Christian Socialism Essay ⋆ Political Science Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

This example Christian Socialism Essay is published for educational and informational purposes only. If you need a custom essay or research paper on this topic please use our writing services. EssayEmpire.com offers reliable custom essay writing services that can help you to receive high grades and impress your professors with the quality of each essay or research paper you hand in.

Christian socialism is an ideological perspective that believes that socialist political and economic policies—if not necessarily a fully socialist community or economy—are essential to living a Christian life. For Christian socialists, the message of Christianity is strongly egalitarian, encouraging all human beings to see themselves as brothers and sisters, condemning economic differences that allow the rich to exploit the poor, and generally disdaining the “profit mentality” and the principles of self-interest that are central to most defenses of free market economy. Hence, they see socialism, or at least some form of social democracy, as a natural concomitant to the Christian message. Similarly, they believe that being a member of a capitalist environment potentially implicates one in un-Christian practices; thus, an active resistance to certain elements of the liberal capitalist state, and attempts to reform those same elements, is the duty of every Christian.

Christian socialist movements or individual Christian socialist leaders, writers, or thinkers will occasionally explicitly link the practices of the original Christianity community formed following the death of Jesus with socialist teachings (e.g., by citing Acts 2:44–45: “All the believers agreed to hold everything in common: they began to sell their property and possessions and distribute to everyone according to his need;” (Revised English Bible). They will also sometimes associate Christian socialism as a whole with numerous egalitarian Christian communalist reforms and movements that have been attempted by different Christian churches, monastic orders, and dissident groups over the centuries (the Franciscans, the Mennonites, the Diggers during the English Civil War [1642– 1651], the United Order practiced by the Mormons in nineteenth-century America, the Hopedale Community founded by Adin Ballou). For the most part, however, Christian socialist beliefs have of their roots in late-nineteenth-century Protestant social gospel teachings and, most particularly, the papal encyclical Rerum Novarum (On New Things). More than any other single writing, Rerum Novarum provided the foundation for numerous Christian democratic and Christian socialist parties throughout Europe.

Of course, these same sources also played an important role in the rise of progressivism in the United States and social solidarity and trade union movements through all the Western world, and have been embraced by numerous liberal, democratic, and egalitarian groups and parties. As such, Christian socialism has historically not been usually understood as a distinct, separate voice calling explicitly for a socialist revolution, but rather as a perspective aligned with other ideologies in seeking a gradualist or evolutionary (though occasionally necessarily confrontational) approach to securing progressive and ameliorative ends. Some Christian socialists hope to see those ends eventually result in a fully socialized economic environment and consider the liberal redistribution of wealth to be insufficient, whereas others see the Christian socialist perspective simply as one that can be realized in any sufficiently egalitarian economy (e.g., a capitalist society with strong welfare policies and key public goods—like transportation, education, and medical care— made accessible and affordable, or free, to all).

Various Christian socialist individuals and organizations have been closely entwined with major political parties throughout Western Europe (such as the Fabian Society and Labour Party in Great Britain, among others).The same holds for the mostly Catholic nations of Central and South America, although liberation theology, which has had its greatest impact in Latin America, is much more explicitly Marxist and revolutionary in its aims, despite being usually considered a branch of Christian socialist thought. Christian socialism has, like socialism in general, had a much smaller impact in the United States. Marx himself, it should be noted, was highly critical of Christian justifications for socialist reforms, calling Christian socialism “the holy water by which the priest consecrates the heart-burnings of the aristocrat.”

Bibliography:

Ballou, Adin. Practical Christianity: An Epitome of Practical Christian Socialism. Providence, R.I.: Blackstone Editions, 2002.
Boyer, John. Culture and Political Crisis in Vienna: Christian Socialism in Power 1897–1918. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1995.
Cort, John C. Christian Socialism: An Informal History. Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1998.
Holland, Joe. Modern Catholic Social Teaching: The Popes Confront the Industrial Age, 1740–1958. Mahwah, N.J.: Paulist, 1993.
Lipset, Seymour Martin, and Gary Marks. It Didn’t Happen Here:Why Socialism Failed in the United States. New York: Norton, 2000.
Norman, Edward R. The Victorian Christian Socialists. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.
Phillips, Paul T. A Kingdom of God on Earth: Anglo-American Social Christianity, 1880–1940.
University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1996.
Wilkinson, Alan. Christian Socialism: Scott Holland to Tony Blair. London: SCM Press, 1998.