From my Twitter account this morning:
Today celebrates the death of man who campaigned for economic justice for the poor, the forgiveness of their oppressive debts, and for monetary reform. The real question for today is why has that been forgotten?
— Richard Murphy (@RichardJMurphy) April 2, 2021
Theologically these claims are easy to justify. Any alternative interpretations to them are harder to justify.
Jesus was an economic reform campaigner. He died four days after he overturned the tables of the money changers in the Temple.
Today is the only UK national holiday to mark the death - and the violent death at that - of a person dedicated to economic reform. But this is almost never mentioned.
Why is that?
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I think the public is put off by the gruesome story of Easter. Besides, the “mainstream media” is not interested in any type of economic reform that removes poverty from the underclass.
Test
Testing what?
For the last couple of days I’m getting server error when refreshing or posting a comment – a message ‘connection error server not secure ..’
I am trying to establish it it’s my phone, the internet connection , your server or something else.
Sorry – I genuinely don’t know
Has anyone else had the problem?
I’m starting to get the server error message……
I will ask my tech guy
Anyone else?
“almost never mentioned”? – it depends where you look! My great uncle was a Methodist Minister in Tonypandy in the 30s and 40s and he had quite a lot to say on this. Indeed, it was not until relatively recently that I accepted that it was possible to be a Christian and vote Tory! Perhaps I have mellowed and become a little less judgemental.
I still doubt the possibility…..
Unfortunately the establishment managed to divert the church into issues around personal morality and sex. A much more useful tool for exercising social control and harmless to any established interests. Jesus said little about who should do what with who, other than to have a prostitute among his close friends (Mary Magdalen), fraternise with tax collectors, talk about the Samaritans favourably (very unpopular with the Jews at the time), and asking who would throw the first stone at an adulterer.
Quite so
I guess you must be thinking of Michael Hudson’s book ‘…and forgive them their debts.’
It is certainly an influence
I am not a Marxist but I recall that Marx forecast that as capitalism developed, capital would concentrate into fewer hands while the masses became poorer, or, at least, no better off.
Keynes and others gave us a time when the mass of the population became better off. But we reverted to laissez fair capitalism and a newer form of financialised capitalism arose.
The stone age civilisations in the middle east who invented money also invented debt relief because they understood that borrowing with interest results in a few rich people and all the rest as slaves.
Thank you, Richard, for bringing up Jesus’ impeccable option for the poor. I think we forget how much we owe Him, socially, politically and culturally. As a Christian Socialist with no political affiliation I still think that it is no coincidence that the key figures in the establishment of the ILP, Keir Hardie, Will Crooks, Ben Tillett and Robert Blatchford were are men of Christian faith.
Happy and blessed Easter to you at this most significant of weekends.
And to you John
I’m certainly not religious but I’ve read a lot words attributed to this man Jesus. In my darker moments I measure myself against him and find myself wanting in many areas except the one about economic justice.
I would have liked to have met the man and have been associated with him and his ideas.
My observation over human history since Jesus is that The Rich have constantly maneuvered around a common desire for fairness in societies that I think Jesus taught us. For example, when Atlee won the post war election, it was only boundary changes that stopped him getting in again as according to John Bew, he got most of the popular vote.
And here we are again with yet another boundary change in the offing.
I’m still reading Philip Mirowski and he calls Neo-liberalism a ‘sociological’ phenomenon in that it is maintained by loosely affiliated individuals who share common views and values – one being of course wealth. The past 30 or so years of Neo-liberalism has produced through its worship of risk and rule breaking get rich quick schemes many more millionaires whose wealth has been sourced and even increasing the wealth of existing ones. Thatcherism was one of the biggest recruiting agents for swelling the ranks of the The Rich in this country, as was Reagan in the U.S.
That wealth has been used to inculcate values that I’m sure Jesus would have rejected into governments, markets and societies at large. The Rich are dug in like ticks.
And why not?
They have a lot to lose that was gained so easily.
I fear that not even pitchforks will dislodge them. Now, fascism is used to divide us and keep us falling out amongst ourselves.
When will our politicians realise that they have helped engineer something that will eventually consume them too; something that cannot be controlled because it does not know the answer to ‘How much is enough?’. Something who’s existence creates more problems than it solves even for them?
The aspects of Jesus to which you refer are unfortunately undermined by the Christian fairy stories of virgin births, ‘miracles’, and rising from the dead, probably more now than in previous times.
The BBC ran a survey several years back on ethics and found that the ethics of the general population equated closely to Christian ethics – minus the virgin births etc.
I have never cared for the story of the virgin birth – it seems utterly irrelevant at best to me
I don’t really much care about the idea of life after death either – so never got too worried about the ‘conjuring rick with bones’ as Bishop David Jenkins called it. It’s key for some – but not me
The teaching does matter, I think
I don’t any way knock those who believe in the whole story – but I am at least very open-minded on it
Leaving aside your ‘at least’…
I am saying that these stories of virgin birth etc etc actually weaken the case for Jesus ‘socialist’ side, which was surely the instigation for your original comments.
I believe it would be much more useful to have that side of things strengthened by it being in a credible context.
So those stories are not a neutral
and ‘at least’ is not useful in regard to what is needed and a constructive way forward.
I tend to agree with you whilst respecting others
I think that fair
There are no rights and wrongs here
I live in what is an almost totally Moslem environment, hundreds of thousands of Moslems and few others. I would really like some solid ground for an alternative. But while its virgin births, miracles and rising from the dead-? It actually embarrasses me.
I think that Linda is right about the undermining of the humanistic side of Jesus’ teachings although all I would add is that it the vested interests in our society which emphasises the ‘virgin birth’ (related to obsessions about sex) and ‘miracles’ side in order to steer us away from what are the more incisive observations and teaching from Jesus about how to be decent human being.
Thankfully perhaps like you Richard, its what Jesus has to say that catches my attention – not the human beings embedded in religion who somehow believe that they have a hot line to the thoughts of a ‘God’ and speak on his her/his behalf. It’s how man should wield power (fairly) that I picked up when made to read the Bible at school. This also made me question what the hell was going when this book told us to behave well when all around me was death, poverty and suffering and that we seemed to tolerate it.
We see this distortion and selective presentation of narratives in the presentation about Government debt. The word ‘debt’ is abused as though all debt is the same when it is not. Sovereign Government debt is simply not the same as household or corporate debt.
There seems to be some sort of ‘death wish’ at work in religion that tells us that we can only have heaven when we’re dead, and ignores the fact that we could have heaven on earth if we just co-operated with each other more and stopped letting a few people push us around for their own ends.
Oh well………………………..
I’m afraid you will have to go a long way to convince those who follow the Margaret Thatcher version of the Christian doctrine Richard but, as always, I hope some listen.
Interesting article here
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/apr/05/americans-religion-rightwing-politics-decline
It seems that US Christianity is finally putting off potential adherents because of its perversion of the Christian message