At what point does a theology become an ideology? How can a Christian distinguish the two? Jacques Ellul has always taken pains to differentiate them, but in this book he provides both a theoretical framework and important examples. Some popular theologies, particularly those that attempt to intertwine biblical theology with Marxist thought, fall into the trap of reaching "theological" conclusions by other means, Ellul believes, so that we cannot consider them as true theologies. From both a biblical-theological and sociopolitical perspective Ellul examines the attempt to relate Christianity to Marxist thought. By reviewing in detail several key Marxist-Christian books, Ellul exposes the weaknesses of so-called Marxist Christianity (which he says is neither Marxist nor Christian), and argues that the biblical perspective takes exception to all political power, leaving Christian anarchism as the realistic revolutionary option. The preface by translator Joyce Main Hanks provides an excellent introduction to the book, showing how it fits into Ellul's thought and how it relates to Ellul's previous work.

An English translation of Jean-Francois Revel's 1999 essay in which he examines the response of French intellectuals to the collapse of Soviet communism in the decade after its end.

Why was Oklahoma, of all places, more hospitable to socialism than any other state in America? In this provocative book, Jim Bissett chronicles the rise and fall of the Socialist Party of Oklahoma during the first two decades of the twentieth century, when socialism in the United States enjoyed its golden age. To explain socialism’s popularity in Oklahoma, Bissett looks back to the state’s strong tradition of agrarian reform. Drawing most of its support from working farmers, the Socialist Party of Oklahoma was rooted in such well-established organizations as the Farmers Alliance and the Indiahoma Farmers’ Union. And to broaden its appeal, the Party borrowed from the ideology both of the American Revolution and of Christianity. By making Marxism speak in American terms, the author argues, Party activists counteracted the prevailing notion that socialism was illegitimate or un-American.

Reprint. Originally published: Maryknoll, New York: Orbis, 1974.

This book focuses on Jesus before Christianity and Marx before Communism. It argues not only that both men sought to end moral and economic estrangement forever, but that Jesus' relational revolution failed because it lacked the foundation of Marx's emancipatory revolution. The absence of the emancipatory conditions for moral regeneration encouraged Jesus' followers to transform his teachings and practices into fetishes and illusions of the Christian Church. Jesus made the same mistake as the later Young Hegelians, who assumed that a change of mind (in Jesus' case, a change of heart) would change the world. Marx's emancipatory revolution also failed, partly because the conditions for abolishing estrangement were absent, and partly because his theories had been misunderstood. The result was the "crude and thoughtless communism" he warned against in the Ecomonic and Philosophical Manuscripts. Now that Marx's theory has been recovered in full and most of the conditions for liberation are present in the West, the stage has been set for the renewal of the emancipatory revolution, which should dissolve what remains of existing Communism at the same time it lifts the burdens of estrangement, spiritual impoverishment, and statism from the shoulders of those living in the bourgeois nations of the West and Third World.