Why Christians Should Be Leftists. By Phil Christman. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2025. 229 pp. $23.99 (hardcover).
With some books, if you’re in the right state of mind—receptive and able to get outside your conditioning—you might just find yourself coming around to the author’s perspective, or at least become a more sympathetic reader. With this book, I don’t think that is likely.
Phil Christman lays out what some might consider to be a case for leftism as a Christian. He does so by taking his cues from the Sermon on the Mount, which he roots in his experience of Christianity—particularly Christian mysticism of some sort in his own personal bio. Christman is known as a famous essayist, and he writes in his characteristic style—charming, welcoming, and engaging. He begins, of course, with his own testimony, testifying to his own bio and how it led him to leftism based upon his own Christian convictions. It is an enjoyable read, there is no doubt. After this point, though, I will say very little of a positive nature about the book. But I do want to emphasize the strength of his writing style.
The chapters begin with his personal experience, even citing Protestant mystics. Christman seems to be quite fond of this general approach to Christianity. Beyond that, he makes a cursory comment about central Christian dogmas—namely the divinity and incarnation of Christ as well as the resurrection itself—but these have little to do, at least early on, with how he’s understanding Christianity itself. The doctrines themselves are by no means spelled out or linked in any way to his social-political commitments early on. It certainly would have been helpful to show or state upfront at least some of the desirables and objectives, and show how at least later these will link up or follow from basic Christian commitments. Little that he even says early on has anything to do with the central Christian dogmas. In fact, his mystical approach could be just as easily linked up with secularism and various approaches within secularism, as well as New Age thinking, of which Christianity provides little or furnishes little in terms of a frame and substantive ground for beginning to think about a sociopolitical program itself. Twenty pages into the work, Christman says little to nothing of a substantive nature about Christian doctrine and how it relates to or entails a certain program of sociopolitical thought. Any serious thinker or academic thinker, who takes seriously their own Christian convictions as a bedrock foundation for considering how it is that we engage society more broadly, should take note of this and highlight this weakness upfront.
For such a serious topic, he does not do it justice and does not take seriously enough the issues at stake as they relate to Christian theology itself. This should cause readers—even if they find themselves sympathetic to his sociopolitical program for various reasons—to suspect his case and how he is framing it. In other words, the setup and the frame for the discussion are quite weak. Much of his commentary early on is full of loaded terms and negative connotations that are quite clearly intended to bias the reader . In fact, it sounds borderline almost like a social media post regarding such a socially rich and important set of issues at stake.
For example, on page 6, he describes his fundamentalist background as “blockhead”—in other words, fundamentalist, stereotypical. I’m reminded of what Alvin Plantinga described as a common term thrown around—namely “fundamentalism”—which really just means, in many quarters, something dismissive without argument (colloquially, “dumb sumbitch”). In fact, he describes Christianity the way he sees it, and he says more about it regarding how Christianity and leftism are basically one and the same on page 11. This is an unfortunate admission that deserves some scrutiny, as any leftist view could be strongly associated with any other religious worldview under question, as often leftism is associated with Marxism itself, which is a completely materialistic, atheistic framework for thinking about the world. To be fair, he does notice this on page 17.
In Chapter 3, he starts getting into whom this is for, and he sets out immediately to distance himself from his Republican heritage, which he sees as effectively highlighting sin mainly associated with abortion, a few guys being gay, pornography, psychotic drugs, and fornication. It’s important to note that he frames this in a very cursory manner that is disingenuous to how a Christian who holds these as central might frame them themselves as part and parcel of central dogma—even anthropological dogma—about which he says nothing .
As for the chapter on international relations, where he asks the famous question “who is my neighbor,” I simply do not feel qualified to determine matters of international economics or our responsibility to other nations, which I see as outside of our control in many ways. All that to say, he doesn’t cite many sources, so it’s hard to see how his arguments that the US has crippled other nations economically and unfairly are founded. It is no doubt possible because the US is a great global power and has a hand in the economic decisions of global politics, but I remain unsure based upon the evidence (or the lack thereof).
Christman frames the race issue around George Floyd and Michael Brown, two highly controversial cases in which later reports came out in a way that arguably unsettled the clear pinning of racial intent or motivation. However, he gives very little data on that in order to assess it or to substantiate the contention that Christianity is sociologically deeply mal-formed in that way in our society. Again, this is part of a larger pattern in which he seems to be setting forward at the outset a deep bias against anything that is conservative or fundamental in terms of values without setting up some kind of framework or methodology for critiquing it in any clear way. The book would’ve been better supported if it had presented such a framework . Rather than taking these things for granted, show us how you will go about exercising some critique, or at least more positively lay out a method for linking leftist sociopolitical ideology with Christian doctrine or motivating it in some way with some sort of data analysis.
On pages 60 to 64, one might argue that he gives at least one reason for voting and against not voting, despite the fact that there are always reasons not to vote for some such candidate, but he doesn’t give a clear layout of hierarchical goods or principles that shows how to adjudicate one’s vote in the first place. He does say that in many ways we are always dealing with a challenging two-party system, and that we will have reasons against voting for some candidate and so we should still vote for the better good for the sake of an institution itself, so that it can continue improving. That much seems apparent for either party and for wherever your convictions lie in general. In some sense, I agree with his frustrations regarding the two-party system.
There is a problem with definitions throughout the work. For example, on page 65 he defines capitalism as “the right to property run amuk.” That doesn’t seem to be a sufficient definition that is even worthy of critique—it’s a deeply built-in bias that he goes on to critique as a kind of strawman. There are different versions of capitalism and some will have some restraints and permit some policies that allow some control in the system. Of course, there are other conservatives that would affirm something more along the lines of an “economic nationalism” that is guided primarily by a value system of the good for the nation rather than a kind of free market system. To associate capitalism in general on such a flimsy definition with conservatism or with Christianity is once again a strawman. Moreover, his understanding of economic theory and how to approach it as a Christian is unclear and unnecessarily reductionist. While he does helpfully point out that economic theory should be guided by values, which I agree with, he does not give any sense to what those might be and show how one might go about using them. Further, he implies that any capitalistic system is simply without a value system.
It would have been helpful for him to show some charity in framing the discussion around the more fundamental natural or creation values that the church has arguably stood firm on through most of her history—essential doctrines or anthropological doctrines, or even Christological implications for anthropology throughout history—namely, the protection of the more fundamental natural community for society (i.e., the family), for which heteronormativity and the preservation of life are central action, and about which the state or government should be concerned as a properly basic good of society. But he doesn’t do that. Combined with all the other things he doesn’t do, the result is a book that will convince few who don’t already agree with him.
