A movement in the Anglican Church, consisting of F.D. Maurice (1805-1872), a theologian; Charles Kingsley (1819-1875), a novelist; and John Malcolm Ludlow (1821-1911), a lawyer, were churchmen who felt that the gospel had something to say to the working people of England. The leaders of Christian Socialism considered their movement to be a development of Christianity and believed that the Christian faith stood for a society that would enable men to work with one another, instead of against one another. Their practical results were limited. Their cooperative workshops were poorly organized an unduly optimistic about the role of laborers. Their greatest contribution was probably in the ideas that carried across the Atlantic to the United States.

[tags]BlogRodent, Christian-Socialists, church-history, ChurchRodent, history, socialism[/tags]

An ideology extremely difficult to define. Democratic ideological perspectives tend to clump anything that identifies itself at "communism" together in the same heap. But two camps of communism may be entirely inimical to each other, and have separate means and ends.

Usually, one points to The Communist Manifesto, or Das Kapital, by Karl Marx, as the guideposts into communism, but basically the communist system has many of the same traits of Hitler's Germany: dictatorial leadership, a single centralized party, ruthless terror, propaganda, censorship, a controlled economy and hostility to all organized religion. Communist ideology emphasized the working class, revolution as a means of social change, and the utopian ideal for a classless society.

[tags]BlogRodent, church-history, ChurchRodent, Communism, history, Karl-Marx, Socialism[/tags]