religious socialism

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Religious socialism is the advocacy of members of Christianity for reasons of their faith for a socialist social order . The term originally referred to a trend in German-speaking Protestantism that arose in Switzerland around 1900 . In the Weimar Republic , an evangelical church party emerged from it, which organized itself in 1926 as the Federation of Religious Socialists in Germany (BRSD). Comparable tendencies also arose in other Christian denominations and countries.

They interpret certain traditions and texts of the Bible , such as the commandment of the year of jubilee , charity , the prophetic-apocalyptic expectation of the kingdom of God , the Sermon on the Mount , criticism of Mammon and the community of goods of the early Jerusalem community as impulses and obligations, the current social order determined by capitalism to overcome. In particular, the gospel of Jesus of Nazareth with its option for the poor currently requires a conscious decision for socialism.

expression

The Swiss Protestant theologians Hermann Kutter and Leonhard Ragaz coined the word combination religious socialism and the self-designation religious socialists in 1906 in order to distinguish themselves from non-religious socialists and anti-socialist Christians and to address followers in all Christian denominations . Ragaz explained at the time that he had chosen the term by accident, but summarized its meaning after 1926 as follows:

"Religious socialism is an understanding of the whole of Christianity that sheds light on its social meaning. […]
Religious socialism is an understanding of the whole of socialism that sheds light on its religious meaning.”

According to this, the word combination does not denote any other, special socialism and no other, special religion, but a special understanding of the existing concepts of socialism and the Christian faith with the claim to uncover their true meaning. The Swiss Religious Socialists thus consciously adopted a fundamentally positive attitude towards social democracy . They differed from the ideas referred to as “Christian-Social” or Christian Socialism , which were directed against socialism and social democracy.

Shortly after joining the Swiss Social Democratic Party in February 1915, Karl Barth demanded:

“A real Christian must become a socialist (if he wants to get serious about the reformation of Christianity!). A real socialist must be a Christian if he is concerned with the reformation of socialism.”

Christianity and socialism both failed miserably in the face of the world war and could therefore only find their way back to their own goals together. In 1917 he specified: It is a question of a new, practical departure from each individual identity, not of looking for "any mediations and bridges" between the previous Christianity and previous socialism. "Christian-social is really nonsense." Christians could recognize socialism in the form of social democracy only completely or not at all. They would have to do the latter in order to give glory again to God as the Lord of history.

Paul Tillich explained in 1919: Religious socialism is a necessary enlightenment of socialism about itself, namely about its historical-philosophical task. He defined the term in 1930 as follows:

"Religious socialism is the attempt to understand socialism religiously and to shape it out of this understanding and at the same time to relate the religious principle to social reality and to shape it within it."

Most of the religious socialists organized in the BRSD represented democratic socialism . The relationship between the BRSD and Marxism was disputed internally: Hans Müller (1867–1950) believed in 1927 that the socialist ideal of society could only be permanently established through religious socialism. The religious socialists must Christianize the labor movement and free it from atheistic Marxism. A majority in the BRSD in 1928 rejected this position and instead followed Erwin Eckert , who saw and affirmed the class struggle as a historical reality. The BRSD also distanced itself from National Socialism at an early stage . Few religious socialists, including Eckert, supported the KPD .

Biblical Roots

Tanakh / Old Testament

The widespread mode of production in the great empires of the ancient Near East was a slave -owning society . A narrow upper class typically owned most of the fertile farmland in the form of latifundia, which were worked by large numbers of landless and largely disenfranchised slaves. Clans of semi-nomads who infiltrated with the change of pasture also owned slaves, but no large estates. They could easily become dependent on the city-states of Canaan or in the slavery of surrounding empires, which had stocks of grain at their disposal even in unproductive years.

