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Religion, Economics and Social Thought PART THREE CHRISTIAN SOCIALISM www.fraserinstitute.org www.fraserinstitute.org Chapter 5 The Legacy of the Christian Socialist Movement in England Ronald H. Preston There are many different understandings of socialism. In 1924 Angelo Rappoport referred to thirty-nine definitions of it, and in 1975 R. N. Berki1 found four major tendencies, in different proportions, in major socialist writings: (1) Egalitarianism and Communitarianism; (2) a Christian moralism of high ideals; (3) a Rationalism, deriving from the Enlightenment, involving expertise and a meritocracy; (4) a Liber- tarian and Romantic strain of an individualistic, and partly anarchic, type. The second element receives scanty treatment in Berki's book—too scanty—but at least his analysis warns us against exag- gerating the legacy of the Christian Socialist movement to socialism. It may well be that it had more, if diffused, influence on the churches. Berki in fact refers only to St. Paul at Philippians 2 verses 3 and fol- lowing, a passage which I have never before seen mentioned in this connection, and to Thomas More's Utopia of 1516. Those of whom I am now writing might never have existed. It is not clear what the qualifying term "moralism" means to him. He confines himself to saying that for Christian moralism the chief values are "social justice, peace, co-operation, and brotherhood," and that for it "capitalism is a fundamentally unjust system of society," it is "cruel and inhuman in that it sets man against man, extolling selfishness and mutual en- mity in the guise of 'free competition.' "2 We shall look more closely at this judgement in due course. www.fraserinstitute.org 182 Preston What was it that made Morgan Phillips say a generation ago, when he was Secretary of the Labour Party, that the Labour Movement owed more to Methodism than to Marx? The British Labour Party is the product of three movements, the Co-operative Movement, the Trade Unions, and the Independent Labour Party. Phillips was re- ferring in a succinct sentence to the large number of pioneers in all three who came from a Christian background. Most of them were Primitive (not United or Wesleyan) Methodists or Baptists. Many of them, in the days before a national educational system was estab- lished, learned to read and write in a Sunday School; and even into the twentieth century it was a Sunday Bible Class in which they learned to speak in public. They carried this Christian background, sometimes considerably diluted into an ethical humanism, into the Labour Movement.3 This was not due to the policy of the central or- gans of the denominations, far from it, but to the ethos of some local congregations. The result is that there has been a different ethos about the Labour Movement in Britain from that of the Social Demo- cratic parties on the continent of Europe, such as the French or Ger- man Socialist parties. Continentals tended to talk in the language of a bowdlerized Marxism; the British in that of an ethical idealism with Christian undertones. This situation is now practically dead; an ideological vacuum is left, as neither language retains its power. The Christian concepts faded because the churches never succeeded in maintaining strong enough links with working-class life to maintain them. For a brief period there were "Labour Churches," pioneered by John Trevor of Upper Brook Street Free Church in Manchester in 1891. At one time there were nearly thirty, almost all in the industrial north of England. But all had died out by 1910 for lack of theological content, which had become lost in their socialism. Their story has never been told. The origins of Christian Socialism in Britain So far we have been considering Christians, mostly Nonconformists, who were active pioneers in the building up of the Labour Movement. Some Anglicans also were active, but their contribution was more theoretical and it is here that the Christian Socialists pioneered. The movement's origin can be precisely dated to the evening of April 10th, 1848. That afternoon a large Chartist march to Parliament from Kennington Common in South London had dissolved in a rainstorm. www.fraserinstitute.org The Christian Socialist Movement in England 183 In the evening J. M. Ludlow, who had been in Paris in February at the uprising which overthrew Louis Philippe, met with Charles Kingsley in Frederick Denison Maurice's house. They stayed up till 4:00 a.m. on April 11th writing a manifesto "To the Workmen of En- gland," urging Chartists to join those who favoured non-violent reform, and signed "A Working Parson." The Chartist movement was not in fact violent in its aims or methods, and indeed everything it worked for has since been achieved except for annual Parliaments. The manifesto also sought