As figures from Tucker Carlson to Nigel Farage flirt with neofascist rhetoric and mainstream leaders edge toward authoritarianism through war and repression, the conditions that once nurtured Hitlerism re-emerge — yet anti-war and anti-imperialist sentiments are also burgeoning anew, writes ANDREW MURRAY
Where do communism and Christianity overlap?
ROLAND BOER talks to Mike Quille about the season for giving and sharing
What are the Biblical roots of Christian communism?
Let us begin with the socio-economic situation, because Christianity, like most religions, is a response to economic injustice and oppression in this world.
In the eastern Mediterranean, Rome’s imperialism was reshaping peasant agriculture, and the burdens of taxation and debt were growing, deeply affecting local economies, village communities, cultures and health — malaria, for example, was rife.
In this context, many Gospel parables and stories are revolutionary. They focus on feeding everyone, on healing from multiple diseases, on the devastation of chronic poverty.
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NICK MATTHEWS recalls how the ideals of socialism and the holding of goods in common have an older provenance than you might think
JOHN GREEN is fascinated by a history that excavates the enormous role played by agricultural workers in recent times
JAMES CROSSLEY charts how anti Jewish sentiment developed from ancient days and the dawn of Christianity to the Middle Ages, the birth of Protestantism and the sinister era of of the Nazis
ZOLTAN ZIGEDY reflects on the lessons from two books looking at the US labour movement and the recent history of spontaneous mass uprisings – and finds two pernicious ideologies working against the interests of the people



