David Bentley Hart

David Bentley Hart’s Christian Socialism

on February 29, 2020

David Bentley Hart is an Anglican convert to Eastern Orthodoxy who’s a prolific and popular author. His most recent book is That All Shall Be Saved: Heaven, Hell, and Universal Salvation, which touts universalism. He also self-identifies as a Christian socialist. His recent Commonweal article is “Three Cheers for Socialism.”

It’s tempting to quip that socialism is the one form of Hell that Hart can affirm. But perhaps his argument merits more response, especially since socialism seems to enjoy an odd renaissance of late among some who’ve never lived under it.

Hart says he embraces socialism but it’s unclear what he actually means. He insists Marxist dictatorships don’t count as socialism even though they claim they are. He doesn’t cite any specific socialist countries, past or current, of which he approves. He likes universal health care such as provided by Canada and Sweden. And he hails “social democracy” as though equivalent to socialism. He doesn’t specifically name any commendable social democracies, though presumably he has Scandinavia in mind.

Instead of describing any actual places where his preferred version of socialism actually works well, Hart lists British thinkers and other socialists he admires, most of them from the 19th century. His preference, as a writer/intellectual, for theoreticians and writers over any actual observable implementation points toward the stereotype that socialism works only in the abstract. He offers no data from any countries about tax rates government or government spending for social services.

If Hart has Scandinavia in mind as social democracies preferable to America, his ideas about those countries might be dated. Fareed Zakaria wrote recently in The Washington Post about Bernie Sanders’ romanticizing of Scandinavia as a social democratic dreamland:

Sanders’s vision of Scandinavian countries, as with much of his ideology, seems to be stuck in the 1960s and 1970s, a period when these countries were indeed pioneers in creating a social market economy. In Sweden, government spending as a percentage of gross domestic product doubled from 1960 to 1980, going from approximately 30 percent to 60 percent. But as Swedish commentator Johan Norberg points out, this experiment in Sanders-style democratic socialism tanked the Swedish economy. Between 1970 and 1995, he notes, Sweden did not create a single net new job in the private sector. In 1991, a free-market prime minister, Carl Bildt, initiated a series of reforms to kick-start the economy. By the mid-2000s, Sweden had cut the size of its government by a third and emerged from its long economic slump.

Confirming this analysis, the conservative Heritage Foundation’s Index of Economic Freedom, which esteems lower government expenditures and taxes, ranks the Scandinavian countries only just behind America. Britain and Canada are ranked higher than America. Apparently the glory days of British socialism, if they ever existed, are long over, especially after Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair. Australia, New Zealand, Ireland and Switzerland have the highest rankings for economic freedom.

On the Heritage list, the wealthiest countries are graded more economically free, with more limited government spending and lower taxes, with protections for industry and property. The poorer nations are ranked not free, with more expansive government. But such data likely doesn’t very much interest Hart, the writer/intellectual, who seems to prefer abstract theory and ideas over real life results.

Much of Hart’s commentary focuses animus against America, where, in his view, sub-Christian rubes, ignorant about their own oppression and hypocrisies, boast freedoms they don’t really have. According to him, America’s “state apparatus” is “tyrannical,” while “providing no substantial civic benefits in return, solely in order to enrich a piratically overinflated military-industrial complex and to ease the tax burdens of the immensely wealthy.”

Sounds just like America, doesn’t it?

Hart further explains:

Americans are, of course, the most thoroughly and passively indoctrinated people on earth. They know next to nothing as a rule about their own history, or the histories of other nations, or the histories of the various social movements that have risen and fallen in the past, and they certainly know little or nothing of the complexities and contradictions comprised within words like “socialism” and “capitalism.” Chiefly, what they have been trained not to know or even suspect is that, in many ways, they enjoy far fewer freedoms, and suffer under a more intrusive centralized state, than do the citizens of countries with more vigorous social-democratic institutions. 

In America, Hart says, “the government raises its revenues for the express purpose of transferring as much wealth as possible from the working and middle classes to corporations and plutocrats.” America‘s “engorged military budget is squandered on wasteful (because profitable) redundancy, but whose public services are minimal at best.”

Hart insists, in contrast with American plutocracy, “social democracy, properly practiced,” is not “an enlargement of the state’s prerogatives, but quite the opposite: a democratic seizure of power from both state and corporate entities, as well as a greater democratic control over public policy, taxation, production, and trade.”

So where is this beautiful “social democracy” actually practiced? Hart never says. Presumably it exists in his mind and the books of his favorite 19th century writers. Such is his contempt for America that he suggests even socialism would be corrupted if enacted here:

Just as we Americans have succeeded in turning “Christianity” into another name for a system of values almost totally antithetical to those of the Gospel, I have every confidence that we will find a way to turn “socialism” into just another name for late-modern liberal individualism.

As to American religion, Hart naturally is contemptuous:

Contrary to conventional wisdom, Christianity has never really taken deep root in America or had any success in forming American consciousness; in its place, we have invented a kind of Orphic mystery religion of personal liberation, fecundated and sustained by a cult of Mammon.

