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ABSTRACT
In this article I investigate how Christian socialist thought has approached the problem of human nature and realism. I focus on four key figures in the tradition: F. D. Maurice, Walter Rauschenbusch, Reinhold Niebuhr, and William Temple. My account makes two claims: first, that realist grounds for the Christian socialist vision developed as the tradition matured; and second, that it is possible to reconcile a realism grounded in original sin with socialism. The core of the realist argument for socialism is simply an extension of a primary justification for political democracy: because of sinful human nature, power needs countervailing forces. Decentralized economic democracy achieves this by distributing power widely. Markets do the same by decentralizing decision-making and enabling selfishness to be “harnessed” and yet “contained” by social ownership. Christian socialism can thus be understood as not only compatible with realism but as the logical outworking of realism.
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Notes
1 Turner, Christian Socialism; Williams, Christian Socialism as Political Ideology; Cort, Christian Socialism; Dorrien, Social Democracy in the Making; Dorrien, American Democratic Socialism; Milbank and Pabst, The Politics of Virtue.
2 Benne, The Ethic of Democratic Capitalism; Novak, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism.
3 See Lovin, Reinhold Niebuhr and Christian Realism, 28–29. A third “realism” in Christian realist thought is the ideal of God’s love (20–23). Because Lovin calls this “theological realism,” and because it does not feature in this article, I note it here just to avoid confusion. Lovin credits Christian realism’s unique insights to its combination of political, moral, and theological realisms: “attentiveness to all of the forces at work in a situation, and the limits imposed by human nature, and the possibilities opened by love” (29).
4 Dorrien, The New Abolition; Dorrien, Breaking White Supremacy; Hellman, Emmanuel Mounier and the New Catholic Left.
5 Jones, The Christian Socialist Revival, 6.
6 Christensen, Origin and History of Christian Socialism, 93.
7 Maurice, The Kingdom of Christ. See vol. 2, 257, 261–263, 516. See also his Epistles of St. John, 61, 118, 121–122.
8 Maurice, Epistles of St. John, 152–167.
9 Ibid., 97–100.
10 Williams, Christ Socialism as Political Ideology.
11 Maurice, The Patriarchs and Lawgivers of the Old Testament, 96. Christensen, The Divine Order; Morris, F.D. Maurice and the Crisis of Christian Authority.
12 Morris, F.D. Maurice and the Crisis of Christian Authority, 30–54.
13 Christensen, The Divine Order, 136.
14 Hutton, Essays, 329; see also Morris, F.D. Maurice and the Crisis of Christian Authority, 191:
He could be read as implying that sin was something of an illusion, affecting at most superficially the permanent, underlying union of humanity with God. Yet his language about sin was also intense and vehement, and shot through with a sense of shock and tragedy at the human rejection of God.
15 Ramsey, F.D. Maurice and the Conflicts of Modern Theology, 70–71. Ramsey also notes unclear comments such as this: “no man has a right to say, ‘My race is a sinful, fallen race’ … because he is bound to contemplate his race in the Son of God.” Maurice, The Life of Frederick Denison Maurice, 408.
16 Mathewes, Evil and the Augustinian Tradition.
17 Christensen, Origin and History of Christian Socialism, 26.
18 Cort, Christian Socialism, Ch. 8.
19 Maurice, The Kingdom of Christ (vol. 1), 337.
20 Maurice, Epistles of St. John, 32.
21 Christensen, Origin and History of Christian Socialism, 85.
22 Ibid., 66.
23 Quoted in Ibid.
24 Ibid., 78.
25 These claims are somewhat understandable given his context in which virtually everyone was baptized and his views of the national role of the Church of England, but the universalistic and over-realized undertones are still present.
26 See e.g. Maurice on baptism in Morris, To Build Christ’s Kingdom, 98. Morris, F.D. Maurice and the Crisis of Christian Authority, 60.
27 Christensen, Origin and History of Christian Socialism, 105, quoting a letter from Ludlow.
28 Morris, F.D. Maurice and the Crisis of Christian Authority, 133.
29 Jones, The Christian Socialist Revival.
30 It should be noted that Rauschenbusch was not a socialist in the partisan sense, and he was openly critical of socialist attitudes toward religion. Even without party membership, he was a staunch ally. See Dorn, “The Social Gospel and Socialism,” 91–100.
