21AR26-34

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AR 26:34 - Socialism's improbable resurrection

In this issue:

SOCIALISM - "proposing to try it all over again"

SYNCRETISM - a "woke" attempt to rehabilitate the term

Apologia Report 26:34 (1,539)
August 27, 2021

SOCIALISM
Heaven on Earth: The Rise, Fall, and Afterlife of Socialism, by Joshua Muravchik [1] -- in his review for Christian Scholar's Review (50:3 - 2021, pp327-331), James R. Vanderwoerd (Applied Social Sciences, Redeemer University) notes that for Muravchik: "Socialism was the faith in which I was raised. It was my father's faith and his father's before him." Vanderwoerd adds that, like many others, Muravchik eventually "came to see the deep flaws in socialism: logical incoherence, contradictions, and worst of all, utter failure to realize any of its dreams."

Muravchik then quotes "an aphorism sometimes misattributed to Churchill but in fact coined by conservative French politician Clemenceau, who had begun as a leftist journalist: 'any man who is not a socialist at twenty has no heart, and any who is still a socialist at forty has no brain.'"

This is a history that Muravchik "first recounted in 2001, at a time when it appeared all that needed to be said was how socialism rose and fell and could be left behind as a historical relic. Now, nearly 20 years later, Muravchik notes with dismay that socialism is making a comeback, and he returns to the task of debunking socialism by adding a chapter on socialism's surprising 'afterlife.' ...

"Although Muravchik is not a Christian, his immersion in the Judeo-Christian tradition and its texts enables him to recognize how adherents repeatedly used religious terms to describe, explain, and rationalize socialism. Not only does Muravchik recognize the religious impulse in socialism, but he goes one step further by invoking biblical language in sometimes clever phrasing to reveal and espouse socialism's visions and failures. ...

"Muravchik focuses his discussion on African socialism by featuring Julius Kambarage Nyerere, the leader of Tanzania [1961–1985]. Ironically, Nyerere became a Christian through the influence of British colonial education, which included religious training, and he saw Christianity as not just compatible with, but as foundational to, his embrace of socialism as the future....

"About the only thing that Nyerere acknowledged as a 'success' was that they had kept inequality in check by preventing the development of an African middle class, or, as Muravchik ironically concluded: 'Equality had been fostered by keeping everyone poor.'

"A few other themes emerge in Muravchik's history that are worth noting. One is the elitism of socialist leaders and the relative lack of participation from actual poor people and workers. Despite the rhetoric....

"Socialism's rootedness as a religious worldview also leads to another of its key characteristics, and explains why it is so powerful: its dismissal of empirical reality in favor of beliefs. ...

"Muravchik's history is largely driven by his attempt to describe and explain how such a bad idea could have spread so far, so fast, a question he comes back to in the final chapter where he examines the promise and failures of the kibbutz as small-scale experiments in collectivist living. ...

"Engels and Marx ... had succeeded in recasting socialism into a compelling religious faith ... by reducing all of history and all problems to a single main drama.... It linked mankind's salvation to a downtrodden class, combining the Old Testament's notion of a chosen people with the New Testament's prophecy that the meek shall inherit the earth. Like the Bible, its historical narrative was a tale of redemption that divided time into three epochs: a distant past of primitive contentment, a present of suffering and struggle, and a future of harmony and bliss. ...

"Muravchik's analysis of socialism suggests that we humans want heaven on earth, but we refuse to acknowledge God as the Ruler and Creator of all, including the very notion of heaven, but rather, wish to make ourselves gods, and by doing so, take the easy path." And this he notes, remains our ongoing problem. <www.bit.ly/3iBrdZz>

The publisher's promo tells us: "Socialism was man's most ambitious attempt to supplant religion with a doctrine claiming to ground itself in 'science.' Each failure to create societies of abundance or give birth to 'the New Man' inspired more searching for the path to the promised land: revolution, communes, social democracy, communism, fascism, Arab socialism, African socialism. None worked, and some exacted a staggering human toll. Then, after two centuries of wishful thinking and bitter disappointment, socialism imploded in a fin de siècle drama of falling walls and collapsing regimes. It was an astonishing denouement, but what followed was no less astonishing. After the hiatus of a couple of decades, new voices were raised, as if innocent of all that had come before, proposing to try it all over again."

