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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
- Sprache: Englisch
Christianity is often assumed to be pro-capitalist and socially conservative - in short, necessarily aligned with the political Right. But can this be straightforwardly true of a religion founded by a figure who drew his early followers from among the poor and downtrodden and spoke against the accumulation of earthly riches? In this book, Anthony A.J. Williams shows that this assumption is far from correct by giving an introductory overview of a tradition of socialist and radical Christianity that can be traced back to the communal ownership described in the Acts of the Apostles. Focusing on modern Christian Left movements, from Christian Socialism and the social gospel to liberation theology and red-letter Christianity, Williams examines the major challenges faced by the Christian Left today, both from within Christianity itself and from the secular Left. Does the Bible and Christian theology really support collectivism and universal equality? Can Christian radicalism remain viable in an age of identity politics? This book is essential reading for anyone interested in the relationship between religion and politics.
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CONTENTS
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Introduction
Biblical theology of the Christian Left
Radicalism and socialism in the church
Notes
1 The Spirit of Brotherhood: Foundations of British Christian Socialism
Origins
Church socialism
Christianity and Labour
Conclusion
Notes
2 Identity Crisis: Christian Socialism in Post-War Britain
A party divided
The response to Thatcherism
Reclaiming the ground
Two faces of Christian Socialism
Conclusion
Notes
3 A Hostile Environment: Religious Socialism in Europe
Christian Socialism against Marx
Protestant Socialist theology
Roman Catholicism and Catholic social teaching
International League of Religious Socialists
Conclusion
Notes
4 What Would Jesus Do? Social Gospel and Socialism in the United States
The Social Gospel
Christian Socialists
Spiritual Socialists
Conclusion
Notes
5 Moral Minority: The Christian Left in the Age of the Christian Right
Martin Luther King and civil rights
Black power
Red-letter evangelicalism
Conclusion
Notes
6 Preferential Option for the Poor: Liberation Theology in Latin America
Theological, cultural and political context
Foundations of liberation theology
Key concepts of liberation theology
Liberation theology, Marxism and Christian Socialism
Conclusion
Notes
7 Liberty to the Captives: Liberation Theology Across the World
Liberation theology in Asia and the Middle East
Liberation theology in Africa
Feminist liberation theology
Conclusion
Notes
8 Where Next for the Christian Left?
Core concepts of the Christian Left
Theological question marks
The future of the Christian Left
Notes
Index
End User License Agreement
Guide
Cover
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Begin Reading
Index
End User License Agreement
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The Christian Left
An Introduction to Radical and Socialist Christian Thought
Anthony A.J. Williams
polity
Copyright © Anthony A.J. Williams 2022
The right of Anthony A.J. Williams to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published in 2022 by Polity Press
Polity Press65 Bridge StreetCambridge CB2 1UR, UK
Polity Press101 Station LandingSuite 300Medford, MA 02155, USA
All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.
ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-4283-3
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.Library of Congress Control Number: 2021947044
The publisher has used its best endeavours to ensure that the URLs for external websites referred to in this book are correct and active at the time of going to press. However, the publisher has no responsibility for the websites and can make no guarantee that a site will remain live or that the content is or will remain appropriate.
Every effort has been made to trace all copyright holders, but if any have been overlooked the publisher will be pleased to include any necessary credits in any subsequent reprint or edition.
For further information on Polity, visit our website: politybooks.com
Introduction
In June 2020 then-US President Donald Trump staged a photo-op outside Washington DC’s St John’s Episcopal Church. Amid the Black Lives Matter protests, which had engulfed Washington and other inner cities since the racist murder of George Floyd a week previously, Trump walked from the White House to the church building, held aloft a Bible for the assembled press, and then walked back again.1 Trump’s aim in this ‘religious performance’ was to signal his faith commitment and Christian credentials to a voter base of white evangelicals.2 Predictably, many of these – three-quarters of whom would cast their vote for Trump that November – were delighted with the president’s performance.3 One such, a Republican candidate for the Florida Senate, described scenes of joy as his family watched Trump on TV: ‘My mother just shouted out, “God give him strength! He’s doing a Jericho walk!” … My mother started crying […] she started speaking in tongues […] I thought, look at my president! He’s establishing the Lord’s kingdom in the world.’4 Encapsulated in this one example is all we know – or think we know – about the relationship between Christianity and politics.
Yet, not everybody was impressed with Donald Trump’s religious signalling. Mariann Edgar Budde, the Episcopal Bishop of Washington DC, led the denunciations.
I just want the world to know, that we in the diocese of Washington, following Jesus and his way of love […] distance ourselves from the incendiary language of this President. We follow someone who lived a life of nonviolence and sacrificial love. We align ourselves with those seeking justice for the death of George Floyd and countless others […] Let me be clear: the President just used a Bible, the most sacred text of the Judeo-Christian tradition, and one of the churches of my diocese, without permission, as a backdrop for a message antithetical to the teachings of Jesus.5
A statement by the Episcopal bishops of New England also criticised Trump’s ‘disgraceful and morally repugnant’ actions, reaffirming the church’s mission to ‘serve our Lord Jesus Christ’s higher purpose: to extend love and mercy and justice for all, and especially for those whose life, liberty, and very humanity is threatened by the persistent sin of systemic racism and the contagion of white supremacy’.6 This is an entirely different interaction between Christianity and politics than the one many of us have come to expect.
