Christian Socialism as Political Ideology

The Formation of the British Christian Left, 1877-1945

Anthony A.J. Williams

• Éditeur: I.B. Tauris
• Année: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781838607746
• Édition: 1
• Sujet: Política y relaciones internacionales
• Sous-sujet: Ideologías políticas

In this book, Anthony Williams investigates the history of Christian Socialist thought in Britain from the late nineteenth to mid-twentieth century. Through analysis of the writings of ten key Christian Socialists from the period, Williams reframes the ideology of Christian Socialism as a coherent and influential body of political thought - moving the study of Christian Socialism away from historical narratives and towards political ideology. The book sheds new light on a key period in British political development, in particular Williams demonstrates how the growth of the Christian Socialist movement exercised a profound impact on the formation of the British Labour party, which would go on to radically change 20th century politics in Britain.

Part One

The basis of Christian Socialism

1

The biblical basis

Christian Socialists are marked out by their use of the Christian religion as a basis for socialism, rather than economic or sociological analysis in the manner of Marxism or Fabianism. In that sense, Christian Socialism is ‘rightly bracketed with other “ethical” socialisms. But although it has fed from them and into them, it rests on unique foundations.’¹ These foundations include the Bible, as well as the teaching and sacraments of the church. James Keir Hardie, for example, ‘would as easily apply the Old Testament as the New, and also argued from the practice of the early Church and the teaching of the Church fathers. [. . .] [T]he overriding force is of a simple appeal to the ethical wisdom of the Bible.’² The same is true of Stewart Headlam, whose political views were ‘firmly based on the Bible and the creeds’, and George Lansbury, who was ‘a Socialist because the Christian religion teaches us that love, co-operation, brotherhood are the way of life which will give us peace and security’.³ Wilfred Wellock saw that ‘[m]ost socialists rested their case solely on the economic argument, whereas I saw the basic error of capitalism in certain spiritual deficiencies’.⁴

Politics then was viewed in moral terms by Christian Socialists, with capitalism viewed as immoral. Wellock writes of ‘the inhumanity, the moral bankruptcy of capitalism [. . .]. It is obviously immoral, and a colossal social crime that almost all the economic benefits of mass-production should be reaped by a minority.’⁵ R. H. Tawney, similarly, views the ‘industrial problem is a moral problem’.⁶ Tawney believed then in the application of morals to industrial questions. While, on the face of it, these morals may have been sourced from any religious or ethical system, or simply those arrived at by Tawney himself, in practice his morals – like those of all Christian Socialists – were drawn from Christianity.⁷ Tawney sums this up: ‘The essence of all morality is this: to believe that every human being is of infinite importance, and that no consideration of expediency can justify the oppression of one by another. But to believe this it is necessary to believe in God.’⁸

Christian ministers who espoused socialism pointed to this disconnect between the capitalist system and Christian morality. John Clifford, the Baptist pastor, wrote in a tract for the Fabian Society, that free-market capitalism was ‘more in keeping with the gladiatorial than the Christian theory of existence. It provides for ruthless self-assertion rather than self-restraint. It does not inspire brotherly helpfulness, but the crushing of competitors and thrusting aside of rivals.’⁹ Samuel Keeble, a Methodist minister, agrees:

No system of industry which proceeds upon the principle of unscrupulous competition, of treating human labour as a mere commodity, and human beings as mere ‘pawns’ in the game of making money, as mere means to a selfish end; of taking advantage of one man’s poverty and necessity, and of another man’s ignorance; which sanctions the law of might, and not of right, and the principle of survival of the fittest for success in the scramble for material wealth – no such system [. . .] can by any stretch of generosity be called Christian.¹⁰

The same stance was taken by career politicians, a class of people who today might be expected to avoid such statements of religion or morality. George Lansbury wrote that ‘[m]y reading and my prayers and all united to confirm my faith that Socialism, which means love, co-operation and brotherhood in every department of human affairs, is the only outward expression of a Christian faith’.¹¹ Hardie, in similar vein, remarked that ‘[t]he only way you can serve God is by serving mankind. There is no other way. It is taught in the Old Testament; it is taught in the New Testament.’¹² Margaret Bondfield’s ‘socialist belief followed naturally from the biblical texts and congregational preaching she absorbed in her youth’.¹³

Lansbury refers to his reading, Hardie to the teaching of the whole Bible and Bondfield’s biographer to ‘biblical texts’ and Bible-based preaching. The Bible was one of the key sources – if not the key source – from which Christian Socialists gained the basis for their socialism. ‘The Bible’, argues Catterall, ‘was not just the source of political language which gained power through the beauty and familiarity of the King James Version, but it was also a series of statements of what should be and of how men should order their society under God.’¹⁴ Theologically different Christian Socialists had different views of the Bible: Keir Hardie refers to it being ‘inspired’ (or, at least, that Christians are ‘taught to look upon [it] as inspired’), while Stewart Headlam refers to the Bible ‘not as the infallible Word of God, but as the most inspiring literature of a nation whose best men were convinced that there was one righteous God, and that personal and social righteousness was the main thing’.¹⁵ Nevertheless, each one appears to have found in the scriptures arguments, justifications and a basis for socialism. In this chapter we will consider the basis for socialism as drawn from the Bible.

The Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man

A key theme in Christian Socialist writing is that all men are brothers, and that all humanity – far from being a disparate collection of individuals – comprises one big family. This idea was also based on, to take one key example, the words of Christ recorded in Gospel of Matthew: ‘But be not ye called Rabbi: for one is your Master, even Christ; and all ye are brethren. And call no man your father upon the earth: for one is your Father, which is in heaven.’¹⁶ Stewart Headlam, to give another example, points to the words of Paul in his letter to the Ephesians: ‘For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named.’¹⁷ ‘[H]ere is St. Paul’, writes Headlam, ‘dwelling on the universal Fatherhood of God.’¹⁸ A theological emphasis on this theme had become more pronounced in British Christianity – Nonconformity in particular – in the mid-nineteenth century, perhaps reflecting the work of German theologian Adolf Harnack, itself influenced by Kantian philosophy.¹⁹ This idea of, as Lansbury phrased it, God’s ‘Fatherhood and the consequent Brotherhood of man’, or in the words of Hardie, ‘that Gospel [. . .] proclaiming all men sons of God and brethren one with another’, was for Christian Socialists an argument against capitalism and in favour of socialism.²⁰

Samuel Keeble identified ‘the great Christian principles of the Fatherhood of God and the Brotherhood of Man’ as in tension with the selfishness and individualism of capitalism. Competition, according to Keeble, ‘is contrary [. . .] to the teaching of the Christian religion, which [. . .] condemns selfishness, and demands that men love their neighbour as themselves. It is contrary, because Christianity proclaims the brotherhood of men.’²¹ Lansbury agrees with Keeble’s analysis, writing that despite this ‘brotherhood’ and the fact that ‘men and women are equal in the sight of God’ it remains the case ‘that under our present social conditions this equality is not realized’.²² The problems of capitalist society exist, according to Lansbury, because ‘we have refused to believe that it is possible to live as brothers and sisters should live’. ‘I believe’, he adds, ‘in the Fatherhood of God, in the Brotherhood of Man, and in the fact that men and women can co-operate, if they will.’²³ John Wheatley took up a similar theme in a letter to the Glasgow Observer, ‘A Catholic Defence of Socialism’, asking: ‘[I]n a society which is one of the swindler versus the swindled, how can there be brotherly love?’²⁴ For Ellen Wilkinson, Christians were called to combat ‘injustice’ wherever it afflicted ‘human beings, the children of God’.²⁵ It is clear then that to Christian Socialists this idea of God’s Fatherhood and the familial relationship between all the people He has created meant that Christianity and capitalism were completely at odds with one another; capitalism stood condemned because it ignored and made impossible to practice the brotherly relations that should be exercised by God’s children.

If capitalism denies this idea of universal brotherhood, Christian Socialists belie ved that socialism was the economic and social system which enshrined it. This was proclaimed in the declaration of John Clifford’s Free Church Socialist League:

Believing that the principle of Brotherhood as taught by Jesus Christ cannot adequately be wrought out under existing industrial and commercial conditions, and that the faithful and commonplace application of this principle must result in the Socialization of all natural resources, as well as the instruments of production, distribution and exchange, the League exists to assist in the work of eliminating the former by building the latter Social Order.²⁶

In the words of Keeble, ‘[t]he other great cry of Socialism is for brotherhood – the most Christian of cries’. ‘The Socialist’, writes Keeble, ‘who demands brotherhood in industry is far nearer the mind of Christ than the economist who clamours for “free” competition.’²⁷

This is also the view of Henry Scott Holland, who writes that it is socialism which ‘tells of the Fatherhood of God, bringing Peace and Goodwill: of the universal brotherhood of men’.²⁸ Wheatley agrees, writing that it is socialism ‘which emanates from that spirit of brotherhood which is ever present in the heart of man but is so often suppressed by the struggle for existence’.²⁹ The idea also seems to have found acceptance in the writing of Tawney, who calls for ‘a society which [. . .] holds that the most important aspect of human beings is not the external differences of income and circumstance that divide them, but the common humanity that unites them, and which strives, therefore, to reduce such differences to the position of insignificance that rightly belongs to them’.³⁰ ‘Surely there is a better way’, declared Wellock, ‘a nobler motive in industry than greed, a right above that of the few to amass huge fortunes whilst others starve! Is it beyond our dreams that society can function as a great brotherhood, can co-operate as fellow citizens instead of exploiters and exploited? What say you who profess Christianity?’³¹

It is clear then that for the Christian Socialist, socialism is simply a natural consequence or outworking of Christianity; the Bible teaches that God is the Father, and socialism is the system whereby the people of the world or of a particular society can live as brothers and sisters. The practice of Christianity should, therefore, necessarily lead to the practice of socialism, as George Lansbury proclaimed: ‘If anywhere in the world there is true Christianity it will be found ranged on the side of International Socialism, proclaiming in clear language the Fatherhood of God and the Brotherhood of Man.’³² For Lansbury, therefore, a Christianity that did not accept and support socialism was not worthy of the name, not a ‘true Christianity’.

While Lansbury offers the opinion that a Christianity which rejects socialism is false, William Temple makes the related point that a socialism which rejects Christianity is completely without foundation:

Apart from faith in God there is really nothing to be said for the notion of human equality. Men do not seem to be equal in any respect, if we judge by the available evidence. But if al...