THE RIGHT BOOKS

While it is impossible to overestimate the lunacy of “revolutionary” Christians, still there may be some (a bit long in the tooth, perhaps) who look back with something like embarrassment on such figures of the past as Hewlett Jonnson, the “Red Dean” of Canterbury, who praised Josef Stalin as a leader who was taking “his people down new and unfamiliar avenues of democracy.” Perhaps, forty years from now, there will be a bedraggled, disillusioned remnant of today’s Christian supporters of the Sandinista Marxist- Leninist cadre in Nicaragua who will remember, at least with embarrassment if not with actual shame, their distressingly naive defense of criminal totalitarianism masquerading as Christian democracy.

Almost from the moment the junta seized power from the fleeing Somozas, a theme much heard in Christian circles (and elsewhere) was that the Sandinistas represented the party, not of Marxism-Leninism, but of enlightened nationalism: that their way is neither socialism nor capitalism but a “third way,” the way of “humanitarian socialism.” Ron Sider, the left-wing Christian journalist and author, wrote: “If the Sandinistas intend eventually to promote totalitarianism, atheistic Marxist-Leninism, then they are proceeding in an unusual way. A number of Christians are in government posts crucial for ideological indoctrination.”

Featured Tags

While it is impossible to overestimate the lunacy of “revolutionary” Christians, still there may be some (a bit long in the tooth, perhaps) who look back with something like embarrassment on such figures of the past as Hewlett Jonnson, the “Red Dean” of Canterbury, who praised Josef Stalin as a leader who was taking “his people down new and unfamiliar avenues of democracy.” Perhaps, forty years from now, there will be a bedraggled, disillusioned remnant of today’s Christian supporters of the Sandinista Marxist- Leninist cadre in Nicaragua who will remember, at least with embarrassment if not with actual shame, their distressingly naive defense of criminal totalitarianism masquerading as Christian democracy.

Almost from the moment the junta seized power from the fleeing Somozas, a theme much heard in Christian circles (and elsewhere) was that the Sandinistas represented the party, not of Marxism-Leninism, but of enlightened nationalism: that their way is neither socialism nor capitalism but a “third way,” the way of “humanitarian socialism.” Ron Sider, the left-wing Christian journalist and author, wrote: “If the Sandinistas intend eventually to promote totalitarianism, atheistic Marxist-Leninism, then they are proceeding in an unusual way. A number of Christians are in government posts crucial for ideological indoctrination.”