The critical responses to Trump’s photo-op and the positioning of the church as an ally to the poor, the oppressed, and the mistreated are not an aberration or an anomaly. The Episcopalian bishops of Washington DC and New England, and others who spoke out, represent a long tradition of socialist and radical religion. The link between the (white) evangelical church of the United States and the economically neo-liberal, socially conservative agenda of the Republican Party should not be assumed to be the default setting for Christian political thought and action. The bishops’ intervention reminds us that many Christians have taken socially liberal or progressive positions. Many others have adopted left-wing, socialist critiques of capitalism and have sought a world in which laissez-faire individualism is replaced with a commitment to co-operation, collectivism and economic equality. In the pages that follow we examine this tradition, the Christian Left.
Biblical theology of the Christian Left
Despite theological variety – there are Christians of the Left from all denominations and theological traditions – all the movements and individuals considered in these pages share the characteristic that, at least in theory, they have drawn their radical or socialist views from the Bible, church teaching, and Christian history. The Christian Left does not see a commitment to co-operative, equality, social justice and liberty as an optional extra to the Gospel or as principles which Christians should only apply if, at some stage, they turn their attention to politics, but rather as the core of the Christian message itself. That God created the world and gave it to humanity – whether the Genesis account is understood literally or figuratively – proves that it is not for a few to own and exploit the natural resources of the world or oppress others with their privilege and dominant perspective. The prelapsarian world of the Garden of Eden was a place of co-operation and equality – ‘When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the Gentleman?’ – as well as a situation in which everything was done justly and God’s children enjoyed perfect liberty.
The Exodus account – so crucial for theologies of liberation – was God breaking into history, bringing liberty to the captives, freedom to the oppressed. The Egyptian rulers and slave-owners are made to represent the capitalist class, the global centre, the one per cent, the white supremacists, the patriarchy. God chooses to identify rather with the exploited. The rest of the Old Testament bears witness to the freedom with which God sets his people free – the land laws of Israel, such as the year of jubilee, are designed to prevent those who have recognised the Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man from slipping back into unequal, oppressive relationships with one another:
When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap your field right up to its edge, neither shall you gather the gleanings after your harvest. And you shall not strip your vineyard bare, neither shall you gather the fallen grapes of your vineyard. You shall leave them for the poor and for the sojourner: I am the LORD your God.
You shall not oppress your neighbour or rob him. The wages of a hired servant shall not remain with you all night until the morning. You shall not curse the deaf or put a stumbling block before the blind, but you shall fear your God: I am the LORD.
You shall do no injustice in court. You shall not be partial to the poor or defer to the great, but in righteousness shall you judge your neighbour.
(Leviticus 19:10–11, 13–15)
The prophets who followed – ‘fiery publicists of the description we should now call Socialists or Anarchists’, according to UK Labour Party founder James Keir Hardie – were fierce in their denunciation of Israel’s failure to measure up to this standard.7 ‘Woe to those who devise wickedness […] They covet fields and seize them, and houses, and take them away; they oppress a man and his house, a man and his inheritance’ (Micah 2:1a, 2). ‘But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an everflowing stream’ (Amos 5:24).
This ‘prophetic-liberating tradition’, as feminist theologian Rosemary Radford Ruether referred to it, reaches its culmination in the life and ministry of Jesus Christ.8 In the Christian Left understanding of the Gospel, Christ comes to proclaim and to inaugurate a new order in which economically and socially oppressive relationships are abolished, the first become last, and the world is turned upside down. ‘My soul magnifies the Lord’, sings Mary upon hearing the news of the miraculous conception. ‘He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts; he has brought down the mighty from their thrones and exalted those of humble estate; he has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has sent away empty’ (Luke 1:46, 51–3). The British Anglo-Catholic Stewart Headlam regarded this Magnificat as ‘the hymn of the universal revolution’, ‘the Marseillaise of humanity’, the heralding of God’s Kingdom of righteousness and justice upon the earth.9 This Kingdom, those on the Christian Left argue, is not a distant eschatological promise – ‘pie in the sky when we die, by and by’ – but, as exemplified in Christ, something to be fought for and won in the here and now.
