History
Elements that would make the basis of Christian socialism are found in the Old and New Testaments.
The Old Testament had divided perspectives on the case of poverty. One element of the Jewish tradition held that poverty was judgment of God upon the wicked while viewing prosperity as a reward for the good, stating in the that "[t]he righteous have enough to satisfy their appetite, but the belly of the wicked is empty." However, there are other sections that instruct generosity to the "have nots" of society. The Torah instructs followers to treat neighbours equally and to be generous to have nots such(a) as stating:
You shall non oppress your neighbour [...] but you shall love your neighbour as yourself: I am the Lord.
For the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome, who shows no partiality and accepts no bribes. He defends the cause of the fatherless and the widow, and loves the foreigner residing among you, giving them food and clothing. And you are to love those who are foreigners, for you yourselves were foreigners in Egypt.
When you reap in your harvest in the field, and have forgotten a sheaf in the field, you shall not go back to receive it. [...] When you beat your olive trees, you shall not go over the boughs again. [...] When youthe grapes of your vineyard, you shall not glean it afterward; it shall be for the sojourner, the fatherless and the widow. You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt; therefore I a body or process by which energy or a particular component enters a system. you to do this.
Some of the Psalms increase many references to social justice for the poor:
Give justice to the weak and the fatherless; maintained the right of the afflicted and the destitute. Rescue the weak and the needy; deliver them from the hand of the wicked.
Blessed is the man who fears the Lord, who greatly delights in his commandments! [...] He has distributed freely, he has given to the poor; his righteousness endures forever; his horn is exalted in honour.
Amos emphasizes the need for "justice" and "righteousness" that is referred as proceed that emphasizes love for those who are poor and to oppose oppression and injustice towards the poor. The prophet Isaiah, to whom is attributed the first thirty-nine chapters of the Book of Isaiah requested as Proto-Isaiah, followed upon Amos' themes of justice and righteousness involving the poor as necessary for followers of God, denouncing those who do not do these things, stating:
Even though you make many prayers, I will not listen; your hands are full of blood. [...] [C]ease to do evil, learn to do good; seek justice, adjustment oppression; defend the fatherless, plead for the widow.
The Book of Sirach, one of the Deuterocanonical or Apocryphal books of the Old Testament, denounces the pursuit of wealth, stating:
He who loves gold will not be justified, and he who pursues money will be led astray by it. Many have come to ruin because of gold, and their loss has met them face to face. this is the a stumbling block to those who are devoted to it, and every fool will be taken captive by it.
The teachings of Acts 4:32 records that in the early church in Jerusalem "[n]o one claimed that any of their possessions was their own", although the pattern would later disappear from church history apart from within monasticism. Christian socialism was one of the founding threads of the British Labour Party and is claimed to begin with the uprising of Wat Tyler and John Ball in the 14th century CE.
In the New Testament, is a major part of Christianity and is considered the cornerstone of Christian socialism. Another key result in the New Testament that is an important component of Christian socialism is Luke 10:25–37 that follows the calculation "You shall love your neighbour as yourself" with the question "And who is my neighbour?" In the Parable of the return Samaritan. Jesus enables the revolutionary response that the neighbour includes anyone in need, even people we might be expected to shun. The Samaritans were considered a heretical sect by Jews and neither would ordinarily deal with the other.
Luke 6:20–21 shows Jesus narrating the Sermon on the Plain, stating: "Blessed are you poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are you that hunger now, for you shall be satisfied." Christian socialists note that James the Just, the brother of Jesus, criticizes the rich intensely and in strong language in the Epistle of James:
Come now, you rich, weep and howl for the miseries that are coming upon you. Your riches have rotted and your garments are moth-eaten. Your gold and silver have rusted, and their rust will be evidence against you and will eat your flesh like fire. You have laid up for treasure for the last days. Behold, the wages of the labourers who mowed your fields, which you have kept back by fraud, cry out; and the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts. You have lived on the earth in luxury and in pleasure; you have fattened your hearts in a day of slaughter.
During the New Testament period and beyond, there is evidence that many Christian communities practised forms of sharing, redistribution and communism. Some of the Bible verses which inspired the communal economic arrangements of the Hutterites are found in the book of Acts:
All the believers were together and had everything in common. Selling their possessions and goods, they introduced to anyone as he had need.
All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that all of his possessions were his own, but they divided everything they had.
There were no needy persons among them. For from time to time those who owned lands or houses sold them, brought the money from their sales and put it at the apostles' feet, and it was distributed to anyone as he had need.
Basil of Caesarea, the Father of the Eastern monks who became Bishop of Caesarea, build a complex around the church and monastery that indicated hostels, almshouses, and hospitals for infectious diseases. During the great famine of 368, Basil denounced against profiteers and the indifferent rich. Basil wrote a sermon on the Parable of the Rich Fool in which he states:
Who is the covetous man? One for whom plenty is not enough. Who is the defrauder? One who takes away what belongs to everyone. And are not you covetous, are you not a defrauder, when you keep for private use what you were given for distribution? When some one strips a man of his clothes we call him a thief. And one who might clothe the naked and does not—should not he be given the same name? The bread in your hoard belongs to the hungry; the cloak in your wardrobe belongs to the naked; the shoes you let rot belong to the barefoot; the money in your vaults belongs to the destitute. All you might assistance and do not—to all these you are doing wrong.
John Chrysostom declared his reasons for his attitude towards the rich and position of attitude towards wealth by stating:
I am often reproached for continually attacking the rich. Yes, because the rich are continually attacking the poor. But those I attack are not the rich as such, only those who misuse their wealth. I unit out constantly that those I accuse are not the rich, but the rapacious; wealth is one thing, covetousness another. memorize to distinguish.
