Fran QUIGLEY. Religious Socialism: Faith in Action for a Better World. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books. 2021. pp. 183. $24.00. ISBN: 9781626984356 Reviewed by Sarah Louise MACMILLEN. Duquesne University, Pittsburgh, PA

Fran Quigley’s bookis a vivid, though compact, history of religious modes of socialism and visions of economic justice, reaching back to their roots in various traditions’ scriptures.  The majority of the text focuses on 19th- 20th century moments and personages.  It also features brief profiles of today’s important figures in the movement.

Though the bulk of the chapters deal with Christian examples, there is a strong ecumenical and inter-religious theme of solidarity-in-justice that runs throughout the book.  From the point of view of catholic-as-universal, solidarity with the marginalized should be a common trope within any religious expression of a social justice movement.  Yet the text highlights as well the way in which some branches of Christianity have embraced logics counter to radical forms of charity-as-justice (tzedakah in the Hebrew scriptures; agape in the New Testament).  For example, throughout the text there is a running critique of the “Prosperity Gospel” and even some mainstream theological positions like Reinhold Niebuhr’s “Christian Realism.”  Fran Quigley’s Religious Socialism is a call to action.   We must “recover Jesus from [these forms of] Christianity” as George Herron (d. 1925) challenged his contemporaries (Quigley, 37).   “Jesus was assassinated because he condemned injustice,” the contemporary Pentecostal preacher Rev. Dr. Samuel Cruz points out.  “If you worship mammon, if you abandon the needy, you will get destroyed,” Mormon Jabra Ghneim powerfully reminds the faithful (Quigley 122).  And today in rebuilding after the pandemic, socialism, and society as a whole, both need ethical and prophetic guidance more than ever. 

Catholic Books Review readers may be particularly interested in Chapter 5: “Catholicism and U.S. Socialism: Time for a Reunion.”  Pope Francis is certainly channeling the energy set forward by the critical moments against capitalism in Roman Catholicism, retrieving the spirit of the teachings of Bishop Wilhelm Emanuel von Ketteler, Pope Leo XIII, John XXIII, et al.  The book even mentions a rather unknown (or perhaps unacknowledged by Catholic-American neoconservatives) statement by Benedict XVI in “Europe and its Discontents,” published in First Things: “In many respects, democratic socialism was and is close to Catholic social doctrine” (Quigley, 51).

Religion and Socialism is a reminder to Catholics, and all “universal” Christians, of the connection between just economic practice and the spirit of the Gospel.  Articulated by American Socialist politician, Eugene Debs who had a picture of Jesus, and not Karl Marx, on his prison cell wall: “Christianity is impossible under capitalism” (Quigley, 29).   According to Quigley, in capitalism, self-interest is elevated above benevolence and charity and creates an oxymoron of a “capitalist society,” a description both faithful Christians and secular Socialists can agree upon. There is somewhat of a parallel here within Friedrich Engels and Rosa Luxemburg’s famous posing of the question, “Socialism or Barbarism?”  The Hobbesian “war of all against all” can be unleashed, lurking in the hearts of persons within capitalist “society.” And as Cornel West has explained, this reinforces not only classism, but also racism, sexism and other forms of inequality and discrimination (Quigley, 168).  

In Chapter 6, and in other parts of the book, Quigley teases out religious socialist influence within the Civil Rights movement, and the continued battle against racism and imperialism: “If the Church is to express the true philosophy of Jesus Christ, Himself a worker…it will not lend itself to the creed of oppressive capitalism” (A. Philip Randolph, in Quigley, 66). For Quigley, religion is the antidote to capitalism’s poison. 

To conclude with a prescription for moving forward in a world perverse with neoliberalism, inequality, culture wars, identity politics, etc., I will quote from Social Gospel figure Walter Rauschenbusch (d. 1918).  Quigley uses an observation from Rauschenbusch, relayed in the text of John Cort’s Christian Socialism: “Christianity and Socialism are the oldest and youngest of idealistic forces at work in our civilization…the future lies…with those who can affect the most complete amalgamation of the two” (Quigley, 25).  Pondering the pervasive Culture Wars and the fear of atheism so prominent in American culture, it is essential to build bridges between critiques of capitalism.  As New York Times columnist Elizabeth Bruenig has pointed out, “the Left needs religion” (Quigley, 170), and religion needs the Left.