Anglicanism - Role in Civilisation

Role in Civilisation

Anglican concern with broader issues of social justice can be traced to its earliest divines. Richard Hooker, for instance, wrote that "God hath created nothing simply for itself, but each thing in all things, and of every thing each part in other have such interest, that in the whole world nothing is found whereunto any thing created can say, 'I need thee not.'" This, and related statements, reflect the deep thread of incarnational theology running through Anglican social thought – a theology which sees God, nature, and humanity in dynamic interaction, and the interpenetration of the secular and the sacred in the make-up of the cosmos. Such theology is informed by a traditional English spiritual ethos, rooted in Celtic Christianity and reinforced by Anglicanism's origins as an established church, bound up by its structure in the life and interests of civil society.

Repeatedly, throughout Anglican history, this principle has reasserted itself in movements of social justice. For instance, in the 18th century the influential Evangelical Anglican William Wilberforce, along with others, campaigned against the slave trade. In the 19th century, the dominant issues concerned the adverse effects of industrialisation. The usual Anglican response was to focus on education and give support to 'The National Society for the Education of the Children of the Poor in the principles of the Church of England'. Lord Shaftesbury, a devout Evangelical, campaigned to improve the conditions in factories, in mines, for chimney sweeps, and for the education of the very poor. For years he was chairman of the Ragged School Board. Frederick Denison Maurice was a leading figure advocating reform, founding so-called "producer's co-operatives" and the Working Men's College. His work was instrumental in the establishment of the Christian socialist movement, although he himself was not in any real sense a socialist but, "a Tory paternalist with the unusual desire to theories his acceptance of the traditional obligation to help the poor", influenced Anglo-Catholics such as Charles Gore, who wrote that, "the principle of the incarnation is denied unless the Christian spirit can be allowed to concern itself with everything that interests and touches human life." Anglican focus on labour issues culminated in the work of William Temple in the 1930s and 1940s.