Marxism taught that religion is the opiate of the people and tried to indoctrinate children in atheism from their earliest days. Yet a socialist party in Germany has erected a billboard stating, “Jesus would have voted for us.”
The fifth-place party in the German Bundestag, Die Linke (“The Left”), “is the direct successor of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) which held East Germany in an iron grip for many decades,” writes Kai Weiss of the Austrian Economics Center. “Religion was suppressed there.”
The party teaches that “capitalism … brought mass impoverishment, genocide and unimaginable wars over humanity.” And its new sign asserts that the Second Person of the Trinity endorses its economic views.
Weiss – who hails from Regensburg, Bavaria, where the sign is located – recounts the many reasons such a claim is counterintuitive:
In 1950, before communism truly took hold in the country, 95 percent of eastern Germans were religious. In 1989, when the Berlin Wall fell, it was only 30 percent. Today, what was once East Germany is still considered the “most godless place on the planet,” with more than half of the people saying they don’t believe a God exists.
It was the result of decades of attempts to suppress religion by the SED — again, the direct forerunner of the Left Party. This communist regime actively propagated a materialist and atheist world view, instituted “Communist rites” as a substitute to Mass, and tried in many way to suppress Christianity, especially in the early stages of the GDR.
Despite Marxism’s unremitting hostility toward religion, socialists around the world are trying to co-opt Jesus as the ultimate Spokesman for their cause.
“If anyone was ever a socialist, it was Jesus,” said a 36-year-old organizer of a Democratic Socialists of America in West Virginia.
French writer Falk Van Gaver made the same assertion in his 2017 book, Christianity vs. Capitalism: The Economy According to Jesus Christ.
More than ever, it is imperative than Christians understand that Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox strains of Christianity repudiate socialism.
In an era as confused as ours, Christians must reclaim Christ from those who spent a century attempting to crucify His Body, the Church Militant.
For a further discussion of this topic, join us for a special Acton on Tap event as Lawrence W. Reed answers the question, “Was Jesus a Socialist?” in Atlanta, Georgia, on October 25. Additional details are available here. You may order his book, Rendering Unto Caesar: Was Jesus a Socialist? here.
(Photo credit: Kai Weiss. Mises.org.)
