Some might be interested in this question. I was talking with one of my friends and we got to arguing whether socialism is more Christian then a conservative take on things. Any thoughts? Is socialism a more Christian way to go about things?

Now personally i hate it when this stuff comes up. I don't believe you can fit God into nice little categories like conservative or liberal. As some on this board might know I personally am a conservative (not a neo-con but a paleo-con as i call it). Anyway just thought some might be interested in this.

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"A dog barks when his master is attacked. I would be a coward if I saw that God's truth is attacked and yet would remain silent."
-John Calvin

I agree that you can't put God into little political boxes, but I would say that Christianity and socialism are highly compatible.

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"Jesus said: I have cast fire upon the world, and behold I guard it until it is ablaze."
Gospel of Thomas

What did Jesus advocate? Pre-emptive war? Secret prisons? Torture? Might is Right? The worship of money? The death penalty? An eye for an eye? Massive armies? Hegemony? Empire? Lying to manipulate people? Hypocrisy? Demagoguery? Market forces over compassion? Vast arsenals of nuclear, bilological, and chemical weapons? Looking out for #1? Charging all the market will bear? Joining the NRA?

I'm pretty sure that I remember reading where He said something about loving God with all your heart was the first and most important commandment. Next was loving your neighbor as yourself. I remember cheek turning, forgiveness, compassion, generousity, and above all love. He gave a sermon on the Mount of Olives (wasn't it?) they called it the Sermon on the Mount. I remember reading once that there are nearly 2000 admonitions in the Bible about caring for the poor. He healed people for free, He fed them for free, He helped them for free, and in the end He forgave the people who tortured and killed Him.

This is a tough question, Non, but it sort of seems to me that He was socially oriented, in fact everything He did or taught was aimed at bettering the human condition--and not at a profit either. Jesus was the first social-ist.

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The apocalypse is coming... we're gonna need more ammo.

You call salvation of the ego a non-profit? I'd say it's pretty much the most selfish form for reward that was ever thought to exist.

Interesting topic Non, and Mare is well into it. First I'd like to clarify that socialism isn't the complete opposite of conservativism. As 'conservative' can be cultural and social conservative, while being leftist in every other aspect. Just look at how all the conservative wife-beating muslims that go to bed with the left in european politics. Because the left has to "respect their culture" to such an extent it becomes double-moralism.

Christianity is certainly conservative when it comes to social issues, but the rest is much more compatible with socialism than with the right.

Let's take an Nietzschian approach on it. Imagine every human fighting against each other for power, there is someone noble, strong-willed, powerful and strong that will prosper and surely win. What would the weak do in such a position? They would rot up against the strong wouldn't they? They have done so, and called it God. Because the only way they could justify them (the weak, petty, downtrodden, dumb and intelligently poor) was to call it evil, and invented this concept as a way of justifying the dumb ruling the intelligent. Notice how religions (especially christianity) have killed or tried to kill almost everyone that slightly disagree with them. Standing up against the Pope like i.e Luther is a very brave thing to do, and few escape with their lives.

Now, socialism is pretty much the same - let the weak and feeble have all our money. Let those that drop out of school for drugs and gangbanging get help. Throughout history leaders of state and leaders of chruch has allied, so that both could distribute their power and rule efficiently. The Church and the State went to bed together out of necessity, to hold a firm hand on the population. Socialism is the State trying to get rid og the Church (through atheism) to rule alone, pointing out how the chruch was imperfect and didn't do what it claimed to be doing (but is the State so much better?).

Now the Chruch is trying to get back in, with mixed success. Anarchism (certain types of it atleast) can be viewed as an attempt to get rid of the State, or as an attempt of redirecting the state.

Now, much of this is my own thought 'bout the subject. They're very rough and I'm not even 20 but it's amongst the things I'm planning on developing further on as I grow up.

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To fill a world with ... religions of the Abrahamic kind, is like littering the streets with loaded guns. Do not be surprised if they are used. - Richard Dawkins

Philosophy is questions that may never be answered. Religion is answers that may never be questioned

MY CAPSLOCK KEY IS BROKEN LOL - Will be stumbled upon several times on the web.

Clash

I beg to differ. With the rhetoric of politics, there's nothing that can't fit in a political box.

Socialism is much the same. Profit from not really doing/deserving anything. Although, as I understood it, you didn't mean to argue against socialism/christianity compatibility with that arguement... correct me if I'm wrong.

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To fill a world with ... religions of the Abrahamic kind, is like littering the streets with loaded guns. Do not be surprised if they are used. - Richard Dawkins

Philosophy is questions that may never be answered. Religion is answers that may never be questioned

MY CAPSLOCK KEY IS BROKEN LOL - Will be stumbled upon several times on the web.

Clash

C.S. Lewis wrote a number of times (and I'm just paraphrasing here) that in matters of public policy, religion (and philosophy in general) can function only to advise on what ends are desirable/"good" and what means are morally acceptable.
The other half of the matter, i.e. "Which of the moral means are most effective for achieving that end?", is an entirely secular question.

To put it another way, the philosopher or the religious scholar might tell you to give bread to the poor, but you will still need to consult a baker to learn the best way to make the bread, an economist to learn how to afford the supplies, and a logistics expert to learn how to distribute them.

