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Christian Doubt and Hope in Early Socialism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 June 2016

Philip Lockley
Philip Lockley*
Affiliation:
Durham University
*
*St John's College, Durham University, 3 South Bailey, Durham, DH1 3RJ. E-mail: pjlockley@gmail.com.
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Abstract

The diverse forms of socialism which emerged in the nineteenth century had a complex relationship with both Christian beliefs and the Churches. Socialist movements are commonly remembered as anti-religious and anti-clerical. Doubt, forged in the familiar nineteenth-century ‘crisis of faith’, shaped not only Marxism, but also Owenism, the earlier social theories of Robert Owen. Church historians have long pointed to another narrative of socialism and religion in the Victorian era: the rise of Christian Socialism after 1848, led by F. D. Maurice, J. M. Ludlow, Charles Kingsley and others. Here, they recall a response to doubt with faith, and an answer to anti-clericalism with a new vision for the Churches’ social role. Yet socialism before 1848 had a more contested interaction with Christianity than this history assumes. By exploring the specific nature of Christian doubt among early Owenite socialists, then following how this doubt was answered by contemporary Christian supporters of Owen, this essay uncovers an alternative, noteworthy response to doubting Christianity – the nature of Christian hope in early socialism.

Keywords

Robert OwenJohn Henry Newmanco-operationChristian hope
Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 52: DOUBTING CHRISTIANITY: THE CHURCH AND DOUBT , June 2016 , pp. 364 - 380
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 2016 

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Footnotes

This essay was researched, written and presented as a paper while the author was a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow and Junior Research Fellow of Trinity College, Oxford.

References

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20 Robert Owen, ‘Address Delivered at the City of London Tavern, August 21 1817’, in idem, A New View of Society and Other Writings, ed. Gregory Claeys (London, 1991), 191–203.

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34 Charles Newman to John Newman, 3 December 1841, in Letters and Diaries, 8, ed. Tracey, 362. Charles had ‘often wished I could find some religious party of similar aim’, but seemingly never did.

35 Charles was later an ally of the leading socialist freethinker George Jacob Holyoake. His articles for Holyoake's Reasoner were republished posthumously as Essays in Rationalism (London, 1891).

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55 Sheffield Courant and Advertiser, 18 May 1832.

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78 Moltmann, Jürgen, Theology of Hope, transl. James W. Leitch (London, 1967)Google Scholar.