This is a summary reconstruction of a paper which, after diligent search of personal and University of Utah archives, including the files of Professors Durham, Rich, and Wormuth, appears to have been irretrievable lost. The paper was published in 1953 by the Institute of Government of the University in PSA: A Journal of Political Thought .
The circumstances surrounding the writing of the paper are as follows: I had been participating in a Graduate Seminar on Political Theory offered by either Professor Sam Rich or Francis Wormuth in which we'd been reviewing the contributions of Sorel, Bakunin, and others to the theories of Socialism, Anarchism, and the so-called Propaganda of the Deed (the latter of which has taken on contemporary significance with the gassing of subway passengers in Tokyo, the bombing of the St. Michel Metro station in Paris, and the blowing up of the Federal Building in Oklahoma City -- all by obscure political movements seeking free front-page publicity for their causes). At some point, I was persuaded by the Director of the Seminar to undertake a paper on the early origins of socialist thought in Britain.
This led me to a study of the works of Charles Kingsley, an Anglican Minister, novelist, and leading participant in the Chartist Movement, which resulted in the Reform Act of , the adoption of universal franchise in Great Britain, the legalization of Labor Unions, and all sorts of health, safety, and labor legislation.
The position of Kingsley and his associates derived from their strongly held Christian belief that the Christian Church was indeed God's true word regarding human duties and relationships. Every living being has a "vocation". And whether high or low, one is in conscience bound as a Christian to perform one's duties to the best of one's ability -- whether as Peer of the Realm, Draper, Grocer, or Chimney Sweep (indeed, one of Kingsley's novels Water Babies dealt expressly with the mistreatment of chimney sweeps). Moreover, good Christians, as employers, should not engage in paying their hands no more than the subsistence wages which prevailed during this period, which was the height of Robber Baron Capitalism, but restore the (undefined) "customary wage" which had enabled craftsmen and cottagers during the period prior to the so-called land clearance movement, which flooded English and Scottish towns with an excess of unemployed labor, to enjoy some of the decencies of life.
From this basis, the Christian Socialist Movement proceeded to adopt the position that every member of society (except women -- female suffrage was yet beyond the ken of even liberal thinkers) should exercise the franchise to ensure government support for the enactment of workshop health and safety legislation, the banning of child labor, and provision of strict controls over female labor. Christian Socialism also supported the notion of legalizing Labor Unions to that workers could collectively bargain for a reasonable share of the profits of the enterprises in which they worked -- beyond bare subsistence.
While the Christian Socialist movement was one of the elements in achieving the enactment of the Reform Bill -- as well as eventual legalization of Labor Unions, it did not possess the breadth to vision the need or desirability of transforming itself into an actual political party, as happened in other European countries.
It remained for the Marxists and their "scientific socialism", and for the Fabians -- in part in reaction to Marxism -- to bring into being the Communist and Labor Parties respectively. Christian Socialism can thus be viewed as a glimpse through the mists of the need for basic reform of the British social, economic, and political systems as the nation approached the modern age; and in measure to be credited with achievement of some of the most important of these reforms; but sadly deficient in its understanding of the need to institutionalize its vision.
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