So, while Christianity might promote a list of good ends and some guidance as to morally acceptable means, whether socialism or capitalism or authoritarianism (or whatever) is most effective at achiving those ends within those means is a question of political/economic/social theory, not of Christianity.

Just as there are libertarians and there are Libertarians, Jesus was certainly a socialist, but I'm not so sure he was a Socialist. I agree he was all in favor of helping your fellow man, especially the downtrodden, but I don't recall anything about robbing Peter to pay Paul to skip work and maintain his meth habit.

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Today's forecast: Government corruption.

Tomorrow's forecast: 100% chance of more 'politics as usual'

Maybe it's finally time to vote Libertarian

It was merely a crack at the non-profit part. Not an argument per se and certainly not to any ism.

I don't think there's a connection between religion as such - as in the raw need to believe in supernatural deities - and any political affiliation. That's a basic urge (or, as Dawkins puts it, misfire) regardless of variations in political ideologies. But there may be plenty of connections between a person's political affiliation and how that person's religion presents itself. And especially vice versa!

One cannot live in society without obligation for it; it is the price one pays, so to speak, to live in a civilized world. Still, our acknowledgment of the social contract is, for the most part, one-sided; that is, we readily recognize our rights to the benefits, but we are not so ready to acknowledge the burden of our debt to society. Laurence Sterne, I think, expressed it most eloquently in one of his sermons thus:

For none of us liveth to himself. Romans xiv. 7.

. . .

“To the honor of human nature, the scripture teaches us that God made man upright - and though he has since found out many inventions, which have much dishonoured this noble structure, yet the foundation of it stands as it was, - the whole frame and design of it carried on upon social virtue and public spirit, and every member of us so evidently supported by this strong cement, that we may say with the apostle, that no man liveth to himself. In whatsoever light we view him, we shall see evidently, that there is no station or condition in his life, - no office or relation, or circumstance, but there arises from it so many ties, so many indispensable claims upon him, as must perpetually carry him beyond selfish consideration, and shew plainly, that was a man foolishly wicked enough to design to live to himself alone, he would either find it impracticable, or he would lose, at least, the very thing that made life itself desirable. We know that our creator, like an all-wise contriver in this, as in all other of his works has planted in mankind such appetites and inclinations as were suitable for their state; that is, such as would naturally lead him to the love of society and friendship, without which he would have been found in a worse condition than the very beasts of the field. No one therefore who lives in society, can be said to live to himself, - he lives to his GOD, - to his king, and his country. - He lives to his family, to his friends, to all under his trust, and in a word, he lives to the whole race of mankind; whatsoever has the character of man, and wears the same image of GOD that he does, is truly his brother, and has a just claim to his kindness. - That this is the case in fact, as well as in theory, may be made plain to anyone, who has made any observations upon human life. - When we have traced it through all its connections, - view’d it under the several obligations which succeed each other in a perpetual rotation through the different states of a hasty pilgrimage, we shall find that these do operate so strongly upon it, and lay us justly under so many restraints, that we are every hour sacrificing something to society, in return for the benefits we receive from it.”

- Laurence Sterne, “Vindication of Human Nature,” Sermons, (1760)

Socialism is close to Christianity with its idea of charity and help to needy.

Yes it was the sermon on the mount.

It is a tough question. We could turn this into a "what would Jesus do" argument but that could go in a pointless direction. I am a personal believer in what Jesus says in John "it is by your actions that you shall know them." I think that rings true. If the policy leads to the relief of poverty then Christians can support it.

There is a huge aid to the poor part of the Bible. Maybe Christ would say this is the responsibility of the church first.

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"A dog barks when his master is attacked. I would be a coward if I saw that God's truth is attacked and yet would remain silent."
-John Calvin

When i said conservative i meant in the government/political realm. My Christianity is actually pretty liberal as most here know.

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"A dog barks when his master is attacked. I would be a coward if I saw that God's truth is attacked and yet would remain silent."
-John Calvin

Monetary profit, my friend.

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The apocalypse is coming... we're gonna need more ammo.

During the 1890's there was a lot of discussion about this, and Pope Leo XIII wrote an encyclical called "Rerum Novarum", subtitled "The Rights and Duties of Capital and Labor " to sort it all out in light of Christian doctrine.
Leo XIII - Rerum Novarum

Later, a New York politician read this encyclical and was very impressed, he turned it into a political platform, and translated the Latin "Rerum Novarum", which means "A new way of doing things" into the snappy phrase "The New Deal".
In the encyclical, the Pope said that it was a human right to own property, but that while the ownership of capital was a right it also came with duties.
In it he described what we now know as social security, national health, minimum wage, welfare, unemployment insurance as the duties of a Christian society to the workers. That the owners of capital had a duty to provide a safe and healthy working environment, a decent wage that would provide workers the ability to provide for their families, that people unable to work should be provided for, that good medical care should be available to all.
Basically, Rerum Novarum has been the platform of the Democratic Party since 1930.

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“ The subjects of every state ought to contribute towards the support of the government, as nearly as possible, in proportion to their respective abilities; that is, in proportion to the revenue which they respectively enjoy under the protection of the state.”

Adam Smith , The Wealth of Nations 1776

"We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals; we know now that it is bad economics"
FDR's second Inaugural Address