AHC: Communist Christian Nation

With a POD of 1917, have a nation which adopts Communism but is also very much Christian instead of Atheist. Bonus points if the nation is the Soviet Union.
 
How Christian? Christianity allowed but church and state are separated? I think that it might be possible with more moderate communist leader.

But communist state where church has still important role might be impossible.
 
Maybe if Liberation Theology became a REALLY BIG thing in left-wing Latin American circles, to the point where they were dominant enough to impose an officially Christian character on any emergent Marxist state. Degree of confessionalism could run anywhere between Christian Democracy and Francoist Spain.

Mind you, I don't know if any of the Liberation Theologians would have been interested in such an outcome.
 
How Christian? Christianity allowed but church and state are separated? I think that it might be possible with more moderate communist leader.

But communist state where church has still important role might be impossible.
Which church? If it was a fairly evangelical Protestant one I could see this quite easily - the way the early Christians lived their lives was very much in the communist mould (from each according to ability, to each according to need, etc.). The problem is that Marxism was quite anti-theist (religion is the opium of the masses and all that) - but if you could get a sufficiently charismatic Christian leader who believed in Communism but also in God then I think this could probably be papered over. Mao supplanted Marx quite happily in China after all...
 
Typical Marxist Communist? No. Small c "communist"? Sure.
There were a lot of Christian heresies that leaned toward communal ownership and free love.
You can wank any of numerous historical sects and have them take over, or maybe have RoberOwen-like character set up a christian-communist colony in some largely uncharted area.
Cascadia maybe? British didn't care that much for the area, since they sold it to US in the first place, so maybe they'll at least tolerate such a colony with "we have bigger problems, we wl deal with them later" attitude.
If Mormons could run defacto-state on teritorry internationally recognised to belong to other country for decade until they were smacked down, why not christian-communists?
Once Americans buy British Colombia, they'll be busy with Mormons before they can pacify another colony.
 
Christian Communism is actually a thing IOTL, based largely around Acts 4:32-35: All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of their possessions was their own, but they shared everything they had. With great power the apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. And Gods grace was so powerfully at work in them all that there were no needy persons among them. For from time to time those who owned land or houses sold them, brought the money from the sales and put it at the apostles feet, and it was distributed to anyone who had need.

Actually getting them into power would be a good trick, though. Christian socialism was a reasonably common theological position in 19th Century Britain, so I suppose you could do something with that.
 
I could see something like that happening in Africa, where a left-wing dictatorship calls itself Marxist-Leninist to get support from the USSR and Christian to bolster support amongst socially conservative Christians, similar to how Communist Somalia declared itself simultaneously Socialist, Nationalists, and Islamist.
 

MERRICA

Banned
The Soviet Union could with the help of the Church, finance communist revolutionsin several countries to "restore" the Pentarchy the keep the Church happy.
 
Ceausescu's regime in Romania wasn't explicitly Christian, but it was essentially nationalist-Communist with a strong emphasis on Romanian traditions, and thus very close to the thread idea. The Orthodox Church did play a prominent role, and many of the policies - like the ban on abortion - suited the interests of the Church. I've just read an interview with Romanian writer Norman Manea, where he states said that Romania had "the biggest party of the Eastern Bloc, despite practically no one in the country ever having been a Communist". There was a strong interplay between party and organised religion. (And unlike in Poland, the religious opposition formed itself not among the majority orthodox church, but within the protestant minority).

More recently, doesn't Hugo Chavez' "Socialism for the 21st century" fit the bill?
 
"When Tanganyika became independent on Dec. 9, 1961, Mr. Nyerere became its first Prime Minister, but six weeks later he suddenly resigned. He remained president of his party, Tanu, and spent nine months traveling throughout the country, meeting ordinary people and preparing a document that he issued under the title ''Ujamma -- The Basis of African Socialism.''
This was the first of two defining proclamations by which Mr. Nyerere sought to blend the major influences of his life: the cooperative forces he had observed in tribal life, with their emphasis on a constant search for consensus; the ideal of a Christian brotherhood, to which he had been exposed at school, and the goals of welfare-state socialism that he had absorbed from British Labor Party teachings while he lived in an Edinburgh housing project."
http://www.nytimes.com/1999/10/15/w...an-socialism-to-the-world.html?pagewanted=all

Julius Nyerere's ideological draft for African Socialism seems to be malleable enough that under the right cirumnstances he might have empahized the Christian or probalby Abrahamic (somehow he has to consider the muslims probably) origins of his idea a bit more. African leader had such a variety of ideologies that probably anyone of them could have proclaimed himself a Christian socialist.
 