Christ – the lowly carpenter, Jesus of Nazareth – befriended the poor and the outcast, acknowledging the worth and dignity of those crushed and oppressed by the selfish and individualistic world. He warned his followers not to seek material gain – ‘You cannot serve God and money’ (Matthew 6:24) or, in the more familiar King James translation, ‘Ye cannot serve God and mammon’ – but rather to love and to serve others as themselves (Matthew 22:39). The followers of Christ were not to lord it over their companions, nor to place burdens on each other, for they were to regard one another as brothers and sisters (Matthew 23:4–12). The Sermon on the Mount, in which Christ raises up the poor and the meek and the peaceable, is, according to Keir Hardie, ‘full of the spirit of pure Communism’.10 Christ’s radical, revolutionary mission is summed up, it is argued, in the synagogue sermon in which the liberative nature of the Old Testament year of jubilee is explained and applied: ‘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, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour’ (Luke 4:18–19). ‘In the Bible,’ maintains Peruvian liberation theologian Gustavo Gutiérrez, ‘Christ is presented as the one who brings us liberation […] Christ makes man truly free, that is to say, he enables man to live in communion with him; and this is the basis for all human brotherhood.’11
Christ’s death, in this understanding, was a result of his radical mission, which was opposed by the religious and political authorities of his day. Labour Party leader George Lansbury declared Christ to be ‘the greatest revolutionary force of His times’, ‘the lonely Galilean – Communist, agitator, martyr – crucified as one who stirred up the people and set class against class’.12 Theologian Robyn J. Whitaker, responding to Donald Trump, links the death of Christ to systemic racial injustice, describing Jesus as ‘a brownskinned Jew killed by the Roman State’.13 The folk singer Woody Guthrie summed up this perspective in his 1940 song ‘Jesus Christ’:
Jesus Christ was a man who travelled through the land
A hard-working man and brave
He said to the rich, ‘Give your money to the poor’,
But they laid Jesus Christ in His grave.
When Jesus come to town, all the working folks around
Believed what He did say
But the bankers and the preachers, they nailed Him on the cross,
And they laid Jesus Christ in his grave.
This song was written in New York City
Of rich man, preacher, and slave
If Jesus was to preach what He preached in Galilee,
They would lay poor Jesus in His grave.14
There are certainly questions arising from this summary of a Christian Left biblical theology, particularly from a theologically (but not necessarily politically) conservative perspective. An understanding of God’s absolute holiness and the sinfulness of people is absent, as consequently is an understanding of how the sinner can be reconciled to God. The substitutionary theory of the atonement, supported by two millennia of church history and a plain reading of the Bible – ‘that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures’ (1 Corinthians 15:4b) – has been replaced. In a justifiable attempt to broaden the scope of the Gospel beyond individual piety, the Gospel itself has arguably been pushed aside in favour of economic collectivism and social liberation.
Radicalism and socialism in the church
It would be an anachronism to attribute the term ‘socialist’ or ‘communist’ to movements active long before modern political ideologies began to develop throughout the long nineteenth century. The term ‘radical’, being less precise, can be employed more freely. In any case, those on the Christian Left can point to a long church tradition of collectivism and social conscience – we might use the term proto-socialism – to show that their position is no postmodern novelty. The collectivism recorded in Acts of the Apostles (Acts 2:44–5; 4:32, 34–5) is seen as the first fruits of a new order of society, the application of Christ’s denunciations of selfishness and materialism, the immediate consequence of the ministry of the Holy Spirit which began at Pentecost; it was the realisation of brotherhood and justice. The church community represented not a disparate conglomeration of individuals but, as the Apostle Paul described it, a body of many members all working towards the same goal (1 Corinthians 12:12–27). In this community ‘[t]here is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus’ (Galatians 3:28). These truths are reflected in the sacraments of the church, especially communion, which speaks of collective unity and togetherness.
Radical and socialist Christians often accuse the institutional church of not living up to this grand creed, at the same time as noting the individuals and the movements that have. Samuel E. Keeble, the British Wesleyan Methodist, quotes freely from the early church fathers, first pointing to the words of Tertullian: ‘We who mingle in mind and soul have no hesitation as to fellowship in property.’ Cyprian is then quoted, commanding that Christians should ‘imitate the equality of God in the common gifts of nature, which the whole human race should equally enjoy’. ‘The unequal division of wealth,’ writes Ambrose of Milan, ‘is the result of egoism and violence.’15 Ambrose is also quoted by the American Catholic John C. Cort: ‘God has ordered all things to be produced so that there should be food in common for all, and that the earth should be the common possession of all. Nature, therefore, has produced a common right for all, but greed has made it a right for a few.’16 Keeble refers to the warnings of Augustine of Hippo Regius about private property: ‘Let us, therefore, my brethren, abstain from the possession of private property, or from the love of it if we cannot abstain from the possession of it.’17 Augustine’s condemnation of economic injustice is, says Cort, ‘the cornerstone of Christian socialism’.18
Radical movements of the late medieval and early modern periods are also co-opted into this account of a radical tradition. The peasants’ uprisings of fourteenth-century England and sixteenth-century Germany, including figures such as John Wycliffe, John Ball and Thomas Muntzer, are held up as examples of prophetic opposition to the corruption of state and church, as is the Diggers movement of the seventeenth century, which declared the earth a ‘Common Treasury’ for all mankind.19 Denominational differences account for whether the precapitalist guild economy and the monasteries of Roman Catholic Europe, or the modernising zeal of the magisterial reformers – Martin Luther, John Calvin, Ulrich Zwingli – are held up as part of the back-story of religious socialism but, in either case, the social conscience and opposition to economic exploitation of Catholics such as Thomas Moore and Protestants such as Hugh Latimer are cited by way of proof that Christianity has not always gone hand-in-hand with the spirit of capitalism.
