To speak of hope today is to speak of something absolutely necessary. But what kind of hope can sustain the struggle for a better world in the face of the ascendancy of Donald Trump, the Reactionary Right’s bold and deadly legislative policies, and the enduring violence of capitalism? What, and in whom, do we hope, and how does this hope help us to imagine a life beyond the death-dealing forces of capital as they continue to wreak havoc on workers, families, communities, and ecosystems?
Asking this question amid our current political situation brings every reason to despair. There is the Trump regime’s unapologetic and brash militarization of Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency, which has led to the presence of armed agents in the streets of many US cities, from Chicago to Los Angeles to New York and Minneapolis. At the same time, the United States continues its imperialism through its renamed Department of War and its bombing campaigns in Iran, the invasion of Venezuela, and the threatened conquest of Greenland. There is the continuing genocide of Palestinians, to which many Christians have turned away in indifference, despite the cries that continue to resound from the Palestinian movement here in the United States and abroad. The administration has attacked the environmental movement and dismissed the urgency of climate change. Yet the effects of ecological disaster can be witnessed everywhere: in the melting of glaciers, the flooding of coastal cities, and the decimation of nutrient-rich soils through industrial agriculture and cash-crop production.
Christian socialism is built upon the theological commitment that the salvation Jesus promised and enacted made us God’s children, freed us to turn away from individual and social forms of sin—from the injustices we enact on ourselves and our neighbors—and empowered us toward a more holy, just, and equitable life. As Christian socialists, we cannot help but ask about hope without seeing in the world the contradiction between that promised in the Kingdom of God and the contemporary entrenchment of inequalities near and far.
In this inaugural issue of The Bias, we wanted to ask whether or not it was possible to hope in the Christian Socialist sense given these circumstances. This, of course, requires that we ask what Christian socialism is and, thus, what kind of world we aim to struggle for, what kind of world the promise of the Kingdom of God opens up. Joerg Rieger opens our issue by laying out the foundations of the Christian socialist tradition that emerges from the “love ethic” of Jesus and synthesizing it with the great socialist Karl Kautsky’s emphasis on the “socialism of production.”
Hope must underlie these socialist commitments. So argues Matt McManus in his essay on the realist, rather than utopian, hope of socialism. A realist hope calls us to be cleared eyed about capital’s resilience and its capacity to keep eating away at people’s lives. To struggle against this ever-hungry beast requires the biblical virtue of patience, which essayist Carl Beijar argues enables us to struggle for justice, even when the promise of its actualization is not apparent.
The art, stories, and poetry in this issue invite us into this patient hope, whether that be through the iconic presentation of Jesus in Katy Ramos’s collage, in the socialist parables of Nathanael Nelson, or in Hannah Keziah Agustin’s prayer for Filipino workers and recently detained migrants. Such work enthusiastically and unapologetically reorients our gaze back toward society on the basis of a robust moral vision grounded in the life of Jesus and the socialism that flows naturally from the Gospels. They particularize the hope-filled and patient love ethic so described by Reiger, McManus, and Beijar.
What does this hope-filled Chrisitan socialism look like on the ground? Sheryl Johnson’s essay reflects on the legacy of the pro-worker Student Christian Movement in Canada, recalling a moment in the movement’s history when students, inspired by the social gospel, formed camps to live near and work with factory workers. Methodist pastor Hazel Joyce Salatan reflects on her time immersing with the naka-salakot, farmers and peasants in the Philippines who are struggling to maintain sovereignty over their farmlands, despite attempts from the local government and corporations to seize it for private development. And mennonite pastor Jay Bergen reflects on being arrested alongside other Christian leaders in their struggle for Palestinian liberation, their protest strategies informed by a history of radical faith-based direct action. The picture painted in these essays is one of hope grounded in concrete and local forms of struggle. Christians throughout the world are fighting for a better world as witnesses to the Kingdom of God. It is their decision to take seriously the moral vision of the gospel that inspires their fight for freedom in the face of capitalist domination.
As a premier voice for the Christian Left, the Institute for Christian Socialism carries a steadfast conviction that the Gospel of Jesus is irreconcilable with capitalism’s death-dealing effects. The voices in this issue give expression to the demands for another way. The repressive violence of the Trump regime and the continued exploitation of workers under capitalism cannot stop the Spirit in continuing to inspire an international hope forged in struggle.