Finished #reading: Crossing the River of Fire: Mark’s Gospel and Global Capitalism, by Wilf Wilde.
An interesting book. Wilf Wilde argues that Christians (and other campaigners for social justice) have tended to take an overly ethical/moral approach to social injustice: for example, seeing third world poverty as a consequence simply of debt or unfair trading conditions. Instead, he argues, we need to go further back in history and deeper into the roots of current conditions, which lie in the power of global capital as established during the age of the European empires.
Wilde states that his own “utopianism” is based not on the legacy of Christian ethical concern about poverty, but on a “theological apocalyptic” which combines protest and vision: “protest against the global injustices of the present and a vision of a new heaven and a new earth that brings healing for both the individual and the nations”.
He bases this on a reading of Mark’s gospel that emphasises its political context, in which many of Jesus’ words and actions have to be seen as directed at the ruling classes (religious and political) of his day. So for example, Jesus’ statement that “foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head” is a veiled attack on Herod (“that fox”) and the religious establishment around him, and the Roman legions (birds symbolising the Gentiles).
In a concluding chapter, he then argues for a form of economic democracy based on “one shareholder, one vote”, which I may try to post about on my politics blog at some point.
