(WSJ Houses of Worship) Robert Orlando–The Gospel According to Karl Marx

As the historian Leszek Kołakowski observed, Marxism functioned for many as “the greatest fantasy of our century”—a promise that history itself would bring final justice.

G.K. Chesterton captured the problem: Marx simply replaces one abstraction with another. But abstractions such as “historical inevitability” can’t produce justice on their own, because justice depends on the moral character of the persons who act within those systems.

The deep question for our own moment is whether modern politics can resist the temptation to which Marxists surrender. Every generation is drawn to the hope that history itself will resolve its deepest conflicts. Marx gave that hope its most powerful modern expression by translating theological categories into the language of political economy. But as Eric Voegelin once warned, attempts to “immanentize the eschaton”—to force heaven into history—have repeatedly produced political disasters.

Marx didn’t abolish the Christian structure of redemption. He relocated it within history—and that relocation continues to shape the political imagination of the modern world.

Read it all.

Very interesting article. The central claim is that Karl Marx did not actually deny the redemption promised by religion, but rather relocated it in time. https://t.co/5LjYMR5YiV

— BajaTed (@bajated) May 21, 2026