These movements are just some of those making up a thread of radicalism, which underpinned the American and French revolutions and informed the liberal and socialist ideologies that developed throughout the long nineteenth century. Radical movements were often secular in nature, such as the attempt of the French Revolution to depose Christianity and install in its place a state religion devoted to the worship of Reason, possibly in an attempt to fulfil the ideas of Jean-Jacques Rousseau in The Social Contract.20 Yet there was always a religious component, calling attention to a message of brotherhood, collectivism, equality, justice and liberty, which had seemingly been forgotten by both secular radicals and the conservative-minded established churches. These movements constitute both the prehistory and philosophical foundation of the Christian Left. The term Christian Left should not be taken to signify a mirror image of the US religious Right. Rather, the phrase is here used to encompass broad and disparate political-theological trends which may be summed with the terms radical and socialist. This, as we shall see, encompasses many different movements and ideological positions.
This book considers the Christian Socialism of the UK; the religious socialism of continental Europe; the Social Gospel, civil rights and black liberation movements, and ‘red-letter’ evangelicalism of the United States; the liberation theology of Latin America, as well as of Africa and the Middle East; feminist, womanist and LGBT+ theologies of liberation. Some of these focused more on economic socialism or social democracy; others on progressive, intersectional or identarian politics. Each movement is itself diverse, and there are many others outside the scope of these pages, which have made their own significant contributions. One of the things the author has discovered in studying radical and socialist Christianity is that there are always movements and individuals that are accidentally overlooked or not given the consideration they perhaps deserve. Some readers may be disappointed to find that movements or persons with which they are familiar have been omitted or neglected. As John Cort commented upon beginning his own account of Christian Socialism, ‘[i]n a book of this ambitious, arrogant scope, it is inevitable that much will be missed or neglected’.21 Nonetheless, this book provides a concise and accessible introduction to the key traditions of the radical and socialist Christian Left.
Notes
1.
Joseph Maybloom, ‘President Donald Trump’s photo op in front of St John’s Church’,
Ecumenica
, 13, 2 (2020): p. 231.
2.
Ibid.
3.
Harriet Sherwood, ‘White evangelical Christians stick by Trump again, exit polls show’,
Guardian
,
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/nov/06/white-evangelical-christians-supported-trump
.
4.
Matthew Teague, ‘“He wears the armor of God”: evangelicals hail Trump’s church photo op’,
Guardian
,
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jun/03/donald-trump-church-photo-op-evangelicals
.
5.
Paul LeBlanc, ‘Bishop at DC church outraged by Trump visit: “I just can’t believe what my eyes have seen”’, CNN,
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/06/01/politics/cnntv-bishop-trump-photo-op/index.html
.
6.
‘New England Episcopal bishops respond with one voice to President’s “cynical” photo-op’ (2020).
7.
Francis Johnson,
Keir Hardie’s Socialism
(London: ILP, 1922), p. 12.
8.
Rosemary Radford Ruether,
Sexism and God-Talk: Toward a Feminist Theology
(Boston MA: Beacon Press, 1983), p. 23.
9.
Stewart D. Headlam,
The Socialist’s Church
(London: G. Allen, 1907), p. 8.
10.
James Keir Hardie,
From Serfdom to Socialism
(London: G. Allen, 1907), p. 38.
11.
Gustavo Gutiérrez,
A Theology of Liberation: History, Politics and Salvation
(Maryknoll NY: Orbis Books, 1973), p. 35.
12.
Jonathan Schneer,
George Lansbury
(Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1990), p. 1.
13.
Robyn J. Whitaker, ‘Trump’s photo op with church and Bible was offensive, but not new’,
The Conversation
,
https://theconversation.com/trumps-photo-op-with-church-and-bible-was-offensive-but-not-new-140053
.
14.
Woody Guthrie, ‘Jesus Christ’,
https://www.woodyguthrie.org/Lyrics/Jesus_Christ.htm
.
15.
Samuel E. Keeble
, Christian Responsibility for the Social Order
(London: Epworth Press, 1922), pp. 39 and 41.
16.
John C. Cort,
Christian Socialism: An Informal History
(Maryknoll NY: Orbis Books, 2020 [1988]), p. 52.
17.
Samuel E. Keeble,
The Ideal of the Material Life and other Social Addresses
(London: C.H. Kelly, 1908), p. 227.
18.
Cort,
Christian Socialism
, p. 56.
19.
Chris Bryant,
Possible Dreams: A Personal History of the British Christian Socialists
(London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1996), p. 4.
20.
Noah Shusterman,
The French Revolution: Faith, Desire and Politics
(Abingdon: Taylor & Francis, 2013), pp. 223–4.
