The Routledge Dictionary of Politics, Third Edition
Christian socialism is not an organized movement or a specific ideology or body of doctrine (though there have been groups, for example in the early Labour Party, which adopted the name). It is a broad descriptive term for individuals or groups, or for a general attitude that has appeared from time to time in various European countries. The central argument of Christian socialism is that both Christianity and socialism share certain basic values, and that Christians should therefore give political expression to their religious beliefs by supporting a certain type of socialism. At the same time, it is argued, Christianity gives socialism a moral basis which is lacking in other versions, such as orthodox Marxism. The supposed commonvalues are those associated with equality, communal sharing, peace, brotherhood, an absence of competition and rejection of hierarchy and power.
The Christian aspect of Christian socialism involves a stress on one side of Jesus’s teaching and one image of him as a man—as a simple carpenter with a radical message.
It often also draws for inspiration on the life of the early Church, which is interpreted as a communal and pacifistic movement. Clearly this view of Christianity, whether historically correct or not, is at odds with the way in which the institutions and theology of the Church developed in later centuries. It may be for this reason that Christian socialism is almost entirely a phenomenon of Protestant Christianity, which was sometimes in intention a return to the values of the early Church. However, there have been political movements within the Catholic Church of a roughly similar liberal-socialist character, for example the Mouvement Republicaine Populaire in France and the – clerical radicalism found in modern Latin America and the Netherlands, often under the label of liberation theology.
Relations between Christian socialists and other socialists are not always easy, since left-wing socialists, in particular, often more or less Marxist in outlook, tend towards materialism and to the overt atheism and antagonism towards religion which occur in Marx’s writings. If only for this reason, the socialism of Christian socialists is generally moderate and non-revolutionary, close to that of the Fabians and/or the British Labour Party.
This is the complete article, containing 361 words
(approx. 1 page at 300 words per page).
View More Summaries on Christian socialism
