The Religion of Socialism

It has long been known that ‘preaching the socialist word’ (Samuel 1980, 48) was an activity with many of the characteristics of a revivalist religious movement. Socialist street-corner orators, competing with the Salvation Army for the attention of the working class, resembled nothing so much as missionaries fishing for the souls of the unbelievers. They also had a lot to say about Christianity as such: Dennis Hird, first principal of Ruskin College, churned out books like The Believing Bishop and Jesus the Socialist. The penny fortnightly ‘Pass On Pamphlets’ and the ‘Clarion Pamphlets’ featured titles about Christianity and socialism from the likes of Blatchford, Conrad Noel, Joseph Clayton, Tom Mann and the Rev. Percy Dreamer. Some of these were atheist polemics, others – like the publications of Stewart Headlam – were expressions of Anglican Christian socialism, many were reprinted numerous times by labour presses. In The Service of Humanity, Headlam preached ‘the Christian Communism of the Church of the Carpenter’, and admonished his congregation to ‘remember that it is a Socialistic Carpenter whom you are worshipping’. His sermons urged listeners to strive to abolish class distinctions, to ‘do your best to bring about a better distribution of wealth and leisure’, and to ‘agitate for social reform’ (1882, 3, 13, 58, 95).