I recently watched this documentary/interview with a guy who lives off the grid in West Virginia. I think he and I’d get on like a house on fire, and I think we’d be able to agree to disagree on religion.
But when it comes to politics, both he and his Amish neighbor are insistent that they need to stop socialism so Christianity isn’t outlawed. Has that ever been on the table? Are Western European countries banning the Bible in some way I haven’t heard of?
Socialism is when the workers (or the public through the state) own the means of production (companies). It’s pretty unrelated to banning religion. With that said Communism’s (a type of Socialism) stated goal is classless social system with full social equality of all members of society. Christianity isn’t really compatible with that due to the sexism and xenophobia promoted by it. If you tolerate intolerant views your society becomes intolerant according to the Paradox of Tolerance.
I don’t know about western Europe, but apparently authorities across china have removed crosses from
churches, banned youth under the age of 18 from participating in
religious services, and replaced images of Jesus Christ or the Virgin
Mary with pictures of President Xi Jinping. Source
There is some truth to that as most countries people think of as socialistic like USSR and China follow(ed) a policy of state atheism where they tried to reduce religious belief in the society. Counties like these tend to to be pretty authoritarian.
But you also have social democracies such as Sweden and Norway which are really pretty socialistic in practice since the public owns the a big chunk of the companies. For example in Norway, the state owns 37% of the shares of companies on their stock market. (Source) These countries are somewhat socialistic, but not really authoritation like China and USSR.
In Norway, 70.6% of Norwegians were members of the Church of Norway in 2017. It is notable that the church of Norway was a state church until January 2017 (Source). So socialism isn’t necessarily anti-christianity. A lot of what Jesus actually preached is compatible with socialism. According to Jesus in Mark 12:29, The most important commandments are "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.”
In summary, The line socialism is anti-Christianity is a common republican talking point that does have a grain of truth in it but is somewhat misleading.
I recently watched this documentary/interview with a guy who lives off the grid in West Virginia. I think he and I’d get on like a house on fire, and I think we’d be able to agree to disagree on religion.
But when it comes to politics, both he and his Amish neighbor are insistent that they need to stop socialism so Christianity isn’t outlawed. Has that ever been on the table? Are Western European countries banning the Bible in some way I haven’t heard of?
Socialism is when the workers (or the public through the state) own the means of production (companies). It’s pretty unrelated to banning religion. With that said Communism’s (a type of Socialism) stated goal is classless social system with full social equality of all members of society. Christianity isn’t really compatible with that due to the sexism and xenophobia promoted by it. If you tolerate intolerant views your society becomes intolerant according to the Paradox of Tolerance.
I don’t know about western Europe, but apparently authorities across china have removed crosses from churches, banned youth under the age of 18 from participating in religious services, and replaced images of Jesus Christ or the Virgin Mary with pictures of President Xi Jinping. Source
There is some truth to that as most countries people think of as socialistic like USSR and China follow(ed) a policy of state atheism where they tried to reduce religious belief in the society. Counties like these tend to to be pretty authoritarian.
But you also have social democracies such as Sweden and Norway which are really pretty socialistic in practice since the public owns the a big chunk of the companies. For example in Norway, the state owns 37% of the shares of companies on their stock market. (Source) These countries are somewhat socialistic, but not really authoritation like China and USSR.
In Norway, 70.6% of Norwegians were members of the Church of Norway in 2017. It is notable that the church of Norway was a state church until January 2017 (Source). So socialism isn’t necessarily anti-christianity. A lot of what Jesus actually preached is compatible with socialism. According to Jesus in Mark 12:29, The most important commandments are "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.”
In summary, The line socialism is anti-Christianity is a common republican talking point that does have a grain of truth in it but is somewhat misleading.