The Christian Socialist Movement

Mark Gallagher

The Christian Socialist movement, as we know it today was founded in 1960 by among others Donald Soper, Tom Driberg and R.H Tawney. Soper's sermons appeared in Tribune during the editorial rejgn of Michael Foot. He onoo called the Labour Party's Clause Four 'the ultimate principle that emerges from our Iords teaching'.

Another Labour politician influenood by Christianity is Tony Benn, whose mother was President of the Congregationalist Federation, rooted in the non-conformist tradition that sees no need for a priesthood telling the faithful what to believe. This bottom-up tradition can be seen in much of Bend s political writings. His is an exoollent example of the Christian influenoo on politics without the need to believe in what he considered the mythology of miracles surrounding the biblical story of Christ.

It has not always been plain sailing for Christian Socialists. Disputes between the very early British Christian Socialists, who were supporters of Chartism, ended up with them being effectively dormant between 1854 and the late 1870s. The 1880s saw a renewal of the movement and by the turn of the oontury a variety of Christian Socialist groups had been formed including the Socialist Quaker Society, the Roman Catholic Socialist Society, the Guild of St. Matthew, and the Christian Social Union. It should be remembered that their intention was to prevent revolution, not encourage it, by ending what they thought were the reasonable complaints of the working class.

A more radical example of Christianity taking ideas from socialist thought is that of liberation theology, particUlarly in Latin America in the latter half of the 20th Century. Roman Catholic priests and theologians drew from the ideas of Karl Marx to develop what even a conservative Archbishop like Oscar Romero called 'the preferential option for the poor'. For this support he was assassirulted while saying mass, and many others in El Salvador and other countries that saw the potential of popular movements and Christian groups coming together also paid with their lives. Death squads that reooived trillning and funding from the United States slaughtered tens of thousands. One Jesuit priest described the carnage in this way: 'People are rwt just killed by death sqzwd.S' in El Salvador -they are decapitated and then their head.S' are placed on pikes and used to dot the landscape. Men are rwt just disemboweled by the Salvadoran ~ury Police,' their severed genitalia are stuffed into their mouths. Salvadomn women are rwt just raped by the National Guard,' their wombs are cut from their bodies and used to cover their faces. It is rwt erwugh to kill children,' they are dragged over barbed wire until the flesh falls from their bones, while parents are forced to watch."

'The Sacred Congregation of the Doctrine of the FaitH, the modern equivalent of the Inquisition, warned that there was a fundamental danger in accepting Marxism uncritically as a basis for theology.

Recently the modern Christian Socialist Movement, which is an affiliated socialist society of the Labour Party, has included among its membersbjp 36 Labour Members of Parliament including the Prime Minister Tony Blair, Chris Smith and Chris Bryant. It includes amongst its goals: world peace; redistribution of wealth; and a classless society.

Just by examining the Christian Socialist Movement's track record with New Labour, it is not hard to argue it has an intrinsic conservatism that prevents it from having the impact it could have both within the Labour Party and outside it. At the 2004 Labour conferenoo it chose to support the NEC statement on Iraq.

Marx argued that "Christian socialism is but the holy water with which the priest consecrates the heart-bumings of the aristocrat". !fit is not to be condemned to this fate then there is an urgent need for a revival of Christian Socialist radical roots, as there is also in the labour movement and the Labour Party more generally. Christian Socialism should never be about charity thatdoesnt change things in the long run, and it shouldnt be offering refuge for Prime Ministers who take their country to war and need to hide behind their party.

Unfortunately doctrinal fears undermined a lot of those who were trying to make societies like El Salvador more just. A Vatican institution called

Mark Gallagher is a member of East Renfrewshire CLP