The Christian Socialist Heritage: Historical Curiosity, Residual Counterproject, or Continuing Resource for the Salience of Love in Economics

Description

This presentation is intended to complement the other papers in the series which generally approach the overall topic of the series from perspectives that either broadly accept the currently predominant capitalist social, political and economic order or else, in presenting their own perspectives, seek its serious reform.

The presentation begins by descriptively focusing on what it argues is the all too often now overlooked “Christian Socialist” heritage. This is explored with special reference to examples mainly from England and Germany, together with discussion of a number of wider examples, especially from within the Baptist tradition of Christianity. The presentation then proceeds in a more critical and evaluative mode with reference to what the Anglican social theologian John Atherton (in his 1992 book Christianity and the Market: Christian Social Thought for our Times) referred to as “the strange death of economic socialism” (p. 255) and his argument arising from that “…what is emerging is the end of ‘socialism’ as we have known it” (p. 256), together with his acknowledgement that: “What has every chance of surviving and flourishing is the strand of socialism as counterproject.” (p. 255).

The presentation concludes in a more authorially positional way from the perspective of a British and German dual national Christian with a broadly socialist orientation, to discuss the extent to which this heritage might now be only an historical curiosity or residual counterproject; but also the extent to which, for the salience of love in economics, this tradition could be a continuing resource in keeping the horizon of history open to the possibility of a fundamental social and economic transformation beyond the achievement of technical adjustments to the current capitalist system.

Period	31 Mar 2025
Held at	University of Oxford, United Kingdom
Degree of Recognition	International