Democrats, who have completely collapsed—but this has more to do with the
Italian reaction to decades of corruption than to the mere decline of religiosity.
At the same time religion, where it is politically important, has come to be
much more firmly oriented to specific moral issues such asabortion, further
reducing the broad reach of a religious identity, and therefore its electoral
utility.
Christian Socialism
Christian socialism is not an organized movement or a specific ideology or
body of doctrine (though there have been groups, for example in the early
Labour Party, which adopted the name). It is a broad descriptive term for
individuals or groups, or for a general attitude that has appeared from time to
time in various European countries. The central argument of Christian
socialism is that bothChristianityandsocialismshare certain basic values,
and that Christians should therefore give political expression to their religious
beliefs by supporting a certain type of socialism. At the same time, it is argued,
Christianity gives socialism a moral basis which is lacking in other versions,
such as orthodoxMarxism. The supposed common values are those associated
with equality, communal sharing, peace, brotherhood, an absence of competi-
tion and rejection of hierarchy and power.
The Christian aspect of Christian socialism involves a stress on one side of
Jesus’s teaching and one image of him as a man—as a simple carpenter with a
radical message. It often also draws for inspiration on the life of the early
Church, which is interpreted as a communal and pacifistic movement. Clearly
this view of Christianity, whether historically correct or not, is at odds with the
way in which the institutions and theology of the Church developed in later
centuries. It may be for this reason that Christian socialism is almost entirely a
phenomenon of Protestant Christianity, which was sometimes in intention a
return to the values of the early Church. However, there have been political
movements within the Catholic Church of a roughly similar liberal-socialist
character, for example theMouvement Republicaine Populairein France
and the – clerical radicalism found in modern Latin America and the Nether-
lands, often under the label ofliberation theology.
Relations between Christian socialists and other socialists are not always
easy, since left-wing socialists, in particular, often more or less Marxist in
outlook, tend towardsmaterialismand to the overt atheism and antagonism
towards religion which occur inMarx’swritings. If only for this reason, the
socialism of Christian socialists is generally moderate and non-revolutionary,
close to that of theFabiansand/or the BritishLabour Party.
Christian Socialism