly materialistic in a positive, redemptive way, valuing the physical world as the very medium of God’s presence and action. This belief fuelled his commitment to social justice (like driving forward the concept of a Welfare State and the passing of the 1944 Education Act), seeing the world’s material suffering as a challenge to Christianity, requiring action to bring about God’s kingdom on Earth.
Similarly, John Polkinghorne, who was a theoretical physicist and Anglican priest, argued from a scientific perspective that the material world is not a closed mechanical system but one “open” to both human and divine action. For him, the inherent unpredictability found in quantum mechanics and chaos theory indicates an “openness” in physical processes, allowing for divine interaction without violating the laws of nature. He further maintained that the extremely delicate balance of physical constants necessary for life to evolve is too significant to be a “happy accident,” suggesting a purposeful intelligence behind the material structure.
Therefore, from both a theological and scientific point of view, Christian faith is incarnational. In other words, God is to be found interweaving with the whole of creation, and is discovered in and through the ordinary events of everyday life and the interactions of humanity. In a similar way to God being on the inside of the processes of evolution, it could be argued that he is also present in the laws of social development as defined by Karl Marx’s dialectical approach to history. In both cases there is a contingent freedom to act, which is both human and divine.
Jesus, the parables, and democratic socialism
In the light of this, it is possible to set the teachings of Jesus relating to the parables, together with the climactic and cosmic events of his Passion, Death, Resurrection and Ascension, in the context of democratic socialist beliefs and principles, because both share the goal of a radical transformation of society where “the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.”
The parables are short, simple stories using everyday situations to instruct and impart wisdom, often about faith, morality, or the Kingdom of God. They are designed to make listeners think, question, and actively take part in discovering the meaning of the message, rather than just passively receiving information.
The Parable of the Sheep and Goats refers to seeing and serving Christ in the sick, the prisoner, the hungry and the naked, and reflects our obligations to the vulnerable in society, which is the hallmark of all socialist politics, while the Parable of The Good Samaritan makes a similar point by emphasising that we are the neighbour to all in need irrespective of race, faith, nationality or gender, emphasising the internationalist character of solidarity. In this respect, Che Guevara regarded all those indignant at social and economic injustice as his comrade while adding, “Far more important than a good remuneration is the pride of serving one’s neighbour.”
The Parable of the Unforgiving Servant who had his massive debts wiped out by his Master, yet refused to release a fellow servant from an insubstantial debt, is frequently applied to modern calls for debt relief of the global South, illustrating a moral argument for powerful nations and institutions to show mercy, and forgive the unpayable debts of poorer nations that have kept them impoverished. After all, it is the western imperialist nations, under the hegemony of the United States, that have plundered and exploited these countries in the first place, and set up international institutions, like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, to retain their global dominance.
Then there is the Parable of the Labourers in the Vineyard who were all paid the same whether they worked all day or just for one hour. A case perhaps of the communist ideal –“from each according to their ability, to each according to their need.” In fact, Fidel Castro once described Jesus as a communist, citing the stories of the feeding of the 5,000 as a lesson in sharing equally from abundance, and that of Jesus and the Rich Man, who had no place in the Kingdom of Heaven due to his attachment to wealth.
Suffering and revolutionary renewal
When it comes to the Passion, Death and Resurrection of Jesus, the First World War Anglican chaplain Geoffrey Studdert Kennedy, known as “Woodbine Willie,” attempted to address the theological problem of suffering. He wrote:
The cross is not past, but present. Ever and always I can see set above this world of ours a huge and towering Cross, with great arms stretched out east and west from the rising to the setting sun, and on that Cross my God still hangs and calls on all brave men and women to come out and fight with evil, and by their sufferings endured with Him help to lift the world from darkness into light.
In short, he argues that God is the one who suffers, not just once on the cross, but in nature, history and contemporary pain so that the universe is a work in progress, moving towards its final destiny with us sharing in that suffering love as we are called to work together in making another world possible. In the present climate we need to remember this more than ever, because through memory, the past exists in the present. Catholics know this only too well, for every Eucharist binds together both past and future: the whole life and ministry, death and resurrection of Jesus, as well as the anticipation of what shall be in the new heaven and the new earth, which can begin to take shape here and now.
In the Mass the whole Gospel is remembered, re-present-ed, put together and made present again, in the ‘now’ of faith. Yet we remember in order that we may be re-membered: When the Penitent Thief says to Jesus: “Lord, remember me when you come into your kingdom”‘ we hear the words in the obvious sense, “Don’t forget me”. But we also hear him saying something more profound: “Lord, re-member me, recreate me, make me anew, put me together again, but now in your own likeness as you have always intended me to be”.
The Eucharist is no spectator sport, but the place where we are caught up in that eternal cosmic drama, in which we and the whole of creation are renewed. Christians both remember and are re-membered in order to make a difference in the world and to work for peace, social and economic justice, and the restoration of our damaged planet. By offering the simple gifts of bread and wine, symbolising our life and work, our joys and sorrows, and our broken world, God transforms them into bearers of his dynamic life and power, so that we become the presence of Christ in today’s world, continuing his work and ministry of healing and reconciliation.
Together with those of other faiths and none we can create an alternative society to capitalism, which ultimately is socialist and communist in nature, but which is born out of class struggle. In Marxist terms, we make our own history but not necessarily in circumstances of our own choosing!