Umm... Kerala.
Not majority Christian, I'll admit, but the Communists often win elections.

Also, not an independent country. But it does serve as a counter example to 'can't be Marxist'.
 
Maybe if Liberation Theology became a REALLY BIG thing in left-wing Latin American circles, to the point where they were dominant enough to impose an officially Christian character on any emergent Marxist state. Degree of confessionalism could run anywhere between Christian Democracy and Francoist Spain.

Mind you, I don't know if any of the Liberation Theologians would have been interested in such an outcome.

This was my thought as well. Some kind of amped up Liberation Theology seems like the way to go.
 
This was my thought as well. Some kind of amped up Liberation Theology seems like the way to go.

Yeah, but the thing is, thinking about it, guys like Sandino and Allende(and I've heard rumours about Castro) were Freemasons, which probably gives you some clue as to how deep anti-clericalism ran on the Latin American left. So we'd probably need a POD in which anti-religion isn't so strong a force on the left, and the leadership still retains a strong adherence to RCism.
 
Last edited:

Yun-shuno

Banned
How exactly do the world views even begin to match-everything is composed of matter in motion-materialism-the system of thought on which Marxism stands versus there is an omnipotent God who rules outside of time has a grand plan and matter isn't really the most important thing in existence?

How do you reconcile dialectical materialism with theism? If some philosophical wizard can explain how feel happy to explain it to me?
 
"When Tanganyika became independent on Dec. 9, 1961, Mr. Nyerere became its first Prime Minister, but six weeks later he suddenly resigned. He remained president of his party, Tanu, and spent nine months traveling throughout the country, meeting ordinary people and preparing a document that he issued under the title ''Ujamma -- The Basis of African Socialism.''
This was the first of two defining proclamations by which Mr. Nyerere sought to blend the major influences of his life: the cooperative forces he had observed in tribal life, with their emphasis on a constant search for consensus; the ideal of a Christian brotherhood, to which he had been exposed at school, and the goals of welfare-state socialism that he had absorbed from British Labor Party teachings while he lived in an Edinburgh housing project."
http://www.nytimes.com/1999/10/15/w...an-socialism-to-the-world.html?pagewanted=all

Julius Nyerere's ideological draft for African Socialism seems to be malleable enough that under the right cirumnstances he might have empahized the Christian or probalby Abrahamic (somehow he has to consider the muslims probably) origins of his idea a bit more. African leader had such a variety of ideologies that probably anyone of them could have proclaimed himself a Christian socialist.

Yes, but Nyerere was not a Communist and despite his pretty close relations with China rejected Communism.

Africa's best bet would be Kerekou of Benin who did lead a Marxist state but cannily shifted religions and ideologies a few times. The trick would be getting it down to the grassroots rather than just the ruling party's line.
 
Have USSR have no Lend-Lease and take even worse losses in WWII, ending up with barely its 1945 borders intact. With people dying of starvation and suffering from the direct wounds of war for generations, Stalin decides to rebuild the Orthodox Church as an internal soft power institution to better control the people and have them identify him with the divine. The outside world and White Russian communities obviously don't accept this political scheme and refer to the resulting religious faith as "Soviet Orthodoxy."

By 1975, Stalin's successors find it expedient to scrap parts of Marxist theory and to make the USSR an explicitly orthodox state, in an attempt to downplay growing ethnic rifts between the Eastern Slavs. Central Asian Muslims are recognized minorities, but Jews receive harsh treatment.
 

Minty_Fresh

Banned
Italy and France both had Communist parties very close to power in the years after WW2. It is not inconcievable that they could take power and not actively go after the Church while still instituting something like Communism, or at least just extremely controlling war socialism of the sort that Britain had after the war.
 
Top