The people of Israel gradually grew out of various semi-nomadic clans and groups of former slaves . It regarded the "promised land" as a gift from its God YHWH , who had made himself known to it as the liberator from slavery ( Ex 3.7  EU ). The Tanakh , the Hebrew Bible , demands a socially just social order as the binding law of this god ( Torah ). The Torah names God's statement ( Lev 25.23  EU ) as the supreme principle of biblical land and property law: "The land is mine, and you are strangers and guests in it." Because all the inherited goods of the Israelites are merely "leased" from God , the supposed landowners are only “guests” and “foreigners” like the Jews or non-Jews who depend on them. Thus the Torah establishes the commandment of Jubilee . After 50 years at the latest, every Israelite should get back his share of the soil of Israel and, if necessary, be released from debt slavery ( Lev 25.8-31  EU ). This fair redistribution of land ownership was intended to restore socio-economic equality for all Israelites at least once per generation, thus opening up future prospects for impoverished landless people who had become dependent on debt and obliging the landowners to release them. Accordingly, human property and power relations are not eternal, but must be regularly changed in favor of the propertyless according to the will of the God of Israel.

Accordingly, the Torah contains a series of commandments intended to protect the vital rights of disadvantaged minorities, such as widows, orphans and strangers. The Torah places foreigners, who otherwise mostly had no rights, under special protection and commands the same kind of neighborly love towards them as Jews do towards each other ( Lev 21,33f.  EU ). For the Torah, it is the behavior towards them that decides whether the Israelite community is characterized by justice at all . However, the Torah distinguished the protective rights of Israelite and non-Israelite slaves.

After around 1000 B.C. The kingdom of David and Solomon is said to have been founded as a hereditary dynasty, and a latifundia economy analogous to the surrounding great empires is said to have developed there, which is biblically attested to for the successor states of northern Israel and southern Judah . The royal court appropriated vacated hereditary land from Israelite farmers or forced its sale through high taxes. On the other hand, since about 850 B.C. BC prophets who reminded the kings of Israel and Judah of the divine right of the dispossessed ( 1 Kings 21  EU ; Am 2  EU ; Jer 34.8ff.  EU ) and sharply criticized the behavior of the haves (for example Am 5.11f  EU ):

"Therefore, because you oppress the poor and take from them a high tax of grain, you shall not live in the houses that you have built of ashlar. For I know your iniquities, which are so great, and your sins, which are so great, because you afflict the righteous and take bribes, and oppress the poor in the gate [where justice was done].”

The promise of a just future for the currently oppressed and oppressed here becomes a sharp indictment of the oppressor; foreign policy defeats are interpreted as the inevitable consequence of domestic corruption of the law by the property owners. This prophetic criticism shows that the ruling classes in both parts of Israel had disregarded the commandment of the jubilee year or had never observed it anyway. In the exilic and post-exilic prophecy of salvation (since 586 BC), the just redistribution of land, the abolition of debt slavery and thus the social differences became an integral part of the end-time hope for the future . Isa 61  :1 EU promises that God's future Messiah will proclaim a year of release for the poor:

“The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me; for the Lord has anointed me. He sent me to bring good news to the poor, to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and liberty to the captives, to proclaim a year of favor from the Lord..."

In Isa 65,21f  EU it also says:

“They will build houses and live in them themselves, they will plant vines and they will enjoy their fruit themselves. They do not build for another to live in their house, nor plant for another to enjoy the fruit.”

The Torah commandment of the year of jubilee remained, despite its largely historical non-compliance, as a hope for an eschatological, just social order without exploitation, in which everyone can live and work together and enjoy the fruits of their labor.

In the Talmud , the commandment of the year of jubilee was abolished for practical reasons: the land of Israel no longer belonged to the Jews, and the biblical ban on interest proved to be impracticable in the Roman Empire. Torah protection rights were preserved in the form of detailed charity under the umbrella of mercy .

New Testament

According to Lk 4: 18ff  EU , Jesus of Nazareth quoted Deutero-Isaiah's promise of an end-time jubilee year (Is 61:1) during his first public appearance in the synagogue of Capernaum :

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me; for the Lord has anointed me. He sent me to bring good news to the poor; to proclaim liberty to the captives and sight to the blind; so that I may set at liberty those who are oppressed and proclaim a year of favor from the Lord.”

