Is Jesus For Democracy or Socialism?

How would Jesus vote?

When Jesus walked the earth, he didn’t shy away from the subject of politics. “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s” (Matt 22:21) he said to the religious leaders. And, since it’s God who’s established every governing authority, it only makes sense that Christians give due participation to the political process.

But in Jesus’ day, there were no elections. No one voted for kings and emperors. They ruled either by right or by force. So, it’s sometimes difficult to glean from Jesus’ teaching about politics and apply them directly to our situation today.

When we look at the political divide in our own country, it feels as if two sides emerge that we can generally call democracy, whose highest good is individual freedom, and socialism, whose highest good is individual equality.

Listen in to this episode as Scott and Shawn discuss some of the key distinctions, merits, and hidden worldview assumptions behind democracy and socialism in order to ask and answer which way Jesus would vote were he living among us in the world today.