Why Christians Should Be Leftists [a review]
Let's start with the obvious: publishing a book entitled Why Christians Should be Leftists at this exact cultural moment, under this administration, takes a lot of chutzpah, regardless of whether the premise excites you or enrages you. Author Phil Christman isn't burying the lede; he's telling you right there in the title what he wants you to take away from this book. So: does he succeed? I'll match his forthrightness and tell you right now that I don't think he quite makes the case.
Before we go any further, it's worth defining the target audience of his book. He's not writing this to MAGA, nor really anyone right of center, I don't think. The tone of the book assumes that you're a Christian who holds left-of-center views about various social issues, but economically you hold relatively conservative views about the goodness of Capitalism.
Why left of center isn't left enough when it comes to economics
For plenty of folks on the right end of the political spectrum, it's becoming increasingly common to refer to anyone even slightly left of center as a "radical leftist," so Christman spends some time upfront defining his terms. This isn't about persuading you to hold vaguely liberal notions in general. Nor even is he merely arguing for Christian support of Elizabeth Warren-esque policies like universal childcare. His goal is to take the Christian who would probably describe themselves as "politically homeless" and beckon them to come all the way leftward past the mainstream Democrats, and to do so because he believes the moral fabric of Christianity requires it.
So why isn't it enough simply not to be on the red team anymore? Christman is careful not to besmirch people in that spot, but he doesn't see it as a morally stable place to remain. We'll get into his biblical argument for why he believes that in a minute, but it's worth highlighting here that while he wants people to move further left on their economics, he's also pragmatic about the need for coalition-building. He critiques his fellow leftists as having "an important failure of imagination" when they abstained from voting for Harris because she wasn't progressive enough about, e.g., Gaza. One can have ideals, but it shouldn't get in the way of political realism. If politics is a game, it's not one where the aim is to keep your hands as unsullied as possible—the goal is to figure out the move that will do the most good for your neighbor. This, incidentally, leads us straight to the heart of Christman's scriptural argument.
Why Christians should be leftists
This book is not about why he thinks people in general should be leftists, but specifically Christians. He gets there by a study of the Beatitudes—a text that for Christman undermines much of Capitalism. The system is predicated upon the notion that if everyone acts in greedy self-interest by capitalizing on every opportunity and pursuing upward mobility, then this will paradoxically result in greater outcomes for everyone. Christman's argument isn't that this doesn't work, but that it isn't Christian.
Jesus does not say, "Blessed are the upwardly mobile, greedily hustling to earn a little more and climb that ladder," but rather, "Blessed are the poor and meek." In Christman's words, "Jesus comes to a brutally hierarchical world and says that the people at the bottom of that hierarchy—the poor in spirit, the meek, the persecuted, the losers and the suckers—are, somehow, the inheritors of the kingdom of heaven." Jesus is blessing those who prioritize communal good over personal gain. Some would say that these things don't have to be in conflict, and that Capitalism is the rising tide that lifts all boats, while 20th century experiments in Communism left millions starving or dead. It's better than feudalism where those in seats of power controlled nearly all the wealth while serfs had next to nothing and no power to do anything about it. Christman takes issue with these common arguments, though: we want to think that Capitalism is a considerable improvement over medieval serfdom, but is it, really? Someone like Elon Musk earns in 1 second what the average citizen earns per month. Such a mind-blowing wage gap starts to look more like a rebranding of feudalism rather than its replacement.
Christians who operate within a capitalistic society tend to try to observe the Beatitudes by practicing personal generosity with their time, money, and resources. That is obviously better than not doing that, but Christman's contention is that this isn't a serious or honest reading of the Beatitudes. In his view, the kingdom isn't just sprinkles of generosity on the existing economic system, but a radical upending of the entire system itself. "According to Jesus," says Christman, "losers define what humanity is and should be." He's not here to browbeat those who try to do their best within the constraints of Capitalism, but we shouldn't convince ourselves that it's as good as we could possibly ever do in enacting kingdom-oriented economics. And in Christman's view, leftist economic models are more faithful to Jesus's words, so that's why Christians should lean that way.
Why Christman didn't convince me to be a leftist
I genuinely enjoyed reading this book, and it prompted a lot of thinking in me—but ultimately, I must confess that he did not persuade me to be a leftist. For those of us grew up with a Christianity hitched to the GOP, it's a relatively natural thing to back away from that. My concern is that we might inadvertently back ourselves into an equal and opposite position. Imagine a future in which leftists are ascendant and cannot imagine how any Christian of good faith could dissent—all Christians should be leftists!
If the question you're asking is if it's possible for a person to be both a Christian and a leftist, I think this book is a pretty good read. But in our current cultural moment, I'm just not that big a fan of absolutism about what Christians should or should not think about prudential matters. Part of the reason the newly ascendant alt-right is so angry and violent is that they lack the imagination to believe that their opponents could be genuinely walking in good faith. When you think everyone should be X, everyone who isn't is an enemy.
Those are meta comments about the book's agenda and the moment it is being published into, but I also wasn't overwhelmingly persuaded by his material arguments, either. The book's arguments are less clearly delineated than I'm used to in an exegetical book, but my impression is that Christman's primary argument for why Christians should be leftists is a textual/moral one:
- The Beatitudes turn traditional attitudes about power and upward mobility on their heads—ideas that are fundamental to capitalism
- Faithfulness means taking this as literally as we can
- Therefore, nothing except a rejection of capitalism and an embrace of leftist economic goals is enough
There's certainly something to this! There's an irony to upper middle-class Christians insisting that all of Scripture must be taken literally, but then who neuter the Sermon on the Mount into little more than a poignant illustration of how none of us can live up to the demands of the law. Jesus demands things that sound absolutely crazy in the Sermon on the Mount, but maybe that's because he wants this world to look very different than it actually does. To the extent that Christman is challenging his fellow Christians to view monetary and economic considerations through the lens of what the Bible says, I think it's a worthy challenge. I just disagree that nothing besides the far left will morally suffice.
I'm glad I live in a country where someone can publish a book-length case for Christians being leftists. That doesn't mean I want all Christians to be leftists any more than I want all Christians to be one specific kind of conservative, though. I want, instead, for Christians to be united around the essentials while having breathing room in the non-essentials. I'm not advocating for "both sides-ism" or a lukewarm centrism here, but rather for a kind of big tent anti-fundamentalism that gives people latitude to move around a little and work out their own faith with fear and trembling. Every single one of us has changed our minds about this or that over time, and I think we should afford one another the space to do that rather than saying, "Christians should think X about Y" when it comes to how to live out the faith in our world today.
Conclusion
Christman is a generous, warm-hearted author, explicitly giving space in his book for various leftist "tendencies" rather than insisting on a narrow definition. I appreciate that, but at the same time, I can't help but feel like it undercuts his argument. He wants me to be a "leftist" while leaving room for that to mean different things. The very premise of the book is that it isn't enough to simply be left of center or even a mainstream democrat; the thesis is that you as a "politically homeless" Christian should go all the way and be a leftist.
He's welcome to write whatever book he wishes, obviously, but I wish this had been something different. I hoped it might be a call to the right-of-center Christian to embrace Christian virtue in their politics and economics rather than succumbing to the brutality of Trump's anti-Christian, gladiatorial vision. If that's you, I'd honestly probably skip this; I'm not sure that you'd get much out of it. If, instead, you're curious about how one Christian leftist derives his economic views from Scripture, this might be worth your time and attention.
DISCLAIMER: I received a copy of this book from the publisher for the purpose of a fair, unbiased review.