I'm a pretty boring, vanilla Ashkenazi Jew who grew up in a middle class, conservative synagogue-attending family in Skokie, Illinois. Most of my neighbors, and many of my public school classmates, were Pakistani, Afghan, and Palestinian Muslims. I saw the mundane, quietly-wholesome and holy life of ordinary, middle class Muslims who were observant and perhaps religiously "moderate" by default. Neither consciously zealously "conservative" or fundamentalist nor intentionally reformist or "liberal" in any way. They lived their lives humbly and showed neighborly kindness to people around them, and forged old-school, real, fraternal-style friendships with peers, including of other religions and cultures. Most of them were broadly politically center-left on the American spectrum. They probably would have favored more distributist tax, welfare, and labor policy than democrats had on tap in the late 90s and early 2000s, but were not excited about increasingly progressive views on sexuality and gender. Still, they would not have considered voting Republican on this account.
But I think these more "distributist" sensibilities are really just hallmarks of the basic generative logic of all of Abrahamic monotheism: with one heavenly Parent, we are all spiritual siblings and ought treat each other as such. I don't think these sensibilities require mixing with or influence from western "socialism" per se. I think really learned and consistent religious Jews, Catholics, Protestants, Eastern Orthodox, and Muslims end up in the same neighborhood of "distributism" when they apply the moral logic, solidarity-impulses, and non-negotiable divine commands of their respective traditions to modern, western statecraft.
I don't think anyone of an Abrahamic faith, including Islam, needs to be "postmodern" or "postliberal" to be distributist. I think distributism fits both premodern/preliberal Abrahamic values and even, frankly, *liberal* and *modernist* movements within the faith traditions. It's just deeply-incompatible with *neoliberalism* as are almost all decent and lovely things incompatible with neoliberalism.
By the way, Stephen, in Lancaster, PA, there is a rag-tag coalition of fairly traditionalist Catholic left-integralists in a broadly distributist mold as well as some Mennonites who are also very interfaith-y and into Vatican II's spirit of fraternal collaboration between different flavors of monotheists. They interlock with what exists of Muslim and Jewish religious "distributism." I have visited them, prayed with them, and organized with them. You might really love them as well.
I'm a pretty boring, vanilla Ashkenazi Jew who grew up in a middle class, conservative synagogue-attending family in Skokie, Illinois. Most of my neighbors, and many of my public school classmates, were Pakistani, Afghan, and Palestinian Muslims. I saw the mundane, quietly-wholesome and holy life of ordinary, middle class Muslims who were observant and perhaps religiously "moderate" by default. Neither consciously zealously "conservative" or fundamentalist nor intentionally reformist or "liberal" in any way. They lived their lives humbly and showed neighborly kindness to people around them, and forged old-school, real, fraternal-style friendships with peers, including of other religions and cultures. Most of them were broadly politically center-left on the American spectrum. They probably would have favored more distributist tax, welfare, and labor policy than democrats had on tap in the late 90s and early 2000s, but were not excited about increasingly progressive views on sexuality and gender. Still, they would not have considered voting Republican on this account.
But I think these more "distributist" sensibilities are really just hallmarks of the basic generative logic of all of Abrahamic monotheism: with one heavenly Parent, we are all spiritual siblings and ought treat each other as such. I don't think these sensibilities require mixing with or influence from western "socialism" per se. I think really learned and consistent religious Jews, Catholics, Protestants, Eastern Orthodox, and Muslims end up in the same neighborhood of "distributism" when they apply the moral logic, solidarity-impulses, and non-negotiable divine commands of their respective traditions to modern, western statecraft.
I don't think anyone of an Abrahamic faith, including Islam, needs to be "postmodern" or "postliberal" to be distributist. I think distributism fits both premodern/preliberal Abrahamic values and even, frankly, *liberal* and *modernist* movements within the faith traditions. It's just deeply-incompatible with *neoliberalism* as are almost all decent and lovely things incompatible with neoliberalism.
By the way, Stephen, in Lancaster, PA, there is a rag-tag coalition of fairly traditionalist Catholic left-integralists in a broadly distributist mold as well as some Mennonites who are also very interfaith-y and into Vatican II's spirit of fraternal collaboration between different flavors of monotheists. They interlock with what exists of Muslim and Jewish religious "distributism." I have visited them, prayed with them, and organized with them. You might really love them as well.
Zohran Mamdani is the Canary in the Coal Mine:
https://torrancestephensphd.substack.com/p/the-canary-in-the-coal-mine-zohran