to turn Chartists away from demands for political reform. Its whole tone seems condescending. It was not until 1850 that Maurice and his friends used the term "Socialist." It was a comparatively new word which had come to be used in the period of intense political and economic argument and social change after the Napoleonic wars, appearing in print in English for the first time in the Owenist Co-operative Magazine of November 1827.4 Because of its Owenite origin it was associated with atheism, whereas Communism at this time had strong religious overtones. All the bolder, therefore, of the Christian Socialists to use it as (to quote Maurice) they sought to influence "the unsocial Christians and the unchristian Social- ists."5 The Christian Socialist Movement was important because it meant the recovery of a theological critique of the assumptions behind the social order which had died out with the collapse of traditional Angli- can and Puritan theology at the end of the seventeenth century. From the time of the early Fathers, Christian theology had included such a critique, though it is scarcely found in the New Testament, chiefly because of the expectation of an imminent parousia (return of Christ). Anglicans and Puritans continued the tradition after the Reformation, the last notable exponent being Richard Baxter.6 The tradition probably died out because the dynamic forces of capitalism were too much for a Christian social theology which was tied in its assumptions to a static society. However the effect of its absence can be seen in John Wesley. He attacked particular abuses, and instigated some voluntary social improvement efforts, but his social theology was merely individualism writ large.7 So it came about that the social and economic upheavals which we call the Industrial Revolution pro- duced inchoate protest and nostalgic regret for the past, but no theo- logical critique; and that at a time when an atomistic social and eco- nomic theory was regarded as a law of God. The Christian Socialist movement only lasted from 1848 to 1854, was unsuccessful in its prac- www.fraserinstitute.org 184 Preston tical experiments and unformed in its theories, but it did go to the root of the matter in this fundamental point, as we shall see. Diverse socialists The leaders were a diverse group. J. M. Ludlow had lived in Paris, and been open to the ideas of Saint-Simon, Blanc and Fourier.8 Some of Blanc's social workshops (ateliers nationaux) had been set up in Paris in 1848, and all failed. To a lesser extent he was influenced by early English socialists like Robert Owen. However he was a staunch Anglican, and the doctrine of the Incarnation was more decisive for him than any of these sources. Charles Kingsley was an upper class Burkeian clergyman with a paternalistic concern for the working con- ditions of the poor, of which he acquired some knowledge. He it was, before Marx, who said that the Bible had been used as a book for the rich to keep the poor in order.9 But he had few constructive ideas. E. V. Neale was a wealthy latitudinarian Christian, primarily in- terested in co-operation. It was his money that financed the Pro- ducers' Co-operatives which the Christian Socialists set up from Feb- ruary 1850, for Tailors, Builders, Shoemakers, Bakers and others.10 They had failed by 1854, or soon after, because of quarrels with the managers, dishonesties, or the individualism of the workers." It was these disasters that led the Christian Socialists to the too easy—and Pelagian—conclusion that middle class people often came to: that the workers need to be educated before they are fit to govern themselves. However Ludlow and Neale turned to give practical help to the burgeoning Labour Movement, in Friendly Societies and in the Co- operative Movement. There was early legislative fruit from their ac- tivities in the Industrial and Provident Societies Act of 1852 which, among other things, gave legal security to Producers' Co-operatives. It was F. D. Maurice who was to turn particularly to education in founding the Working Mens' College in Camden Town. Everyone has agreed at the time and since that F. D. Maurice (1805- 1872) was the leader, and that for him his theology is the key to all he did. From his Unitarian upbringing onwards Maurice is the ar- chetype of the theologian who endeavours to hold together the many- sided mysteries of life in one comprehensive view. In his intellectual formation he absorbed influences from Julius Hare, his tutor at Cam- bridge, S. T. Coleridge, Erskine of Linlathen, Edward Irving, and many others, but by 1838 he had reached what in most respects was www.fraserinstitute.org The Christian Socialist Movement in England 185 his permanent position in the best known of his voluminous writings, The Kingdom of Christ.
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