31 Hooft, The Background of the Social Gospel in America; White and Hopkins, The Social Gospel.
32 Rauschenbusch, Christianizing the Social Order; Dorrien, Reconstructing the Common Good, 33.
33 Dorrien, Reconstructing the Common Good, 42–44.
34 Rauschenbusch, A Theology for the Social Gospel, 32.
35 Ibid., 5.
36 Meyer, The Protestant Search for Political Realism, 133.
37 Rauschenbusch, A Theology for the Social Gospel, 41–42.
38 Ibid., 92–94; Dorrien, Reconstructing the Common Good, 39.
39 Rauschenbusch, A Theology for the Social Gospel, 56.
40 Meyer, The Protestant Search for Political Realism, 130.
41 Rauschenbusch, A Theology for the Social Gospel, 166.
42 Dorrien, Reconstructing the Common Good, 39, 46.
43 Rauschenbusch, A Theology for the Social Gospel, 48.
44 Ibid., 97.
45 Ibid., 54.
46 Lasch, “Religious Contributions to Social Movements,” 17.
47 Rauschenbusch, Christianity and the Social Crisis, 310. Cf. Harry Emerson Fosdick: “human nature is the most plastic, the most changeable thing with which we deal,” in Christianity and Progress, 99.
48 King, Stride Toward Freedom, 78.
49 Rauschenbusch, Christianity and the Social Crisis, 194.
50 Meyer, The Protestant Search for Political Realism, 17.
51 See Evans, “Ties That Bind.”
52 Meyer wrote that “Rauschenbusch's concept of sin was never remarkably clear, and never well correlated with other factors in human nature and history.” The Protestant Search for Political Realism, 16.
53 Rauschenbusch, Christianizing the Social Order, 183, 181.
54 Ibid.
55 Ibid., 356.
56 Ibid., 184.
57 Ibid.
58 Rauschenbusch, A Theology for the Social Gospel, 111–113.
59 Rauschenbusch, Christianizing the Social Order, 195.
60 Rauschenbusch, A Theology for the Social Gospel, Ch. 8 and Ch. 11.
61 Rauschenbusch, Christianizing the Social Order, Ch. 5, titled “The Last Entrenchment of Autocracy.” See also Dorrien, The Making of American Liberal Theology, 103–104.
62 Rauschenbusch could be unclear about some of the specifics of socialist political economy; see Dorrien, The Making of American Liberal Theology, 115.
63 Niebuhr, “Biblical Faith and Socialism,” 49.
64 Rauschenbusch, A Theology for the Social Gospel, 55.
65 Ibid., 102.
66 Dorrien, The Making of American Liberal Theology, 104.
67 See Smith, “Creating a Cooperative Commonwealth.”
68 Scudder, Socialism and Spiritual Progress, 17–18.
69 Ibid., 10.
70 Scudder, Socialism and Character, 242.
71 Ibid., 197.
72 Ibid., 198.
73 Dorrien’s phrase in The Making of American Liberal Theology, 448.
74 Bennett, “Reinhold Niebuhr.” More recently, Snarr, “Economic Justice,” and Rasmussen, “Was Reinhold Niebuhr Wrong about Socialism?”
75 Due to limitations of space, I focus on Niebuhr's political realism, though questions about his theological realism can be raised just as with Rauschenbusch. See e.g., E. L. Mascall’s concerns about Niebuhur's doctrine of original sin in Christ, the Christian and the Church, 155.
76 Novak, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism; Benne, The Ethic of Democratic Capitalism.
77 Niebuhr, “The Collectivist Bogy,” 478.
78 Niebuhr, The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness, 103.
79 Ibid., 113.
80 Ibid., 115.
81 Dorrien, “Introduction,” xx.
82 Snarr, “Economic Justice”; Rasmussen, “Was Reinhold Niebuhr Wrong about Socialism?”
83 Dorrien, “The 1960s.”
84 Rasmussen, “Was Reinhold Niebuhr Wrong about Socialism?” 450.
85 Ibid., 454.
86 Dorrien, Soul in Society, 308.
87 Bennet, “Reinhold Niebuhr's Social Ethics,” 75.
88 Why Niebuhr doesn't consider the cooperative socialism espoused by the Anglican tradition is not important for my purposes, though Rasmussen presents several plausible reasons why Niebuhr was uninterested in the varieties Christian socialisms out there. Rasmussen, “Was Niebuhr Wrong about Socialism?” 434–436.
89 Temple, Christianity and Social Order, 87.
90 Ibid., 94.
91 Ibid., 105; Avis, Neville Figgis, CR.
92 Temple, Christianity and Social Order, 60.
93 Ibid., 61.
94 Ibid., 100.
95 Government is “the art of so ordering life that self-interest prompts what justice demands.” Temple, Christianity and Social Order, 65.
96 Temple, Christianity and Social Order, 100, 26.
97 Ibid., 100.
98 Ibid., 36.
99 Ibid., 26.
100 Wolin, Politics and Vision, 353 (as for subsequent quotations).
101 Dorrien, Reconstructing the Common Good, 13–14; Mott, A Christian Perspective on Political Thought, “Acknowledgements.”
102 Mott, A Christian Perspective on Political Thought, 213.
103 Ibid., 210.
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Joel Gillin
Joel Gillin completed his Ph.D. in systematic theology at the University of Helsinki, where his research focused on pluralism and post-secular political theology. He is an ordinand in the Church of England.