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Christianity Was Always for the Poor

From the Sermon on the Mount through the Apostolic Age, the first Christians preached against wealth.

The standard translations of the term are usually something along the lines of “fellowship” or even “community,” but a more accurate rendering might very well be “communism.” At least, in the texts themselves, it is quite clear what practices were entailed in cultivating koinōnia: the first converts of the apostolic age in Jerusalem, for example, as the price of becoming Christians, sold all their property and possessions and distributed the proceeds to those in need, and then fed themselves by sharing their resources in common meals (Acts 2:43–46). Mind you, we ought not so exaggerate the “apocalyptic” element in the teachings of the early apostolic church that we forget how much of it consisted in a genuinely practical social vision, as well as a very this-worldly denunciation of a political, legal, religious, and economic regime that had forsaken the “justice and mercy and faithfulness” of the Law. Even so, one does not need to be a scholar of Judaea and Galilee in late antiquity to notice how often Jesus speaks of trials, of officers dragging the insolvent to jail, of men bound by or imprisoned for undischarged debts, of unmerciful creditors, of suits brought before judges to secure a coat or cloak, of the unfortunate legally despoiled by the fortunate.

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