I don’t see the problem, necessarily. It is true that few Baptist churches – and perhaps no Baptist churches in our time – are “Communist Churches.” But the meme seems to assume that they could not be, as though there were inherently something unthinkable about the idea. And while that may be true of Marxist/Leninist Communism, which had a distinctly anti-religious bent to it, the Communist Manifesto itself mentions other already-existing forms of communism, among with are Christian varieties. What the Book of Acts describes in the New Testament may or may not ever have been implemented in actual fact. And whether or not it was, that doesn’t make its paradigm of people selling their belonging and sharing the proceeds in common a model that should actually be followed. After all, Paul in his letters refers to a collection he is taking up from Gentile churches for the poor in Jerusalem. And so if they were following the way of life depicted in Acts – often referred to as a variety of “love communism” – then it was not working out well for them economically.
Ancient economies were fundamentally different from modern post-industrial ones in a wide variety of ways. We cannot borrow from them – or from their proposed solutions to injustices resulting from them – and expect them to transfer directly to our own context.
But it is not just appropriate, but typical of how Christians have made use of the Bible down the ages, for the church to seek principles in the pages of the Bible that can be applied in new and creative ways in a new context. And there is nothing whatsoever implausible that a form of “communism” could be one of them. Sharing what we have, working collectively as a community for the common good, and other things that are at the heart of that term are also core Christian principles.
And so the Community Baptist Church should feel comfortable opening the doors to their vans – and might even want to consider keeping them open.
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In