The death of Venezuela's president Hugo Chávez last Tuesday has provoked a wide range of responses. To the poor in his own country, he was a hero, redistributing the wealth from the oil industry to raise their standard of living. To those less in sympathy with his socialist ideology, he was a tyrant, a rogue, and worse.
While I cannot clain to be a great admirer of either the man or his socialism, one feature that strikes me is that while he may be an icon of the left (and the BBC haven't stopped gushing about him for 48 hours), he in no way came near to repeating the atrocities of other high-profile left-wing dictators of the last century. He may have had some pretty dubious friends on the world stage - including Iran's president Ahmadinejad, who claimed that on the last day, Chávez would be resurrected with Jesus Christ - but compared with Stalin or Mao, he was an angel. Even his harshest critics have never accused him of the massacre of millions of his fellow countrymen. Never during his 14-year rule did Venezuela figure on Open Doors' list of the toughest 50 countries for Christians. Some members of Venezuela's evangelical churches openly supported the president. Others did not, but the important thing is that he didn't send them to the gulags. He may have cut state funding for the Roman Catholic church, but even compared with his mates the Castro brothers in Cuba, this is pretty mild stuff. Last year, he celebrated his re-election by reading a passage from the Book of Acts describing the communal lifestyles of first-century Christians. Imagine North Korea's Kim Jong-un quoting from the Bible!
Chávez's death is a reminder of how socialism has changed since the Cold War. North Korea may cling to unreconstructed Stalinism, but neither Chávez nor his left-wng friends like Evo Morales in Bolivia have attempted anything like the ruthless suppression of opposition, including Christian opposition, that characterised the classic Marxist régimes that seized power between 1917 and 1975.
This does not make Chávez a good man, neither does it mean that socialism has become a noble ideology which Christians should support. Nor does it mean that Christians outside the Islamic world can all expect a permanent guarantee of freedom from persecution, but if the victory of the West over Soviet totalitarianism in the Cold War has resulted in contemporary socialist dictators taking a less violent line than their forebears towards Christians - or indeed, any other opponents among their fellow countrymen - we must be thankful for small mercies.
While I cannot clain to be a great admirer of either the man or his socialism, one feature that strikes me is that while he may be an icon of the left (and the BBC haven't stopped gushing about him for 48 hours), he in no way came near to repeating the atrocities of other high-profile left-wing dictators of the last century. He may have had some pretty dubious friends on the world stage - including Iran's president Ahmadinejad, who claimed that on the last day, Chávez would be resurrected with Jesus Christ - but compared with Stalin or Mao, he was an angel. Even his harshest critics have never accused him of the massacre of millions of his fellow countrymen. Never during his 14-year rule did Venezuela figure on Open Doors' list of the toughest 50 countries for Christians. Some members of Venezuela's evangelical churches openly supported the president. Others did not, but the important thing is that he didn't send them to the gulags. He may have cut state funding for the Roman Catholic church, but even compared with his mates the Castro brothers in Cuba, this is pretty mild stuff. Last year, he celebrated his re-election by reading a passage from the Book of Acts describing the communal lifestyles of first-century Christians. Imagine North Korea's Kim Jong-un quoting from the Bible!
Chávez's death is a reminder of how socialism has changed since the Cold War. North Korea may cling to unreconstructed Stalinism, but neither Chávez nor his left-wng friends like Evo Morales in Bolivia have attempted anything like the ruthless suppression of opposition, including Christian opposition, that characterised the classic Marxist régimes that seized power between 1917 and 1975.
This does not make Chávez a good man, neither does it mean that socialism has become a noble ideology which Christians should support. Nor does it mean that Christians outside the Islamic world can all expect a permanent guarantee of freedom from persecution, but if the victory of the West over Soviet totalitarianism in the Cold War has resulted in contemporary socialist dictators taking a less violent line than their forebears towards Christians - or indeed, any other opponents among their fellow countrymen - we must be thankful for small mercies.