Christians believe that Jesus is the way to heaven. Their political inclinations ranges from the left to the right of the political spectrum. However, most of the disciples of Jesus, and Jesus himself were socialist.

Jesus Christ was definitely a liberal secularist with socialist leanings. His mission statement is to be found in

Luke 4:18 “"The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed."

Jesus did not mix politics and religion. He was secular:

Mat 22:21 …“Therefore render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's."

Joh 18:36 Jesus answered, "My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting, that I might not be delivered over to the Jews. But my kingdom is not from the world"

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On the days following Pentecost the disciples of Jesus put into practice what they learned from Jesus, true socialism.

Act 2:44-45 And all that believed were together, and had all things common;
And sold their possessions and goods, and parted them to all men, as every man had need.

On the other hand, the apostle Paul was a right-wing conservative

2Th 3:8-10 nor did we eat anyone's bread without paying for it, but with toil and labor we worked night and day, that we might not be a burden to any of you.
…we would give you this command: If anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat.

Many of the ‘socialist’ governments in South America collapsed because they mixed religion and politics. Mr Chavez would do well to take ‘politics’ out of the Roman Catholic Church and put in its place ‘Christianity’. The Catholic Church in South America has lost her first love of bringing the kingdom of socialism to the masses.

From the article, it looks like the Chavez government is making the mistakes of past socialist government on raising taxes to ‘help the poor’. Let the church take care of the poor.