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Religious socialism is a type of socialism based on religious values. Members of several major religions have found that their beliefs about human society fit with socialist principles and ideas. As a result, religious socialist movements have developed within these religions. Those movements include Buddhist socialism, Christian socialism, Islamic socialism, and Jewish socialism. According to the Encyclopedia Britannica Online, socialism is a "social and economic doctrine that calls for public rather than private ownership or control of property and natural resources. According to the socialist view, individuals do not live or work in isolation but live in cooperation with one another. Furthermore, everything that people produce is in some sense a social product, and everyone who contributes to the production of a good is entitled to a share in it. Society as a whole, therefore, should own or at least control property for the benefit of all its members. [...] Early Christian communities also practiced the sharing of goods and labour, a simple form of socialism subsequently followed in certain forms of monasticism. Several monastic orders continue these practices today".[1]
The teachings of Jesus are frequently described as socialist, especially by Christian socialists.[2] Acts 4:35 records that in the early church in Jerusalem, "[n]o one claimed that any of their possessions was their own", although the pattern would later disappear from church history except within monasticism. Christian socialism was one of the founding threads of the British Labour Party and is claimed to begin with the uprising of Wat Tyler and John Ball in the 14th century CE.[3]
Abu Dharr al-Ghifari, a companion of Muhammad, is credited by multiple authors as a principal antecedent of Islamic socialism.[4][5][6][7][8] The Hutterites believed in strict adherence to biblical principles and church discipline, and practised a religious form of communism. In the words of historians Rod Janzen and Max Stanton, the Hutterites "established in their communities a rigorous system of Ordnungen, which were codes of rules and regulations that governed all aspects of life and ensured a unified perspective. As an economic system, Christian communism was attractive to many of the peasants who supported social revolution in sixteenth century central Europe", such as the German Peasants' War, and "Friedrich Engels thus came to view Anabaptists as proto-Communists."[9]
- ^ Ball, Terence; Dagger, Richard; et al. (30 April 2020). "Socialism". Encyclopedia Britannica Online. Retrieved 15 September 2020.
- ^ The Gospels, by Terry Eagleton, 2007.
- ^ "Labour revives faith in Christian Socialism". 21 May 1994.
- ^ Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern Islamic World. New York: Oxford University Press. 1995. p. 19. ISBN 978-0-19-506613-5. OCLC 94030758.
- ^ "Abu Dharr al-Ghifari". Oxford Islamic Studies Online. Archived from the original on 18 June 2013. Retrieved 23 January 2010.
- ^ And Once Again Abu Dharr. Retrieved 15 August 2011.
- ^ Hanna, Sami A.; George H. Gardner (1969). Arab Socialism: A Documentary Survey. Leiden: E.J. Brill. pp. 273–74.
- ^ Hanna, Sami A. (1969). "al-Takaful al-Ijtimai and Islamic Socialism". The Muslim World. 59 (3–4): 275–86. doi:10.1111/j.1478-1913.1969.tb02639.x. Archived from the original on 13 September 2010.
- ^ Janzen, Rod; Stanton, Max (2010). The Hutterites in North America (illustrated ed.). Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. p. 17. ISBN 9780801899256.