But in socialism, however defined, Hart has boundless faith:

But I honestly cannot imagine how anyone who takes the teachings of Christ seriously, and who is willing to listen to those teachings with a good will and an open mind, can fail to see that in the late modern world something like such socialism is the only possible way of embodying Christian love in concrete political practices.

Note Hart insists socialism is the “only” path for Christian politics. He complains:

I have heard American Christians claim (based on a distinction unknown in the New Testament) that Christ calls his followers only to acts of private largesse, not to support for public policies that provide for the common welfare. What they imagine Christ was doing in publicly denouncing the unjust economic and social practice of his day I cannot guess.

In fact, Christ in His earthly walk had relatively little specific counsel about the politics and economics of His day, focusing instead on personal faith, morality and charity. But of course, Christian teaching is not confined to the Bible’s red letters.

Hart concludes:

But it should be obvious that certain moral ends can be accomplished only by a society as a whole, employing instruments of governance, distribution, and support that private citizens alone cannot command. We, as individuals, can often aid our brothers and sisters only by acting through collective social and political structures.

Here Hart has an important and legitimate point that some conservative Protestants and others often miss. Government is ordained to facilitate the public order and the common good. Gospel aspirations for comity and justice have political implications, though the Gospel of course doesn’t detail preferred economic or governmental systems.

Abraham Lincoln, a superb political theologian, said it better: “The legitimate object of government is to do for a community of people whatever they need to have done, but can not do at all, or can not so well do, for themselves – in their separate, and individual capacities.”

In other words, government has both duties and limitations. Government is not paramount. It is only one institution among many ordained to serve society. When government exceeds its ordained parameters, whatever the intentions, the results are tragic, sometimes evil.

Hart insists the murderous dictatorships that enslaved populations in the name of socialism weren’t/aren’t really socialist. But neither were the European social democracies he seems to commend, most of whom have reduced the size of government, and arguably were always essentially capitalist.

Socialism has always been a faith mainly for intellectuals who prefer the metaphysical over the practical. Hart’s socialism is for writers and readers but not for practical Christians.

Here’s a question: is there a theological connection between Hart’s universalism and his socialism? That topic may merit another blog!

  1. Comment by Timothy on March 1, 2020 at 12:19 pm

    Sweden and other European countries saved hundreds of billions of dollars on defense spending while U.S. taxpayers sacrificed their tax dollars. U.S. taxpayers (enjoying the benefits of private sector production) also paid other European expenses since WW11. There’s still problems with the U.S. economy; multinational corporate giants (some of these companies have more revenue than entire nations), and the suffering, shrinking middle class. In my state government unions in conjunction with their academic and lawyer/legal partners, along with the establishment press, run the show.

  2. Comment by Paul E Hester on March 10, 2020 at 6:15 pm

    Sweden and other European countries save billions on defense and other expenses due largely to the fact that they are part if NATO and have not paid their annual share of expenses since WWII. The US has been footing the bill for NATO and European defense for decades, and well as other areas of the globe because we believe mankind has an inalienable right to freedom. Which nation do the majority of immigrants seek to enter? It is not based solely on the “free stuff” advertised by past administrations but the freedom to pursue the inalienable rights.

  3. Comment by Noel Anderson on March 7, 2020 at 8:22 am

    Sweden has another dirty secret: enormous oil reserves in the north. Without them, they would have tanked completely. Furthermore, Swedes who come to America (as did my grandparents) do far better here than they would have there.

  4. Comment by Christine Willett Greenwald on March 11, 2020 at 7:33 am

    Great article, Mark. Thank you! Jesus never commandeered (nor intended to commandeer nor urged His followers to commandeer) governmental resources or constructs to advance His Kingdom. Rather, His “master plan of evangelism” (the title of Robert Coleman’s brilliant book on the topic) was built around discipling 12 individuals to understand and pass on to others His eternal heart, mission, and plan for the entire world — a wholistic salvation and shalom that would embrace every aspect and level of relationship with God and fellow humans. As Coleman put it, “there was no Plan B.” I would contend that true Christianity HAS “taken deep root in America” and everywhere else around the planet where Christ-followers have sat at Jesus’ feet, allowing the Holy Spirit to live in and through them in the home, the Church, the marketplace and at all levels of government. When a critical mass of Christ-followers in any locale do so, the people, community, and surrounding environs ARE changed in amazing ways.

  5. Comment by Paige on March 11, 2020 at 9:18 am

    Hart is a bumbling, pedantic, self-aggrandizing ignoramus! There’s a reason why Christ acted personally touching the hearts of the oppressed. He aroused a mere 12 disciples to change the world! He did it organically – through the power of the Holy Spirit. If he has any understanding of the human condition, he would have recognized that wherever humans rule without Christ at the center, we eventually destroy because at the core, we are vulnerable to power – over time, power corrupts anything good. Absolute power corrupts absolutely (Lord Acton). And I can bet in his worldview or world economy, Hart is at the center, not Christ. He is narrow minded, and has a skewed understanding of world history and what impacted the growth of America. It is sad people like him has a soapbox to stand on. I’m encouraged however that God breaks through walls, is the wayfinder, and mover of mountains.

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