July 17, 2000

11:27 AM

Jesus Christ was a Communist?Fidel Castro seems to think so. The article even goes as far as to hint that Fidel's once atheistic views have "mellowed" in his old age.
posted by Satapher (11 comments total)

I'm getting a 404 on that link, Satapher.
posted by deckard at 11:32 AM on July 17, 2000

Arg. I forget that my @Home's news stuff probably doesnt apply to the rest of the world... Mathowie : you can delete this if you want - i dunno how - im a failure... Here's the story until then :


Cuba's Catholic-educated President Fidel Castro, one of history's most famous communists, believes Jesus Christ shared his political faith.

"Christ chose the fishermen, because he was a communist," Castro said in comments carried by state media on Friday, referring to Christ's choice of humble fishermen from the Sea of Galilee to be his first disciples.

Castro, whose once-stated atheism is believed to have possibly mellowed in recent years, made the comment during a National Assembly debate on the local fishing industry.

His brother Raul Castro -- second-in-command in the ruling Communist Party headed by Fidel Castro -- concurred entirely. "I think that's why they killed Jesus, for being a communist, for doing what Fidel defined as Revolution ... that is to say, changing the situation," he said.

Fidel Castro, 73, was educated at a Jesuit-run High School in Havana. But after his 1959 Cuban Revolution, he established a socialist and officially atheist state, and declared himself a non-believer. Church-state ties were tense.

But in recent years, most notably during Pope John Paul II's historic visit to Cuba in 1998, Castro has avoided defining his personal view on Christianity and preferred to insist that he respects all religions.

He has said that legendary leftist guerrilla Ernesto "Che" Guevara probably would have been "made a saint" if he had been a Catholic because he had "all the virtues."

posted by Satapher at 11:41 AM on July 17, 2000

Hey, any body can make a mistake, Satapher. Really interesting topic, though.

I've always wondered why it seems that the more fundamentalists the christians in america get, the more capitalistic they get. It's weird, because while I don't know if Christ could be considered a communist, I'm sure he wasn't a capitalist.
posted by Doug at 12:04 PM on July 17, 2000

They killed Jesus cuz
he was SubGenius.
posted by ZachsMind at 12:14 PM on July 17, 2000

Here's the story:

http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000717/od/castro_dc_1.html
posted by mikel at 12:35 PM on July 17, 2000

Margaret Thatcher (I only believe in Hell because of the happy thought that she may burn there for eternity) took the opposite view, arguing that the Good Samaritan needed to be a successful entrepreneur before he could help the bloke who got robbed. But she missed the irony that mugging is one of the purest kind of entrepreneurship; and all that "kicking out the moneylenders" shit passed her by completely.

But it's a false argument: Communism is driven by the evolving concept of capital as much as capitalism, and the bloke from Galilee wasn't too bothered about that, hence the "to Caesar what's Caesar's" stuff.
posted by holgate at 1:19 PM on July 17, 2000

Personally, I doubt Jesus held to any particular economic philosophy. Capitalism rewards the greedy, socialism rewards the lazy, and communism rewards those in power. I think the point of a lot of his teaching was that you shouldn't be too concerned about that kind of stuff. There are more important things to worry about.
posted by daveadams at 1:48 PM on July 17, 2000

It's an important thing to worry about if you're a capitalist in a communist state. Or a christian in a communist state, for that matter.
posted by lileks at 8:04 PM on July 17, 2000

Actually, that reminds me of a story my dad told me about the father of my Sardinian uncle. He apparently had an identity locket which contained two names to be contacted in the case of emergency: that of his parish priest, and that of the secretary of the local branch of the Italian Communist Party...
posted by holgate at 8:24 PM on July 17, 2000

This isn't that new an idea. Compare, for example, Liberation Theology.
posted by dhartung at 9:58 PM on July 17, 2000

Actually the economic categories are meaningless, the economy in the time of Jesus was a slave based agricultural empire.
posted by lagado at 12:55 AM on July 18, 2000