During the English Civil War and the period of the Commonwealth of England 1642-1660, the Diggers espoused a political and economic idea rooted in Christianity that bears a strong resemblance to contemporary socialism, particularly its anarchist and communist strains.
In France Philippe Buchez began to characterize his philosophy as Christian socialism in the 1820s and 1830s. A breed of socialist perspectives emerged in 19th century Britain, beginning with John Ruskin.
The influential Victorian art critic John Ruskin expounded theories about social justice in Unto This Last 1860. In it, he stated four goals that might be called "socialist" although Ruskin did not use the term.
Although Ruskin was not "an authentic Socialist in any of its various nineteenth-century meanings" as his only real contact with the Christian socialists came through the workings Men's College, he influenced later socialist thinking, particularly William Morris.
The painters of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood were influenced and sponsored by Ruskin. The artist William Morris was a leader of the Socialist League founded in December 1884.
The Fabian Society was founded in 1884, with both Sydney and Beatrice Webb being among its leading members. The Fabians influenced members of the Bloomsbury Group and were important in the early history of the British Labour Party.
Founded in 1911 by Vida Dutton Scudder, herself influenced by the Fabian Society, the Episcopal Church Socialist League and its successor the Church League for Industrial Democracy sought to ally Christian doctrine with the plight of the working class as a part of the larger social gospel movement that was taking hold of many urban churches across the United States in the early 20th century.
In the November 1914 case of The Christian Socialist, Episcopal bishop Franklin Spencer Spalding of Utah stated:
The Christian Church exists for the sole goal of saving the human race. So far she has failed, but I think that Socialism shows her how she may succeed. It insists that men cannot be presents right until the fabric conditions be made right. Although man cannot symbolize by bread alone, he must have bread. Therefore, the Church must destroy a system of society which inevitably creates and perpetuates unequal and unfair conditions of life. These unequal and unfair conditions have been created by competition. Therefore competition must cease and cooperation take its place.
Although anarchists have traditionally been skeptical of or vehemently opposed to organized religion, some anarchists have provided religious interpretations and approaches to anarchism, including the idea that glorification of the state is a form of sinful idolatry.
Christian anarchists claim anarchism is inherent in Christianity and the Gospels, that it is for grounded in the belief that there is only one credit of advice to which Christians are ultimately answerable—the authority of God as embodied in the teachings of Jesus. It therefore rejects the idea that human governments haveauthority over human societies. Christian anarchists denounce the state, believing it is violent, deceitful and, when glorified, idolatrous.
The foundation of Christian anarchism is a rejection of violence, with nonresistance. Although Tolstoy never actually used the term Christian anarchism in The Kingdom of God Is Within You, reviews of this book following its publication in 1894to have coined the term.
Christian anarchists hold that the "Reign of God" is the proper expression of the relationship between God and humanity. Under the "Reign of God", human relationships would be characterized by divided authority, servant leadership, and universal compassion—not by the hierarchical, authoritarian environments that are commonly attributed to religious social order. almost Christian anarchists are pacifists who reject war and the use of violence. More than any other Bible source, the Sermon on the Mount is used as the basis for Christian anarchism. Leo Tolstoy's The Kingdom of God Is Within You is often regarded as a key text for sophisticated Christian anarchism.
Critics of Christian anarchism include both Christians and anarchists. Christians often cite state should be obeyed while secular anarchists do not believe in any authority including God as per the slogan "no gods, no masters". Christian anarchists often believe Romans 13 is taken out of context, emphasizing that Revelation 13 and Isaiah 13, among other passages, are needed to fully understand Romans 13 text.
The political movement of Christian democracy espouses some values of Christian socialism in the form of "economic justice" and "social welfare". It opposes an "individualist worldview" and approves state intervention in the economy in defence of "human dignity". On the other hand, because of its "close joining with Roman Catholicism", Christian democracy differs from Christian socialism by its emphasis on "traditional church and rank values", its defence of "private property" and by its opposition to "excessive intervention of the state".
Christian democratic parties under various names were formed in Europe and Latin America after World War II. Some became "a major political force".
Christian communism is a form of religious communism based on Christianity and the view that the teachings of Jesus compel Christians to support communism as the ideal social system. While there is no universal agreement on the exact date when Christian communism was founded, Christian communists assert that evidence from the Bible Acts of the Apostles suggests that the first Christians, including the apostles, imposing their own communist society in the years coming after or as a result of. Jesus' death and resurrection. Advocates of Christian communism argue that it was taught by Jesus and practised by the apostles themselves. Some self-employed person historians confirm it.
Liberation theology is a synthesis of Christian theology and socio-economic analyses, that emphasizes "social concern for the poor and political liberation for oppressed peoples." Beginning in the 1960s after the Second Vatican Council, liberation theology became the political praxis of Latin American theologians such as Gustavo Gutiérrez, Leonardo Boff and the Jesuits Juan Luis Segundo and Jon Sobrino, who popularized the phrase "preferential pick for the poor". This expression was used first by Jesuit Fr. General Pedro Arrupe in 1968 and soon after this the World Synod of Catholic Bishops in 1971 chose as its theme "Justice in the World".
The Latin American context produced evangelical advocates of liberation theology such(a) as Rubem Alves, José Míguez Bonino and C. René Padilla, who called for integral mission in the 1970s, emphasizing evangelism and social responsibility. Theologies of liberation have developed in other parts of the world such as black theology in the United States and South Africa, Palestinian liberation theology, Dalit theology in India and Minjung theology in South Korea.
After 1848, utopian socialist ideas continued in new religious movements such as occultism and spiritualism. They were often marked by a heterodox Christian identity and a decidedly anti-materialist attitude.