Christ’s death, in this understanding, was a result of his radical mission, which was opposed by the religious and political authorities of his day. Labour Party leader George Lansbury declared Christ to be ‘the greatest revolutionary force of His times’, ‘the lonely Galilean – Communist, agitator, martyr – crucified as one who stirred up the people and set class against class’.12 Theologian Robyn J. Whitaker, responding to Donald Trump, links the death of Christ to systemic racial injustice, describing Jesus as ‘a brownskinned Jew killed by the Roman State’.13 The folk singer Woody Guthrie summed up this perspective in his 1940 song ‘Jesus Christ’:
Jesus Christ was a man who travelled through the land
A hard-working man and brave
He said to the rich, ‘Give your money to the poor’,
But they laid Jesus Christ in His grave.
When Jesus come to town, all the working folks around
Believed what He did say
But the bankers and the preachers, they nailed Him on the cross,
And they laid Jesus Christ in his grave.
This song was written in New York City
Of rich man, preacher, and slave
If Jesus was to preach what He preached in Galilee,
They would lay poor Jesus in His grave.14
There are certainly questions arising from this summary of a Christian Left biblical theology, particularly from a theologically (but not necessarily politically) conservative perspective. An understanding of God’s absolute holiness and the sinfulness of people is absent, as consequently is an understanding of how the sinner can be reconciled to God. The substitutionary theory of the atonement, supported by two millennia of church history and a plain reading of the Bible – ‘that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures’ (1 Corinthians 15:4b) – has been replaced. In a justifiable attempt to broaden the scope of the Gospel beyond individual piety, the Gospel itself has arguably been pushed aside in favour of economic collectivism and social liberation.
Radicalism and socialism in the church
It would be an anachronism to attribute the term ‘socialist’ or ‘communist’ to movements active long before modern political ideologies began to develop throughout the long nineteenth century. The term ‘radical’, being less precise, can be employed more freely. In any case, those on the Christian Left can point to a long church tradition of collectivism and social conscience – we might use the term proto-socialism – to show that their position is no postmodern novelty. The collectivism recorded in Acts of the Apostles (Acts 2:44–5; 4:32, 34–5) is seen as the first fruits of a new order of society, the application of Christ’s denunciations of selfishness and materialism, the immediate consequence of the ministry of the Holy Spirit which began at Pentecost; it was the realisation of brotherhood and justice. The church community represented not a disparate conglomeration of individuals but, as the Apostle Paul described it, a body of many members all working towards the same goal (1 Corinthians 12:12–27). In this community ‘[t]here is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus’ (Galatians 3:28). These truths are reflected in the sacraments of the church, especially communion, which speaks of collective unity and togetherness.
Radical and socialist Christians often accuse the institutional church of not living up to this grand creed, at the same time as noting the individuals and the movements that have. Samuel E. Keeble, the British Wesleyan Methodist, quotes freely from the early church fathers, first pointing to the words of Tertullian: ‘We who mingle in mind and soul have no hesitation as to fellowship in property.’ Cyprian is then quoted, commanding that Christians should ‘imitate the equality of God in the common gifts of nature, which the whole human race should equally enjoy’. ‘The unequal division of wealth,’ writes Ambrose of Milan, ‘is the result of egoism and violence.’15 Ambrose is also quoted by the American Catholic John C. Cort: ‘God has ordered all things to be produced so that there should be food in common for all, and that the earth should be the common possession of all. Nature, therefore, has produced a common right for all, but greed has made it a right for a few.’16 Keeble refers to the warnings of Augustine of Hippo Regius about private property: ‘Let us, therefore, my brethren, abstain from the possession of private property, or from the love of it if we cannot abstain from the possession of it.’17 Augustine’s condemnation of economic injustice is, says Cort, ‘the cornerstone of Christian socialism’.18
Radical movements of the late medieval and early modern periods are also co-opted into this account of a radical tradition. The peasants’ uprisings of fourteenth-century England and sixteenth-century Germany, including figures such as John Wycliffe, John Ball and Thomas Muntzer, are held up as examples of prophetic opposition to the corruption of state and church, as is the Diggers movement of the seventeenth century, which declared the earth a ‘Common Treasury’ for all mankind.19 Denominational differences account for whether the precapitalist guild economy and the monasteries of Roman Catholic Europe, or the modernising zeal of the magisterial reformers – Martin Luther, John Calvin, Ulrich Zwingli – are held up as part of the back-story of religious socialism but, in either case, the social conscience and opposition to economic exploitation of Catholics such as Thomas Moore and Protestants such as Hugh Latimer are cited by way of proof that Christianity has not always gone hand-in-hand with the spirit of capitalism.
These movements are just some of those making up a thread of radicalism, which underpinned the American and French revolutions and informed the liberal and socialist ideologies that developed throughout the long nineteenth century. Radical movements were often secular in nature, such as the attempt of the French Revolution to depose Christianity and install in its place a state religion devoted to the worship of Reason, possibly in an attempt to fulfil the ideas of Jean-Jacques Rousseau in The Social Contract.20 Yet there was always a religious component, calling attention to a message of brotherhood, collectivism, equality, justice and liberty, which had seemingly been forgotten by both secular radicals and the conservative-minded established churches. These movements constitute both the prehistory and philosophical foundation of the Christian Left. The term Christian Left should not be taken to signify a mirror image of the US religious Right. Rather, the phrase is here used to encompass broad and disparate political-theological trends which may be summed with the terms radical and socialist. This, as we shall see, encompasses many different movements and ideological positions.
This book considers the Christian Socialism of the UK; the religious socialism of continental Europe; the Social Gospel, civil rights and black liberation movements, and ‘red-letter’ evangelicalism of the United States; the liberation theology of Latin America, as well as of Africa and the Middle East; feminist, womanist and LGBT+ theologies of liberation. Some of these focused more on economic socialism or social democracy; others on progressive, intersectional or identarian politics. Each movement is itself diverse, and there are many others outside the scope of these pages, which have made their own significant contributions. One of the things the author has discovered in studying radical and socialist Christianity is that there are always movements and individuals that are accidentally overlooked or not given the consideration they perhaps deserve. Some readers may be disappointed to find that movements or persons with which they are familiar have been omitted or neglected.