The Christian Left. Anthony A. J. Williams

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 1. Joseph Maybloom, ‘President Donald Trump’s photo op in front of St John’s Church’, Ecumenica, 13, 2 (2020): p. 231.

      2 2. Ibid.

      3 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 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 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 6. ‘New England Episcopal bishops respond with one voice to President’s “cynical” photo-op’ (2020).

      7 7. Francis Johnson, Keir Hardie’s Socialism (London: ILP, 1922), p. 12.

      8 8. Rosemary Radford Ruether, Sexism and God-Talk: Toward a Feminist Theology (Boston MA: Beacon Press, 1983), p. 23.

      9 9. Stewart D. Headlam, The Socialist’s Church (London: G. Allen, 1907), p. 8.

      10 10. James Keir Hardie, From Serfdom to Socialism (London: G. Allen, 1907), p. 38.

      11 11. Gustavo Gutiérrez, A Theology of Liberation: History, Politics and Salvation (Maryknoll NY: Orbis Books, 1973), p. 35.

      12 12. Jonathan Schneer, George Lansbury (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1990), p. 1.

      13 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 14. Woody Guthrie, ‘Jesus Christ’, https://www.woodyguthrie.org/Lyrics/Jesus_Christ.htm.

      15 15. Samuel E. Keeble, Christian Responsibility for the Social Order (London: Epworth Press, 1922), pp. 39 and 41.

      16 16. John C. Cort, Christian Socialism: An Informal History (Maryknoll NY: Orbis Books, 2020 [1988]), p. 52.

      17 17. Samuel E. Keeble, The Ideal of the Material Life and other Social Addresses (London: C.H. Kelly, 1908), p. 227.

      18 18. Cort, Christian Socialism, p. 56.

      19 19. Chris Bryant, Possible Dreams: A Personal History of the British Christian Socialists (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1996), p. 4.

      20 20. Noah Shusterman, The French Revolution: Faith, Desire and Politics (Abingdon: Taylor & Francis, 2013), pp. 223–4.

      21 21. Cort, Christian Socialism, p. 5.

1 The 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