Christian socialism is a form of religious socialism based on the teachings of Jesus. Many Christian socialists believe capitalism to be idolatrous and rooted in greed, which some Christians denominations consider a mortal sin. Christian socialists identify the cause of inequality to be associated with the greed that they associate with capitalism.
Christian socialism became a major movement in the United Kingdom beginning in the 1960s through the Christian Socialist Movement.
The term also pertains to such earlier figures as the nineteenth century writers Frederick Denison Maurice (The Kingdom of Christ, 1838), Charles Kingsley (The Water-Babies, 1863), Thomas Hughes (Tom Brown's Schooldays, 1857), Frederick James Furnivall (co-creator of the Oxford English Dictionary), Adin Ballou (Practical Christian Socialism, 1854), and Francis Bellamy (a Baptist minister and the author of the United States' Pledge of Allegiance).
Read more about Christian Socialism: Catholic Criticisms, Christian Socialist Parties, Prominent Christian Socialists, Quotes
Famous quotes containing the words christian and/or socialism:
“If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that. If a Jew wrong a Christian, what is his humility? Revenge. If a Christian wrong a Jew, what should his sufferance be by Christian example? Why, revenge. The villainy you teach me, I will execute, and it shall go hard but I will better the instruction.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“There’s no such thing as socialism pure
Except as an abstraction of the mind.
There’s only democratic socialism,
Monarchic socialism, oligarchic
The last being what they seem to have in Russia.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)