He commented on this quotation from the Bible with the single sentence: "Today the word of Scripture that you have just heard has been fulfilled." With this he expressed that his work will finally bring about the commanded Jubilee Year, meaning that this forgotten commandment remained valid. Jesus' Beatitudes in the Sermon on the Mount ( Mt 5.3-12  EU ) promise the currently poor, mourning, powerless and persecuted that the kingdom of God already belongs to them and that they will also own the earth (the land, the soil) in the future. According to Matthew 11.2-15  EU , in his answer to the question of the Messiah that John the Baptist asked him, Jesus referred to the healing effects of his actions, in which Deutero-Isaiah's future promises of the gospel for the poor were fulfilled. According to Matthew 10.9ff  EU , Jesus encouraged the followers he called to unreservedly renounce a job, permanent residence and material security. According to Mark 2.23-28  EU , in the event of an acute famine, he allowed them to collect food on the fields of large landowners even on the Sabbath and subordinated the Sabbath commandment to opponents to the well-being of the people. According to Mark 10:21ff.  , Jesus invited a large landowner who asked him how he could obtain eternal life . EU to give up all his possessions for the benefit of the poor and explains this invitation to his disciples as a (rarely or not at all) precondition for the rich to enter the kingdom of God. With his surprising visit to one of the then hated and marginalized Jewish collectors of Roman taxes (“tax collectors”), Jesus persuaded him to pay the poor four times over for goods stolen ( Luke 19.8  EU ).

Following on from the Jesus tradition, Acts 2.44  EU emphasizes a community of goods of the early Jerusalem community :

"All who believed were together and had all things in common."

In the concept of Luke's double work, this common property fulfills Jesus' promise ( Lk 18:30  EU ): Those who give up their possessions, job and family in the service of the kingdom of God would receive these goods again during their lifetime in the community of Jesus' followers. On the other hand, according to Acts 11: 27-30  EU , the early community, which was determined by the community of goods, achieved a burden sharing between rich and poor communities. This balance realizes what Luke depicts with the Pentecost miracle as the role and task of the whole church: to anticipate and pave the way for the eschatological unity of all people in the kingdom of God (the Shalom or the peace of the peoples ). Thus Luke made the just sharing of all property among Christians the obligatory example for the church of all times for the benefit of all peoples.

precursor

middle age

As Christianity rose to become the state religion of the Roman Empire (313–380), Christian theology increasingly softened or reinterpreted Jesus' radical demands. Since the early Middle Ages , church bishoprics and monasteries have been closely linked to emerging feudalism through aristocratic privileges . Bishops and abbots were large landowners who behaved towards their subjects in the same way as secular princes. Accordingly, the mainstream church largely disregarded the socially critical traditions of the Hebrew Bible, which aimed at redistributing property for the dispossessed and at a social order that was fair for all.

Only Christian minorities tried to preserve this tradition, but for centuries they could only practice community of property in Catholic religious communities , usually in monasteries , permitted by the popes . These were subordinate to the church hierarchy and did not require any change in ownership or power.

In the High Middle Ages , the social contrasts and burdens on the serfs intensified . At that time, newly founded religious orders and other Christian communities not only represented a worldly ideal of poverty, but also tried to help the poor directly and aimed at church reforms. The Pauperes Christi , which arose around 1100, maintained an ascetic lifestyle, managing their properties jointly and dividing them according to the needs of their members. The Cathars also practiced sharing property with the poorer among them. They often came from the upper class and primarily addressed them. Petrus Valdes formed the community of the "poor of Lyon" around 1170. They distributed their possessions to the city's poor and thus called the medieval estate system into question. The resulting Waldensians , one of today's “ peace churches ”, were therefore excommunicated by the popes and expelled and persecuted by the secular rulers.

Around 1200, Francis of Assisi first demanded renunciation of property for the Catholic clergy and set an example. Pope Innocent III allowed him to preach in 1210 and found an order committed to the ideal of poverty, but refused to give up the wealth of the church. Some Franciscans practiced common property as voluntary poverty at a distance from ecclesiastical and social normality, others like the Minorites wanted to continue to reform the entire Church and thus tend to change the situation of the majority of the population. This conflict continued under later popes of the Middle Ages.

