Religion as a force for revolutionary change

When we try to answer the question whether religion has a place in the political arena, most people tend to come with either a solid ‘’Yes’’ or ‘’No’’ answer.

Many tend to answer the question by generalizing that religion only has a place within conservative politics. When trying to combine religion and politics into one mix, one immediately gets a picture of a nationalistic party with Christian-Democratic views, but we often forget that religion does not have to be ‘‘conservative’’.

Catholic Liberation theologians and priests came into being as leftists and revolutionaries. Rather than promote the status quo and protect the interests of economic elites, these visionaries upheld the Catholic faith by fighting for the vulnerable in society. In this article I am going to show that there is no contradiction between being progressive and being religious. It is a question of interpretation, and that religion can be an agent for social as well as economic change.

Throughout the 20th century there have been many socialist and anarchist organizations who upheld Christian Catholic values and supported forms of liberation theology. While we must acknowledge that political Communist figures such as Karl Marx and the anarchist Mikhail Bakunin were strictly atheists, prominent figures still remain that upheld Christian values such as the anarchist Catholic Dorothy Day in America and the Christian anarchist Leo Tolstoy in Russia. They show us that Christian progressives exist just as much as conservative Christians do.

The Christian Left came into being long ago, and one good example was the ‘‘Quakers movement’’, or as it was known by George Fox called it in the mid17th century English Civil War, ‘‘ The Religious Society of Friends’’. Although the Christian Left started out in the Protestant denomination of the Quakers, Christian Leftism also manifested itself through Catholicism, in the form of Liberation theology which was a synthesis of Christian theology and sociological economic analyses that emphasized social concerns for the poor, homeless and oppressed people.

Liberation theology saw its beginnings in the 1960s after Vatican Council II. Latin American Marxist theologians like the Domican priest Gustavo Gutiérrez were prime examples from the time. This form of liberation theology later developed and branched out; one such branch being ‘’Black theology’’, mixing civil rights and Christanity with the struggle against racist sentiments in America. The same type of struggle was fought by a Democratic Socialist Christian - Martin Luther King. He was another pure example of a Christian individual upholding progressive and socialist values.

Although the Vatican and numerous Popes criticized Communism as a political theory as a process that leads to state dominion, this did not stop the Vatican from pursuing its own ‘’communistic’’ type of political theory called ‘‘Distributism’’, which is the equivalent to PierreJoseph Proudhon’s anarchist theory of economics which today we call Mutualism.

Christianity sometimes served as a force of liberation. Sometimes religion is instead used as a tool to suppress and dominate. The story of Moses in itself is a story of emancipation from oppressors. The tenacity of Christian martyrs in the Roman Empire is a story of a subjugated minority enduring persecution so as to freely practice their beliefs. However, one must note that the tables turned, and it was no longer the Christians who were persecuted by pagans, but it was the Christians who in turn ended up carrying out the persecutions.

Examples of the abuses of any religion across history need not be mentioned; in Malta we also have numerous examples of this. It is therefore a question of how religion is interpreted and used, and how true people are to its messages instead of paying lip service while acting differently in practice. More recently, Pope Francis’ encyclical Laudato Si, presented in crystal clear language his vision of a spiritual and progressive ecologism. He highlighted the disproportionate effect of environmental change on the poor. He blasts the unthinking reliance on market forces and demands that technological advancements should not be embraced uncritically before considering how they will affect our world.

The Pope links all human beings to nature: “We are part of nature, included in it, and thus in constant interaction with it”, reiterating the Green message that a blind pursuit of money that sets aside the interests of the marginalized and the plundering of earth are connected. Using religious language (obviously, he’s the Pope!), he calls for an “ecological conversion” in which we can listen to the “cry of the earth and the cry of the poor”. The same message of condemning trickle-down economics was depicted in Pope Francis’s new encyclical called ‘’Fratelli Tutti’’ denouncing populism and neoliberalism which was accepted by our Maltese Archbishop Scicluna as an encyclical promoting solidarity throughout all nations, especially in a new vision for what should be done in a pastcovid world.

ADŻ (Alternattiva Demokratika Żgħażagħ) find themselves proud to have a mix of youth with different ideas for the place of religion in society, and a different mixture of personal beliefs. Yet in spite of our differences, we have come to the conclusion that we support a progressive interpretation of religion that is on the forefront for the emancipation of women, the poor, the working class and other oppressed minorities.

Those of us who are Green, progressive and are also believers, see Jesus as an insurrectionary and yet also as a pacifist. He turned the other cheek and felt mercy for the sick, the sinful and the deprived. Dorothy Day asks of us ‘‘that we must really love God as much as the person we love the least’’. It is this community, this church that we support; a church that loves vulnerable persons as much as God himself and if we truly love these people, then if they’re chained, it is our responsibility to free them from bondage both in spiritual prayer and in actuality.