The Christian Left. Anthony A. J. Williams

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СКАЧАТЬ 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

      To twenty-first-century readers Scott Holland’s invocation of the state sounds troublingly authoritarian, the slogan ‘Law is liberty’ alarmingly Orwellian. Holland, though, has nothing so sinister in mind. His view here is, for example, of factory legislation, which frees workers from the exploitative demands of their employers, or welfare reforms, which set individuals at liberty from the fear and the threat of destitution.⁵³ This is a positive conception of liberty, which to be sure may lend itself to an authoritarian agenda – but such was not Holland’s agenda. Individuals had inalienable rights. Local government kept a check on national government, and viceversa. Democracy ensured that the state served the people rather than the people serving the state.⁵⁴ There was no reason that legislating Christian ethics would lead to authoritarianism; rather, it would lead to ‘a Kingdom of earthly righteousness and social happiness […] The Holy Jerusalem descends from heaven to Earth: the City of God.’⁵⁵

Scott Holland’s friend and colleague Charles Gore took a similar view of laissez-faire capitalism. It was a ‘profound revolt against the central law of Christian morality, “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself”’, he said, adding: ‘There are few things in history more astonishing than the silent acquiescence of the Christian world in the radical betrayal of its ethical foundation.’⁵⁶ Gore emphasised that human beings were made equally in the image of God; the exploitation which characterised the capitalist system served therefore to damage and corrupt this image in whom СКАЧАТЬ