[Y]es, there is a direct lineage from Christianity to Marxism; yes, Christianity and Marxism should fight on the same side of the barricade.
~ Slavoj Zizek, The Fragile Absolute, 2.
Two revolutionaries [Gk: lestes] were crucified with Jesus, one on his right and one on his left.
~ Mt 27.38 (cf. Mk 15.27; Lk 23.32-33).
It is interesting to note that, when the sons of Zebedee come to Jesus (with their mother!) and request to be seated at the places of honour next to Jesus — one on his right and one on his left — Jesus first asks them if they will be able to drink the cup that he is going to drink (cf. Mt 20). However, even after they answer in the affirmative, and even after Jesus affirms that they will drink of the same cup, Jesus refuses to grant their request. Now, where this gets interesting is that, in the Gospels, we do not see the sons of Zebedee, or any of the other disciples drinking from the same cup as Jesus (the “cup,” in this passage refers to Jesus' upcoming crucifixion, the climax of his “messianic woes”). Rather, when the time comes, the disciples all abandon Jesus. So who is it that we find situated at the places of honour and drinking from the same cup as Jesus? Two rebels, two revolutionaries, two terrorists(!), martyred for their opposition to Roman rule (the traditional translation of the word lestes as “robbers” in most English versions of the Gospels is something of a misleading translation, as several scholars have noted).
Further, some scholars have gone on to suggest that this is no mere coincidence; Jesus' placement in the middle of the rebels, highlights his sympathy and solidarity with the cause of those who would recognise no King but God alone. Although they differed on the use of violence (Jesus refused to engage in violence, while most — but, note, not all — of the rebels engaged in violence), both Jesus and the Jewish revolutionaries recognised that faithfulness to God led them into conflict with an empire that recognised no King but Caesar. Consequently, both Jesus and the rebels find themselves “on the same side of the barricade,” dying outside of the city walls together.
(If we accept what these scholars have to say then we might well conclude that the company we keep while dying is just as significant as the company we keep while living. What, I wonder, is the significance of the observation that most of us wish to die peacefully, in our sleep, in our comfortable beds, in our comfortable homes? On which side of the barricades does such thinking place us? Or rather, on which side of the barricades does such thinking reveal that we have been living this whole time?)
With these reflections in mind, it is easy to see the validity in Zizek's statement that Christians and Marxists should fight together, rather than fighting against one another. Indeed, I am fascinated by the ways in which Marxists — like Zizek, Agamden, and Badiou — have been exploring Jesus with Paul. Unlike those who have appropriated a “revolutionary” Jesus and discarded an “institutional” Paul, these scholars desire to maintain the integrity of the New Testament witness and find revolutionary potential in both Jesus and Paul. Therefore, where once Christian theologians were recognising the liberating potential in elements of Marxism, now Marxist scholars are recognising the liberating potential in elements of Christianity! Although the weapons of Christians and Marxist can be very different, they are united in a common cause. Christians and Marxist both voice a resounding “No!” to the Powers that perpetuate processes of oppression, dehumanisation, terror, enslavement, consumption, and so on and so forth. Furthermore, although the hope of Christians and the hope of Marxists are rather different, they are both hopes that subvert and challenge the current state of affairs while inspiring action against that state of affairs.
Unfortunately, the Christian perception of Marxism has been so warped in N. America that it is often impossible for N. Americans to recognise who their allies are. That we have so easily accepted such a caricatured picture of Marxism suggest to me that perhaps our sympathies aren't really with the oppressed, the enslaved, and the dehumanised. Perhaps we are on the wrong side of the barricade.
(This language of “allies” and “sides” may make some uncomfortable since it seems to suggest an “us” vs. “them” mentality. To say that we have “allies” suggests that we also have “enemies” and many of us are ill at ease with such language. However, it should be noted that Christianity never suggested that we do not have any enemies. Rather, Christianity says that we do have enemies, but we are to love those enemies and treat them as our friends — even if they continue to live as very real enemies.)

When Caesar becomes a member of the church, the enemy becomes internalized. The problem is no longer that the church is seen as a threat to the political order, but that now my desires are disordered.
~ Stanley Hauerwas, from “No Enemy, No Christianity: Theology and Preaching between 'Worlds'” in The Future of Theology: Essays in Honor of Jurgen Moltmann.
In my recent reflections on “Christianity and Capitalism” I observed that capitalism disciplines us in various ways. In particular, I emphasised the ways in which capitalism disciplines our desire — it teaches us to desire in certain ways, just as it teaches us to desire certain things.
It was with these thoughts in the back of my mind that I came across this quote from Hauerwas. From Hauerwas we can conclude that the reason why our desires have been so disciplined (and so disordered) is because we have welcomed capitalism into the Christian community, instead of choosing to resist it. Indeed, in the same essay, Hauerwas emphasises that Christianity is unintelligible without enemies; Christianity, Hauerwas says (provocatively, and as a pacifist!), is about making the right enemies. If Christianity does not do this, it will cease to exist in any meaningful sort of way.
Thus, for as long as we seek to pursue “Christianity with Capitalism” (i.e. “moral capitalism” or “capitalism with a human face”) we will find that the main area of struggle is with our own desires. Only when we begin to pursue a form of Christianity that exists as a genuine alternative to capitalism will we be able to find our desires liberated. In that scenario, the conflict will be where it should be — between the church and the political order.
Of course, the Church has a long history of internalizing conflicts that are meant to take place in the socio-political and economic arena. Thus, for example, we are accustomed to taking a passage like Eph 6.12 (“For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms”) and assuming that it refers to my individual struggle with sin and temptation (i.e. we take it as a reference to our personal struggles with our disordered desires). However, as Walter Wink has so ably shown (cf. Naming the Powers, Unmasking the Powers, and Engaging the Powers), the language of “rulers,” “powers,” and “forces of evil,” refers to the socio-political and economic structures of Paul's day. In such passages Paul (and his interpreters) are talking about the economic and political authorities of the Roman Empire — and it is these structures of authority that Christians are to resist.