Socialism has been a popular theme in past issues of Apologia Report: <www.bit.ly/37uZljf>

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SYNCRETISM
"How White Christians turned syncretism into an insult: Early-20th-century European and North American missionaries grew concerned about it - but never in their own churches" by by Ross Kane of Virginia Theological Seminary (Christian Century, Jun 3 '21, pp22-24) -- proposes that in recent years syncretism has become a "derogatory term. What it implies may include 'Your Christianity doesn't seem pure,' 'Your Christianity is less refined than mine,' or 'Your Christianity feels exotic to me.' It nearly always comes down to 'Your Christianity makes me feel uncomfortable.'"

In an argument that will resonate with proponents of Critical Race Theory, Kane declares that "The evolution of syncretism [is] a story about racism and how that racism has constrained and imperiled our understanding of divine revelation."

Some will be startled to learn that "For centuries, syncretism was something to aspire to. This makes it different from heresy, theology's other epithet, which has never been a compliment. Syncretism was long used to express admiration for the ability to form alliances across ecclesial divisions." (Then again, Kane has also written approvingly of "The wisdom of the African Christian practice of reverencing the dead.") <www.bit.ly/3BgnU0h>

"The word gained something of its caustic quality during the 17th century, in a fierce Lutheran debate between Georg Calixtus and Abraham Calovius. ... This debate became known as the syncretistic controversy, and people began using the word syncretism to express their worries about Christian purity. ...

"It wasn't until the early 20th century in Christian missionary circles that the word became clearly negative. ... They started calling supposedly diluted forms of Christianity syncretism. ...

"Meanwhile, in anthropology and the new field of religious studies, scholars continued using the word in a neutral sense. ... While an anthropologist used the word syncretism to show the enduring power of African cultures across the Middle Passage and amid centuries of enslavement and racism, White Christian theologians used it to deride forms of Christianity they found inferior to their own. ...

"After syncretism became firmly entrenched as a theological insult, outside of theology its connotation changed again. Among anthropologists in the 1990s, syncretism was celebrated as the reshaping of Christianity from an imperial religion into a means of resisting colonialism. ...

"White nationalists erecting a wooden cross at the United States Capitol during their insurrection earlier this year was a syncretism, blending Christianity with a vision of White America."

(The online version is titled "How Syncretism Became a Bad Word") <www.bit.ly/37sWY0z>

Ross Kane (Theology, Ethics, and Culture, Virginia Theological Seminary) is the author of Syncretism and Christian Tradition [2]. Its Oxford University Press promo reads: "Syncretism has been a part of Christianity from its very beginning, when early Christians expressed Jesus' Aramaic teachings in the Greek language. Defined as the phenomena of religious mixture, syncretism carries a range of connotations. In Christian theology, use of syncretism shifted from a compliment during the Reformation to an outright insult in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The term has a history of being used as a neutral descriptor, a pejorative marker, and even a celebration of indigenous agency. Its differing uses indicate the challenges of interpreting religious mixture, challenges which today relate primarily to race and revelation. Despite its pervasiveness across religious traditions, syncretism is poorly understood and often misconceived.

"Ross Kane argues that the history of syncretism's use accentuates wider interpretive problems, drawing attention to attempts by Christian theologians to protect the category of divine revelation from perceived human interference. Kane shows how the fields of religious studies and theology have approached syncretism with a racialized imagination still suffering the legacies of European colonialism. [Kane] examines how the concept of race figures into dominant religious traditions associated with imperialism, and reveals how syncretism can act as a vital means of the Holy Spirit's continuing revelation of Jesus."

Of course, Kane's complaint is not without precedent - see, for example, the many examples cited <www.bit.ly/3Bd8Ro7> in "Stumbling over Syncretism" by Ralph E. Powell in Christianity Today, Apr 13 '73. For an African Christian response to syncretism, start with "Can We Be Christian & African?" by Amanda Pungula at the Gospel Coalition Africa (June 2021). <www.bit.ly/3t3olZ7>

And for more on syncretism from our past issues (and how others have grappled with its alleged "promise" and serious doctrinal perils), see <www.bit.ly/3ix3yZX>

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SOURCES: Monographs

1 - Heaven on Earth: The Rise, Fall, and Afterlife of Socialism, by Joshua Muravchik (Encounter, 2019, paperback, 472 pages) <www.bit.ly/3jDWgTM>

2 - Syncretism and Christian Tradition: Race and Revelation in the Study of Religious Mixture, by Ross Kane (Oxford Univ Prs, 2021, hardcover, 300 pages) <www.bit.ly/3iwlIeA>

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