America's religious left, with its utopian and collectivist ideals, has a long history dating back to the days of the Pilgrims. For a discussion of this history, click here.
One notable religious leftist who embraced communist and socialist causes was the late Rev. Lucius Walker, Jr. In the 1960s Walker was a sponsor of the National Committee to Abolish the House Un-American Activities Committee, a Communist Party USA front group. In 1967 he founded the Interreligious Foundation for Community Organization, and from 1973-78 he served as Associate General Secretary for the National Council of Churches. A longtime critic of American policy toward Fidel Castro's Cuba, Walker in 1994 was an initiator of the International Peace for Cuba Appeal (IPCA), which called for normalized trade relations with Castro's island nation. IPCA was an affiliate of the International Action Center, which was itself a front group for the Marxist-Leninist Workers World Party.
Like Lucius Walker, Rev. Jesse Jackson has been effusive in his praise of Castro. “Viva Fidel! Viva Che [Guevara]!” Jackson once thundered. “Castro is the most honest and courageous politician I've ever met.” On the domestic front, Jackson has given voice to his own socialist views by proposing that in return for the $600 billion that African American consumers spend each year, black business owners should be guaranteed a corresponding share of the service and manufacturing contracts that U.S. companies award. “We must have a plan to achieve equal results,” he asserts.
Rev. Calvin Butts, a New York-based Baptist minister, has likewise made clear his own affinity for Fidel Castro and Communist Cuba. When Castro made a 1995 visit to New York, he was hosted and feted by Butts (and an adoring crowd of 1,300) at the latter's Abyssinian Baptist Church. There, Butts lavished praise on his honored guest: “It is in our tradition to welcome all who are visionaries, revolutionaries and who seek the liberation of all people.”
Rev. Jeremiah Wright, the longtime former pastor at Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ (TUCC), detests America’s capitalist economic structure, viewing it as a breeding ground for all manner of injustice. “Capitalism as made manifest in the ‘New World,’” he says, “depended upon slave labor [by African slaves], and it is only maintained [today] by keeping the ‘Two-Thirds World’ under oppression.” Wright’s anti-capitalist perspective is reflected in TUCC’s “10-point vision,” which calls for the cultivation of “economic parity” and the eradication of “America’s economic mal-distribution.” At a September 17, 2009 anniversary celebration for the socialist magazine Monthly Review, Rev. Wright praised the periodical for its “no-nonsense Marxism.” “You dispel all the negative images we have been programmed to conjure up with just the mention of that word socialism or Marxism,” he asserted.
In a May 2010 address to a Connecticut church congregation, Rev. Al Sharptoncharacterized the late Martin Luther King, Jr.'s dream as a socialist one:
One notable religious leftist who embraced communist and socialist causes was the late Rev. Lucius Walker, Jr. In the 1960s Walker was a sponsor of the National Committee to Abolish the House Un-American Activities Committee, a Communist Party USA front group. In 1967 he founded the Interreligious Foundation for Community Organization, and from 1973-78 he served as Associate General Secretary for the National Council of Churches. A longtime critic of American policy toward Fidel Castro's Cuba, Walker in 1994 was an initiator of the International Peace for Cuba Appeal (IPCA), which called for normalized trade relations with Castro's island nation. IPCA was an affiliate of the International Action Center, which was itself a front group for the Marxist-Leninist Workers World Party.
Like Lucius Walker, Rev. Jesse Jackson has been effusive in his praise of Castro. “Viva Fidel! Viva Che [Guevara]!” Jackson once thundered. “Castro is the most honest and courageous politician I've ever met.” On the domestic front, Jackson has given voice to his own socialist views by proposing that in return for the $600 billion that African American consumers spend each year, black business owners should be guaranteed a corresponding share of the service and manufacturing contracts that U.S. companies award. “We must have a plan to achieve equal results,” he asserts.
Rev. Calvin Butts, a New York-based Baptist minister, has likewise made clear his own affinity for Fidel Castro and Communist Cuba. When Castro made a 1995 visit to New York, he was hosted and feted by Butts (and an adoring crowd of 1,300) at the latter's Abyssinian Baptist Church. There, Butts lavished praise on his honored guest: “It is in our tradition to welcome all who are visionaries, revolutionaries and who seek the liberation of all people.”
Rev. Jeremiah Wright, the longtime former pastor at Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ (TUCC), detests America’s capitalist economic structure, viewing it as a breeding ground for all manner of injustice. “Capitalism as made manifest in the ‘New World,’” he says, “depended upon slave labor [by African slaves], and it is only maintained [today] by keeping the ‘Two-Thirds World’ under oppression.” Wright’s anti-capitalist perspective is reflected in TUCC’s “10-point vision,” which calls for the cultivation of “economic parity” and the eradication of “America’s economic mal-distribution.” At a September 17, 2009 anniversary celebration for the socialist magazine Monthly Review, Rev. Wright praised the periodical for its “no-nonsense Marxism.” “You dispel all the negative images we have been programmed to conjure up with just the mention of that word socialism or Marxism,” he asserted.
In a May 2010 address to a Connecticut church congregation, Rev. Al Sharptoncharacterized the late Martin Luther King, Jr.'s dream as a socialist one:
“So many of us [who act] as though the struggle for social justice and the struggle for rights is over, don’t realize that the struggle is not over until we achieve equality. Someone was saying to me the other day, 'Rev. Sharpton, we’ve got an African-American president [Barack Obama]. We’ve achieved the dream of Dr. King.' And I told him, that was not Dr. King’s dream … [T]he dream was not to put one black president in the White House. The dream was to make everything equal in everybody’s house. President Obama is in the White House to help us get there, but we’re not there yet.”
Another luminary of America's religious left is Jim Wallis, founder of the evangelical ministry Sojourners. In the 1960s, Wallis joined the radical Students for a Democratic Society and avidly championed the cause of communism. In 1979 the journal Mission Tracks published an interview with Wallis, in which the activist expressed his hope that “more Christians will come to view the world through Marxist eyes.” To this day, Wallis remains fiercely opposed to capitalism and the free market system. In 2005 he stated that private charity to help the poor was insufficient, and that true social justice could be achieved only by an expansive central government empowered to redistribute wealth. In a January 13, 2006 radio interview with Interfaith Voices, Wallis was asked, “Are you then calling for the redistribution of wealth in society?” He replied, “Absolutely, without any hesitation. That's what the gospel is all about.”
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