21.
Cort,
Christian Socialism
, p. 5.
1The Spirit of Brotherhood: Foundations of British Christian Socialism
The first socialist organisation in Britain was not a trade union or a political party. Rather, it was a society founded to promote Eucharistic observance at St Matthew’s Church in Bethnal Green. The Guild of St Matthew (GSM), founded in 1877, was the child of Stewart Headlam (1847–1924), an eccentric Anglican priest with a dual commitment to Anglo-Catholic sacramentalism and socialism. The GSM had among its aims both the promotion of ‘frequent and reverent worship in the Holy Communion’ and the promotion of ‘the study of social and political questions in the light of the Incarnation’. Headlam’s view of politics was stark: he declared as the leader of the GSM that the ‘contrast between the great body of workers who produce much and consume little, and those classes which produce little and consume much, is contrary to the Christian doctrines of brotherhood and justice’, and that all Christians should seek to ‘bring about a better distribution of the wealth created by labour’.1 The connection between a high-church sacramentalism and socialism may not be immediately obvious, but for Headlam and others like him the two were intrinsically linked.
British Christian Socialism arguably has its origins in 1848 when Frederick Denison Maurice (1805–72), Charles Kingsley (1819–75) and John Malcolm Forbes Ludlow (1821–1911) joined forces to offer a Christian view of social questions as a response to the Chartist campaign for voting rights and parliamentary reform in the UK and the radical forces at work across the continent of Europe. Question marks remain, however, over whether these men, Maurice in particular, were fully committed to socialism. Nevertheless, they did bequeath a theology of God’s Fatherhood and human brotherhood, which was to become the keystone of the socialism espoused so clearly by Headlam. Headlam was followed by other Anglican clergy who took up the message of Christian Socialism, among them Henry Scott Holland, Charles Gore, Conrad Noel and William Temple, as well as Nonconformists such as the Wesleyan Methodist Samuel E. Keeble and the Baptist John Clifford. These men established a vibrant tradition of church socialism, which has lasted until the present day.
Christian Socialism did not remain purely the concern of the church. Unlike continental Europe, where mutual distrust characterised the relationship between the church and the political Left, the ethics of Christianity became part of the very DNA of the nascent Labour movement. James Keir Hardie was the key figure in the founding of the Scottish and the Independent Labour parties before he helped to form the Labour Representation Committee – later the Labour Party – in 1900. Hardie did not disavow the theories of Karl Marx – whether the orthodox doctrine enshrined by Friedrich Engels and Karl Kautsky, or the revisionist version offered by Eduard Bernstein – but, nevertheless, declared unambiguously that ‘the impetus which drove me first of all into the Labour movement, and the inspiration which has carried me on in it, has been derived more from the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth, than from all other sources combined’.2 In this Hardie was followed by George Lansbury, Arthur Henderson, Margaret Bondfield, John Wheatley, R.H. Tawney, and many others. The Christian Socialist principles first declared by Headlam on behalf of the GSM fundamentally shaped the Labour Party and had their ultimate triumph in the social democratic agenda enacted by the post-war Labour government.
Origins
It was the social and political turmoil of 1848 which proved to be the catalyst for Maurice, Kingsley and Ludlow to join forces. The three men met at Maurice’s house after the mass Chartist demonstration at Kennington Common in London, spending much of the night discussing how Christianity might respond to socialism. The immediate response was a leaflet, most probably written by Kingsley, seeking to dissuade the Chartist protestors from turning to violence and highlighting for them the necessity of seeking morality and virtue.3 Consider, the ‘Workmen of England’ were urged, the ‘men who are drudging and sacrificing themselves to get you your rights, men who know what your rights are better than you know yourselves’. ‘[T]urn back from the precipice of riot [for] there will be no true freedom without virtue.’4 This unblushingly paternalistic, moral-force argument hardly represents a thoroughgoing radicalism. Kingsley, according to historian of Christian Socialism Chris Bryant, had the instincts of a ‘Tory paternalist’ who was concerned less with economic or political reform than with the moral standing of the working class.5 Nevertheless, Kingsley would go on to draw attention to the ways in which the capitalist system exploited workers in novels such as Yeast and Cheap Clothes and Nasty, which stirred the consciences of his readers and garnered support for the co-operative ventures of himself, Maurice and Ludlow.6 Kingsley also condemned a hypocritical Christianity that sought to quash complaints about such an exploitative system, arguing: ‘We have used the Bible as if it were a special constable’s handbook – an opium-dose for keeping beasts of burden patient while they were being overloaded – a mere book to keep the poor in order.’7 The Bible, Kingsley pointed out, speaks far more of the rights of workers and the duties of those who own property than contemporary preaching reflected.
