First published in 1908, this writing is in the public domain.
The mainstream Methodist Church is one that I cannot attend anymore. My minister, on the Sunday after 9/11/01, declared that ‘the cause of the attack was poverty and world hunger. Can’t we just share so that everyone has enough’. I never went back.
I have met some socialist pastors and have noted an incredible naivete and misunderstanding of the true nature of socialism among that crowd.
Southern Baptist is our second largest denomination, and their clergy is about as conservative as it gets, with at least 80% of them voting republican.
Compare that to the atheists and non-religious individuals who are about 80% and more to the left, and then you can look at clergy of different denominations, that fall in between.
useful idiot clergy ping
Socialism = death.
There is an irony here in that to a great extent, socialism is a form of Judeo-Christian heresy.
It exists as a method of the oldest of sins, vanity, which has plagued mankind since its beginnings, in the form of men trying to pretend they “are like God”.
Socialism in a nutshell begins with the Book of Genesis, in which socialists put “mankind” in the place of God throughout; yet in a corrupted form, they keep the myth.
For them, the Garden of Eden becomes The State of Nature, from which mankind was ejected for embracing the knowledge of good and evil. So, one precept of socialism is that good and evil must be ‘normalized’, made equal, so they cease to exist as such. When this happens, socialists theorize, mankind can return to Eden, or The State of Nature.
This is pretty much the basis of radical environmentalism as well, that mankind must give up on civilization to return to nature, that our current state is unnatural and must be stopped.
The real hazard is that true clergy, Catholic, Orthodox, conservative Protestant, and Jewish, need to realize that socialism *is* heresy, in its deepest manifestation, because it rejects God, it shuns God, and it despises God.
But, as a twisted parody of Judeo-Christianity, it often seems on the surface to embrace the same goals as religion, so the temptation is ecumenism. But ecumenism cannot happen with evil, and religion is corrupted in the effort.
A pragmatic approach, that “It does not matter who gives bread to the poor, as long as they are fed”, ignores that religion gives the faith, and the bread, and the water; but socialism *promises* the bread and the water, but only delivers liquor, narcotics and perversion, at the demand that faith and righteousness be discarded.
So look on clergy that embrace socialism as either being ignorant of the truth, or worse, that they have embraced the axiom of socialism, and now despise God.
When one studies the Bible as a whole, focusing on foundational principles rather than on verses taken out of context, it is much more supportive of an economic system respecting private property and the work ethic (see especially Isaiah 65:21-22 and Jeremiah 32:43-44)."Thou shalt not steal" is the clearest declaration of the right of private property in the Old Testament.And, private ownership and stewardship of property is assumed to be the proper state of affairs throughout the Bible (Deuteronomy 8; Ruth 2; Isaiah 65:21-22; Jeremiah 32:43-44; Micah 4:1-4; Luke 12:13-15; Acts 5:1-4; Ephesians 4:28).
“We regard Socialism as the economic expression of the Christian life and believe that it is now the duty of the Church to step in and advocate Christian Socialism in the United States.”
If they are advocating socialism then they are no longer a church. They should lose their tax exemption.