Heaven is the natural meeting place of Christianity and Marxism.
A cursory glance at the histories of these two doctrines might suggest such a statement is, at best, misguided, at worst, violent. Patriarchal and white supremacist theologies have been carefully crafted to encourage their adherents to ignore (if not deify) systems of oppression in anticipation of an afterlife in which there will be neither pain nor politics. To the extent such theologies have shaped hegemonic Christian practice, religion has indeed been the sigh of the oppressed. Yet there are other theologies – theologies that are equally (I’d argue more) orthodox and rooted in Scripture – that understand heaven to be immanent as well as eschatological; that see Christian mission as the work of building heaven on earth. It is within this vision of heaven that progressive Christians and communists can link arms and move towards a shared goal.
Communism isn’t trapped “out there” somewhere in the future. The communist future can break into the present through our actions.
The clearest example of this is found in the liberation theology movement that emerged in South America in the 1960s. Catholic theologians popularised the social teaching of the “preferential option for the poor”. In short, they argued that Biblical teachings demonstrate a clear trend towards prioritising the wellbeing of the poor and marginalised, including by promoting social justice. Unsurprisingly, many of these Catholics were also sympathetic to Marxism, if not Marxists themselves. Thus, a revolutionary form of theopraxis was developed. Here there was no contradiction between Christian heaven and communist utopia. Biblical interpretations that described heaven as totally transcendent were discarded in favour of a materialist theology concerned with exercising God’s justice here on earth. Other hermeneutical movements across the globe have made similar arguments, including black, feminist, and postcolonial theologies.
Moreover, moving beyond theoretical cohesion, Christianity and Marxism also share a key tactic for bringing about a new world. Marxism requires us to practise utopia. This is out of an understanding that communism isn’t trapped “out there” somewhere in the future. Rather, the communist future can break into the present through our actions, and it is in fact by these repeated rehearsals that this future will finally come about.
This also serves an aesthetic purpose. As someone whose political activity has historically been motivated by duty, I’m increasingly finding the benefits of being driven, instead, by desire. This desire is nurtured by the beauty of what I can experience of communist utopia today. Inevitably, whatever I experience now is just a glimmer (and probably a fetishised glimmer at that) of what that future could entail; the reality is far beyond what my historical context allows me to imagine. And yet, it’s enough. Whether it shows up in my own life or in art (for example novels like Confessions of the Fox or Everything for Everyone), the aesthetics of utopia and the desire it produces in me fuel me to conspire with the future, to help it force its way into the present more and more.
The Christian faith does precisely the same thing through the sacraments. The sacraments as formally instituted by some denominations are rituals that visibly communicate something of God’s invisible and omnipresent grace to believers. One of these is the Eucharist (also known as Communion). Whoever presides during this rite (usually an ordained priest) will consecrate bread and wine and distribute it to communicants. This is done both in memory of the final Passover meal Jesus shared with his disciples and in anticipation of an afterlife in which all will be fed. However, this is far from just a dead memorial to the past or an empty run through of the future; the Eucharist is God’s utterly mysterious and non-linear time breaking into our own time.
If we understand heaven to be something that is already happening, that is aching to break into human time rather than at some imagined “end of days”, then the implications are clear.
Drawing first from secular and religious philosophers, two observations can be made which tell us something about the implications of this. The first is that linear time is God’s gift to creation to prevent everything from happening to us all at once. The second is that for eternity to be eternity it cannot have a starting point in time; it must always already be happening.
These observations help illuminate Scripture that can otherwise seem opaque with respect to the temporal nature of heaven. Jesus frequently spoke about the kingdom of heaven in the present tense as though it was already here. Given the overwhelming presence of present-day suffering, this could be a bleak or confusing possibility. Yet if we understand heaven to be something that is already happening, that is aching to break into human time and that wants to do so now rather than that at some imagined “end of days”, then the implications are clear. Just as with Marxists, the role of Christians is to conspire with the utopic future – to conspire with God – to help this future force its way into the present more and more.
The Eucharist is the central ritual that enables us to do this. Amidst the mystical straddling of past, present, and future is the echo of God’s central command: feed my people. If we take seriously that in that moment God’s time is breaking into ours, the command must be more than symbolic. We are tasting a world in which there is neither hunger nor any of its attendant sufferings; bringing that about will require effecting material, structural changes and the only acceptable time to begin doing so is today.
Aesthetics are essential here, too. It does not go without saying that people will experience the Eucharist as anything more than a mere ritual. Liturgists (that is, people concerned with the design of religious worship) must consciously develop liturgical practices that communicate the beauty of a just afterlife in such a way that a desire to make this a present-day reality is produced in communicants.
At my church, this looks like gathering the whole congregation in a circle around the altar to receive the bread and wine, rather than having us line up in queues. It means that Communion is administered to the priest presiding at the Eucharist by someone else (as opposed to the more common practice of presidents administering to themselves), and that that priest only receives it after they have fed everyone else. These theological choices foster communality and teach us that all leadership (whether religious or political) must be servant leadership. Gesture and movement, music and silence, all of these are employed to show us just a glimmer of what the future holds and make us yearn to build a new world.
All leadership, whether religious or political, must be servant leadership.
Perhaps the most straightforward way to end is with the words of the Spanish mystic Teresa of Avila: “Christ has no body but yours… Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good, / Yours are the hands with which he blesses all the world.” No Marxist today can truly know what global communism will entail, nor can any Christian know the mind of God or what their plans for creation are. But we can recognise that neither communism nor heaven are expected to appear miraculously. They must be co-created with the use of our hands and feet, and that co-creation has already begun.