After the initial leaflet the three men set up a journal, Politics for the People, ‘a rag-bag fusion of radical politics, liberal churchmanship and social conservatism’, which tended to lack concrete proposals and attracted criticism from the Chartists and other radical movements as much as it did from the conservative elements within the Church of England.8 This was followed by a series of Tracts on Christian Socialism, a name approved by Maurice, who had quickly emerged as the dominant figure within the group: ‘Christian Socialism [is] the only title which will define our object, and will commit us at once to the conflict we must engage in sooner or later with the unsocial Christians and the unchristian Socialists.’9 The fact that Maurice predicted such a conflict indicates that he saw himself or his colleagues as having to battle with secular socialists no less than with Christians who opposed socialism; by contrast, Christian Socialists in Britain, from the late nineteenth century onwards, would often work within, or at least alongside, the main current of left-wing and labour politics, even while they emphasised the unique religious reasoning for their socialism.
Maurice contributed the first Tract, in which his commitment to socialism was as ambiguous as that of Kingsley. In the opening paragraphs he declared that ‘I seriously believe that Christianity is the only foundation of Socialism, and that a true Socialism is the necessary result of a sound Christianity’; yet, in what followed, he remained vague on what that socialism actually entailed.10 Robert Owen and Charles Fourier were advanced as examples of socialism, yet Maurice argued that the co-operative schemes of these men failed because they erred in trying to build a new form of society. This, according to Maurice, was a mistaken endeavour, for a co-operative society already existed – all that was required was for the co-operative nature of society to be recognised.11 This somewhat bewildering argument perhaps goes some way towards explaining Maurice’s cautious approach, for radical action was unnecessary and potentially harmful, insofar as attempts to build new co-operative structures risked damaging the already-existing co-operative nature of society, which needed only to be brought into view. Instinctively conservative, Maurice remained a supporter of monarchy and social order, opposed to trade unions and attempts to undertake significant structural changes to politics or the economy.12
Maurice’s view of society as co-operative was derived from his ecclesiology – his theology of the church. For historian and theologian Jeremy Morris, the politics of Maurice ‘was never anything other than a direct application of his ecclesiological convictions […] his Christian Socialism was simply another presentation of his thinking on the church’.13 The church, argued Maurice, declared the ‘unity of God’, which was the basis for ‘all unity among men’. It was the church, he wrote, which represented ‘Universal fellowship’ and unity ‘for all kindreds and races’, as well as being ‘the divine means of declaring to all men their relationship to God; and of transmitting its blessings to succeeding generations’.14 It was this emphasis that explains Maurice’s reluctance to support reform movements, trade unions, political parties, or even the co-operative ventures to which he did, at length, give his approval: the church was already, as Morris terms it, ‘a universal, spiritual society for all human beings’, and none other was needed.15 The task at hand, thought Maurice, was to draw attention to the church as the basis for a co-operative society, not to create a new basis. In Maurice’s view, society was made up of three spheres: church, nation and family. Unlike other theories of this type – for example, the sphere sovereignty of Abraham Kuyper – which posited autonomous, non-overlapping spheres, Maurice’s spheres were in hierarchical relationship to one another: church at the top, then nation, and then family. Furthermore, Maurice at times seems to suggest that the church encompassed all – a complete overlap between universal church and universal society.16 As such, the church was the basis for all societal co-operation.
Though significant, Maurice’s ecclesiological arguments were not as durable as his theology of the incarnation, which would be a key emphasis in the work of the next generation of, especially high-church Anglican, Christian Socialists.17 Maurice ‘sees the union between Godhead and humanity as the central message of Christian Scripture’, for it ‘reveals the unity of God with humanity’.18 This is not an exclusive unity, but underlines the presence of Christ in all human lives – hence, the universality of the church and its message of unity and co-operation. It demonstrates that all human beings are linked together in a common brotherhood, as a common family, and therefore that a society based on economic competition and rivalry is unnatural and inhumane.19 In place of such a competitive society, Maurice called for a co-operative society based on ‘fellowship’ or ‘communion’.20 Nowhere are these ideas represented more clearly than in the Eucharist, which represented for Maurice the incarnate Christ as well as the communion – the fellowship – of all people, both with each other and with God.21 Thus incarnational theology was linked to the core Christian Socialist concept of brotherhood, as well as to co-operation.