Consequently, if we are being true to Paul, we must recognize that the primary arena of conflict should not be within ourselves; rather, the primary arena of conflict is to be the socio-political and economic realm. The conflict is not between my and my desires, it is between the Church and the political order — and the more we focus on the former, the more we are thrown off-track and become inconsequential in relation to the latter. Furthermore, the fact that we tend to focus almost exclusively on the former simply verifies the degree to which “Caesar” has become internalised in our churches.

There was a great question in my mind. Why was so much done in remedying social evils instead of avoiding them in the first place? … Where were the saints to try to change the social order, not just to minister to the slaves but to do away with slavery?
~ Dorothy Day, The Long Loneliness, 45.
In the matter of slavery Paul's standpoint is maintained [by the early Church]… The fact that slavery exists is accepted as a part of the given world order which it is not the task of Christians to alter.
~ Rudolph Bultmann, Theology of the New Testament: Volume 2, 230.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners… to release the oppressed.
~ Jesus, quoted as quoting Isaiah, in Lk 4.18.
Dorothy Day asks herself about the whereabouts of the saints who confront slavery in order to do away with it. That she was unable to find such saints is, in part, due to the legacy of scholars like Rudolph Bultmann.
In his study of Paul, Bultmann makes two moves that result in a presentation of a Paul who is socially conservative in his approach to socio-economic and political issues.
The first move, which is apparent in the quotation that I provide, is the social introspection that Bultmann argues existed, and was encouraged, within the Pauline communities. Pauline Christians, Bultmann argues, were not concerned with the given world order, they were simply to be concerned with themselves. Thus, that slavery existed in the world, was irrelevant for Christians who were no longer to see the distinction between “slave” and “free” as operative within the Christian community.
Now this could be a promising way forward, but Bultmann takes away what he gives in his second move, wherein he spiritualizes the transformation that occurred within Pauline Christianity. Thus, he goes on to argue that, within the Christian community, there were still Christian masters with Christian slaves; the point was that, even though nothing physical was altered, the distinction between masters and slaves should not be considered of any significance at a spiritual level.
The result of both of these moves is a depoliticized, or apolitical, Paul. However, an apolitical Paul becomes, necessarily, a conservative Paul; to show no interest in politics is to perpetuate the reign of the powers that be.
Not surprisingly, I would take issue with both of the moves that Bultmann makes. The second move is simply, IMHO, a misreading of the texts (Bultmann quotes 1 Cor 7 and Philem). As far as I can tell, the abolition of distinctions, like those between “slave” and “free,” (or those between “male” and “female”) had significant concrete, physical outworkings in the Pauline churches. The first move, however, is more troubling because it is a much more common move to make. Bultmann argues that the Pauline churches were not concerned with the “given world order” because they believed that the world order was passing away, they believed that “The End” of the world order would come within the life-span of their generation. Thus, despite their many differences, this is one place in which Bultmann is in agreement with Schweitzer and Dibelius (not to mention the host of others who have followed these two in seeing Paul as socially conservative because he believed that the End of the world was just around the corner). I would object to this on two grounds: (1) I believe that socio-rhetorical criticism has shown that Paul is very interested in socio-economic and political issues; and (2) I am not convinced that Paul was so sure that the world was coming to “The End” as some of these scholars assert. We must remember that for Paul, as a faithful Jew, the “end” of the world was really about the remaking of the world. Therefore, if, after the resurrection and Pentecost, the Pauline churches found themselves living in a time when the future was invading the present, it seems to me that they would have had an express interest in beginning to embody the new creation as it applied to all areas of life. Consequently, far from encountering a conservative Paul, I am inclined to discover a “subversive” Paul.
Be that as it may, the legacy of Bultmann (and others) lives on. We read Bultmann on slavery and we substitute a whole host of other issues — from homelessness in N. American urban centres to the HIV/AIDS pandemic in Africa — and we conclude that it is “not the task of Christians to alter [these situations].” Thus, it comes as no surprise that Day was unable to find the saints for whom she searched — most saints never imagined that they were to do anything more than to minister to slaves, for as long as the world continued being the world (however, I wonder about the extent to which Bultmann would apply these words to anything beyond what he sees as the Pauline perspective on slavery. After all, he was a member of the Confessing Church in Germany during WWII, and his family was involved in sheltering Jews from the Nazi regime).
All this, then, leads me to my third quotation — the one from Lk. What I find intriguing about the passage is the way in which Jesus uses the language of slavery (when he speaks of “the prisoners” and “the oppressed”; this is, of course, exilic language, but exile itself is properly understood as a from of slavery) in a way that opens that language up to an application beyond the situation of slaves in the first-century. Jesus calls for the abolition of all forms of oppression, and for freedom from all forms of bondage. Thus, whereas Bultmann “spiritualises” talk of slavery in way that results in something less than the physical emancipation of slaves, Jesus employs the language of slavery to refer to much more than, and certainly nothing less than, the physical emancipation of slaves. Consequently, we see Jesus embodying this proclamation by freeing the sick from the bondage imposed by illness, freeing the wealthy from the bondage imposed by money, freeing the poor from the bondage imposed by the religious structures, freeing the possessed from the bondage of demons, freeing the outcasts from the bondage imposed by social structures, and freeing the exiles from the bondage imposed by godforsakenness.
In light of these things, my question is this: how do we begin, like Day, to follow Jesus and confront the slaveries, and slave-traders, of our day, in order to do away with all forms of slavery?