Communism with Christian Characteristics: China's Good Example

Readings for the Second Sunday of Easter: Acts 2: 42-47; Psalm 118: 2-4, 13-15, 22-24; First Peter 1: 3-9; John 20: 19-31

Today's rich reading from Luke's Acts of the Apostles shows how China's socialist policies - relentlessly vilified by our political leaders, educators, mass media, and churches - are far more in accord with the spirit of Yeshua and the early church than the corresponding policies of the United States.

That shocking fact is born out by the results of measures that China has for decades identified with its drive towards "Common Prosperity." Even since the time of Mao Zedong, the campaign's goal has been to narrow the wealth gap between the country's rich and poor.

And in a very short time, China has advanced towards its goal far beyond what Americans have been led to understand. That is while hunger, tent cities, ineffective schools, deteriorating infrastructure, and large population swaths without health care proliferate among us, things are quickly moving in the opposite direction under the aegis of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

Think, for instance, of the CCP's verified announcement (vastly underreported in the United States) that it has virtually eliminated extreme poverty for over 800 million of its people. No wonder that according to surveys sponsored by U.S. pollsters, the Chinese government boasts approval ratings of nearly 90% of its people.

One might think that such unprecedented accomplishments and support would be widely celebrated across the planet. You'd think that it would be taken as a sign that "socialism with Chinese characteristics" is superior to neoliberalism's laissez-faire system.

However, China's success is not even widely acknowledged or celebrated among Christians who (judging by the reading from Acts just referenced) should embrace such accomplishment as a sign of progress towards the North Star Yeshua proclaimed as the "Kingdom of God." You'd think they'd embrace it because the early Christians practiced what might be called "communism with Christian characteristics."

Let me show you what I mean. Take that reading from the Acts of the Apostles.

Today's Reading

Think about what we read there - a description of life among Jesus' first followers after the experience they called his "resurrection":

"All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their property and possessions and divide them among all according to each one's need."

Luke the evangelist repeats that refrain later in the same source when he writes:
"Now the whole group of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one claimed private ownership of any possessions, but everything they owned was held in common . . . There was not a needy person among them, for as many as owned lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold. They laid it at the apostles' feet, and it was distributed to any as had need." (Acts 4:32-36).

There you have it. The early Christians:

* Lived communally
* Rejected private property
* Including land and houses
* Instead held everything in common
* Pooling all their resources
* And distributing them "from each according to ability to each according to need."
* As a result, they eliminated poverty from their midst.

Did you catch the operative words: they divided their property "among all according to each one's needs?" As Mexican biblical scholar Jose Miranda points out in his Communism in the Bible, those are the words of the Bible not of Marx or Engels. In other words, the formula "from each according to his ability to each according to his need" comes straight from the Acts of the Apostles. They have nothing to do with atheism. On the contrary, they have everything to do with faith.

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