Maurician co-operation, though based on the fraternal fellowship of all people, was not egalitarian. Indeed, it is noticeable that Maurice employed the phrase ‘Liberty, Fraternity, Unity’ in place of the more familiar conceptual trio, with unity replacing equality.22 Nevertheless, Maurice wanted all to take their place in a society based on the fraternal, co-operative values of God’s kingdom. For Maurice – and for Kingsley – socialism was the expression of a kingdom of God, which already existed if men would but realise it. This, however, meant that socialism must be kept from party politics, unions, strikes and revolutions, all of which mitigated against this reality.23 ‘Every successful strike tends to give the workmen a very undue and dangerous sense of their own power, and a very alarming contempt for their employer,’ Maurice declared, while unsuccessful strikes led, he claimed, to even more radicalism.24 ‘Organizations, political parties, trade unions, strikes – these implied a denial of “the Divine Order”,’ explains John Cort. ‘It was all rather pathetic. The message, in effect, was: “Politics are not for the people – at least not yet”.’25
Cort gives rather a more charitable assessment of Ludlow, whom he regards as the true founder of British Christian Socialism. Ludlow had spent time in France, was influenced by ethical socialists such as Henri Saint-Simon (see Chapter 3) and Charles Fourier, and was supportive of the co-operative initiatives he observed in Paris. He went far further than Maurice or Kingsley in arguing for state ownership and worker management of key industries.26 Maurice certainly emphasised the significance of co-operation. In his Christian Socialist Tract he declared that the ‘principle of co-operation’ is the core principle of socialism and that all who prefer it to competition are socialists; co-operation would allow the working class to assert their share of ownership in society, a share denied to them by the capitalist system.27 Maurice, however, needed his arm twisting before he would commit to putting his principle into practice – perhaps he feared attempts to create rather than simply recognise co-operation – and it was Ludlow who was the driving force behind the associations for tailors, shoemakers, builders, bakers, needlewomen, and other professions, all of which were affiliated to a new Society for the Promotion of Workingmen’s Associations, which was responsible for providing guidance and raising funds where necessary.28 Yet Maurice’s unwillingness to countenance union activity and strikes prevented this developing co-operative movement from forming links with the trade unions; the movement faltered and finally failed in 1855, the progress of Christian Socialism itself coming to a simultaneous halt. Its supporters reflected that things might have been different had Ludlow rather than Maurice been the leading figure.29
Maurice’s achievements should not be denigrated – he founded the Working Men’s College, also known as The Camden College, which still exists today, and was a champion of adult education in a similar manner to R.H. Tawney in the early twentieth century – but these were the achievements of a Christian reformer rather than a Christian Socialist. Maurice protested that his view of co-operation as a present reality, embodied by the church, which needed to be recognised in society rather than of co-operation as a future objective which needed to be created did not mean he was less of a socialist than Owen or Fourier – yet insofar as it kept him from actually trying to establish co-operation, this is exactly what it did mean.30 Ludlow was regretful that he deferred to Maurice’s cautious approach and continued political activism for many years, serving as a member of the executive committee of the London Christian Social Union from 1891–1903. Henry Scott Holland described how Ludlow ‘retained to the last his democratic faith in the people, his passionate pity for the poor and downtrodden, his fiery cry for righteousness’.31 Maurice, however – always more a theologian than a political or economic theorist – did provide for the next generation of Christian Socialists a theology of God as universal Father and the consequent brotherhood of all people, which would be the lasting foundation of Christian Left thought.
Church socialism
It was Stewart Headlam more than anybody else in the next generation of Christian Socialists who acknowledged his debt to Maurice. In his estimation Maurice and the others revealed ‘the theological basis of Socialism, by showing how essentially Christian it was […] They brought into the world of thought all the suggestion which is contained in that most pregnant phrase, “Christian Socialism”.’32 It was not, argued Headlam, that Maurice was responsible for a new form of socialism, but rather that he demonstrated that socialism was inherently Christian regardless of whether socialists recognised the fact. Given Maurice’s intention to battle against the ‘unchristian Socialists’, Headlam may here be overstating his case; he certainly overstates it in the assertion that Maurice wanted to go further than any ‘mere co-operative store or association of workmen’.33 Nevertheless Headlam viewed his own Guild of St Matthew (GSM) as continuing the work of Christian Socialism. As noted above, the basis of the GSM was more thoroughly socialist than Maurice, or indeed than any organisation that came before in British politics. It was not therefore when it came to practical politics or socialist theory that Headlam was indebted to Maurice, but rather in theology. Headlam’s socialism was based on the foundation laid by Maurice – as Headlam phrased it, ‘the fact of the Fatherhood of God, implying as it does the Brotherhood of men […] as children of one God we are all united in one common Brotherhood’.34
Headlam was an eclectic mix of opinions and preferences – yet somehow he shaped them into a coherent perspective. He was an aesthete who founded the Anti-Puritan League as a protest against the drabness of Victorian Christianity, lauding instead art and music, dancing and theatre. Keir Hardie later recalled, ‘[a]s a Scotsman and a Nonconformist, I well remember the shock it gave me that the leading member of the Guild divided his attention fairly evenly between socialism and the ballet’.35 It may have been this taste for theatrical show that inclined him towards Anglo-Catholic liturgy rather than what he regarded as the severity of low-church and Nonconformist worship. For Headlam the sacraments were the indispensable foundation of socialism; he described baptism as ‘the Sacrament of Equality’ and Holy Communion as ‘the Sacrament of Brotherhood’, adding that ‘these two are fundamental, the one abolishing all class distinctions, and admitting all into the Christian Church, simply on the ground of humanity; the other pledging and enabling all to live the life of brotherhood’.36 Such a perspective was simply not possible, Headlam averred, on the basis of a Christian theology that drew distinctions between saved and unsaved, redeemed and lost, elect and reprobate, and which offered the sacraments only to those accounted part of the first set of categories. Headlam’s theology was the basis for socialism because it was universal – God was the Father of all, all people were brothers and sisters – and the indiscriminate administration of the sacraments was a picture of that fact.37
In his idiosyncratic Anglo-Catholic way Headlam viewed the Eucharist as being central to worship, not the reading and preaching of the Word. Nevertheless he was not shy about turning to the Bible to offer arguments in favour of socialism. The parable of the sheep and the goats, argued Headlam, in which Christ judges the world in righteousness, commending those who provided for the poor and needy and condemning those who failed to do so, ‘seems to compel every Christian to be a socialist’.38 Headlam saw that Christ often warned against the love of money, the pursuit of wealth and the selfish misuse of property, all while urging his followers to behave as brothers and sisters by sacrificially providing for one another: ‘All those ideas which we now express vaguely under the terms solidarity, brotherhood, co-operation, socialism, seem to have been vividly present in Jesus Christ’s teaching.’ For Headlam then, Christ was ‘a radical reformer’, ‘a Socialistic carpenter’, the ‘revolutionary Socialist from Galilee’.39 Headlam discovered the same socialist ideals throughout scripture, New Testament and Old, a key example being the common ownership of the earliest Christians recorded in Acts of the Apostles. These first-century believers were, according to Headlam, ‘in the simplest sense of the word communists’ – and the same should apply today.40
The GSM was soon followed by a similarly minded organisation, the Christian Social Union (CSU), founded in 1889 by Henry Scott Holland (1847–1918) and Charles Gore (1853–1932). The CSU was more vague in its commitment to socialism than the GSM – according to Gary Dorrien ‘purposively vague – Christian socialism in the broad sense of Maurician Christian idealism, not a political programme’ – but did have a definite purpose, Scott Holland explaining that policies must be found to prevent Christians flitting between the amoral principles of political economy and conscience-driven attempts at providing charity.41 It was also alleged that the CSU was founded in order for Anglicans to commit to Christian Socialism and social reform without having to work alongside Headlam.42 The CSU was less sectarian than the GSM – it was exclusively Anglican but membership was not restricted to Anglo-Catholics.43 It was also more devoted to research than activism, with Scott Holland describing the process:
We form Reading Circles. We gather round the study of this or that qualified and adequate book. We meet to talk it round, and through, and over […] At the end we, perhaps, can manage to formulate certain conclusions, certain definite issues, which have resulted from the talks. Those can be reduced to print, and circulated. Our experiences are recorded; and we can go on to the next book.44
The scathing response from those who remained members of the GSM: ‘Here’s a glaring social evil; let’s read a paper about it.’45 Holland in turn mocked Headlam and his GSM colleague Henry Cary Shuttleworth (1850–1900) as ‘Headlong and Shuttlecock’.46
It is probably fair to say that Scott Holland and Gore were rather more radical than their pedestrian method of social analysis suggests. Scott Holland rejected Marxism and lauded Christian reformers such as Lord Shaftesbury, but he nevertheless viewed socialism as being an extension of Christianity; socialism, he insisted, gives voice ‘to pleas and claims to which Jesus Christ alone could give value and solidarity […] It tells of the Fatherhood of God, bringing Peace and Goodwill: of the universal brotherhood of men’.47 This socialist Christianity had been lost because of the fear of those who benefited from laissez-faire capitalism that religious morals and ethics would place limits on their ability to make a profit.48 Yet such limits were the necessary consequence of an economic system that enshrined the Christian principle of love for neighbour; love of neighbour, Scott Holland asserted, was not merely an act of charity but the requirement of justice, for your neighbour ‘might be some stranger lying by the roadside, unknown and unnamed, who had been nothing to you, and whom you might never see again. Nevertheless, if he was there, and you happened to be going that way, and could do anything for him, that was enough. He held you fast by a moral claim.’49 Furthermore, in an increasingly globalised economy there was no person upon the face of the earth who was not your neighbour.
Holland did not shy away from the conclusion that the state must be involved in this process. He begins by focusing on the municipality, arguing that local government is one of the things that bind the members of a locality together as neighbours as well as the means by which they may govern lovingly and responsibly, thereby demonstrating their neighbourly commitment to one another. ‘The Municipality is sacred to us. It is our only instrument by which to fulfil the commandment of our Lord – “You shall love your neighbour as yourself”.’50 Yet, Holland adds, there is another instrument that can achieve even more – the state itself. Given Holland’s view of the interconnectedness of the national and international economy, it is the state by which Christian love may be demonstrated to all the inhabitants of a nation and to those in other nations. ‘We invoke the State, then. We call upon it to relieve our individual conscience by doing for us what we are powerless to do for ourselves.’51 This, argues Holland, is not an abdication of responsibility but the recognition of a practical reality – economic relations have grown into such a complex system that the structures of local and national government must be brought into play in order to establish the social ethics of Christianity. It might not be necessary for the state to do all the things that socialists desire, but some regulation of the economy is necessary in order to enshrine love for neighbour. ‘Law is liberty’, declares Holland. ‘Why do we fail to see this?’52