Early modern age

In the 15th century, as a result of the increasing impoverishment of large parts of the population, local and regional withdrawal movements and revolts occurred more frequently, which led to peasant wars in various European countries in the 16th century . Christian minorities criticized the reality of the time in church and society with the ideal of the early community and thus demanded a change in society in favor of those without property and rights.

The Czech reformer Jan Hus represented ideas influenced by the Waldensians in Prague from 1402 to 1413 . From his followers, the Hussites , the Czech Taborites also emerged after his execution. They rose up against the emperor, pope and feudal nobility and established an egalitarian commune in the city of Tabor . There, with reference to Acts 2, they practiced a binding community of property without class differences, without taxes and marriage; moreover, they demanded a society without state and ecclesiastical power structures.

In 1476 in Niklashausen , the bagpiper Hans Böhm preached social equality without class distinctions and rejected taxes, levies, compulsory labor, interest and estates. Like the Hussites, he understood community of goods as the realization of the imminent earthly kingdom of God ( chiliasm ). The pilgrimage movement he initiated was directed against the corporate order, the corrupt Catholic clergy and the secular princes and demanded comprehensive social reforms. Böhm was also executed.

It was only during the Reformation in the 16th century that economic conditions and reference to biblical tradition worked together in such a way that a comprehensive change in society towards more social justice appeared possible. Nikolaus Storch ( Zwickau ) and Thomas Müntzer ( Allstedt ), a student of Martin Luther , tried to implement radical democratic city constitutions in Thuringia and Saxony around 1520. Müntzer founded a kind of secret society, which also demanded community of property. Whether he practiced this is uncertain. In 1523 he joined the peasant uprisings that had started in southern Germany. Referring to the Old and New Testament biblical tradition, especially the apocalyptic , he called in his sermons for the realization of the kingdom of God as an earthly social order without the ruling institutions of state and church. In the context of the peasant uprisings of the time, Michael Gaismair 's Tiroler Landesordnung (1526) and Hans Hergot 's Von der Neue Wandlung (1527) represented the idea of ​​an early democratic social order with no estates and common property on the land. Jakob Hutter founded an Anabaptist community in Tyrol in 1533 and the Hutterites community that still exists today . He understood the community of goods practiced there as an unconditional characteristic of true Christianity and a mark of separation from the mainline churches. For this reason, the Hutterites were classified by Catholic and Evangelical-Lutheran authorities and theologians as particularly dangerous for the medieval social order. These groups, which were close to the Anabaptist movement and the peasant uprisings, were persecuted as heretics by both Catholic and Protestant rulers ; their leaders were almost always executed.

During the English Civil War (1642–1649), Christian groups emerged again that demanded and partially realized common property as a form of church and social reform. In 1649, Gerrard Winstanley established a rural commune in Wales that collectively occupied and cultivated vacant arable land. In his writings, he called for the expropriation of all nobility and clergy, as well as joint land ownership by all English farmers, as a concrete vision of the future. He justified this exclusively biblically and independently of continental models. He thus became the theoretical leader of the English diggers and levellers . The Quakers and Mennonites assimilated such English groups and partly shared similar ideas. The Dukhobors in Russia (c. 1633) and Labadists in Maryland (from 1683) practiced communal ownership in their settlements.

What all these groups had in common was that they regarded the community of goods of the early community according to Acts 2 as a valid, normative model for their present and tried to partially realize it. This is interpreted as an expression of a deep social crisis and a reaction to the impoverishment of broad sections of the population. None of these or similar attempts at reform could last long. They mostly failed because of the balance of power or internal disagreements.

History in German-speaking countries

19th century

In the 19th century, industrialization intensified social contradictions, and a proletariat emerged in many European countries . After large sections of the bourgeoisie in the 18th century, most workers also turned away from Christianity and the Church, as they saw them connected to the ruling classes. Instead, they increasingly justified their goals with scientific claims. With the workers' movement organized into trade unions and left-wing parties, a new social force aspired to a just social order.

Now some Jewish and Christian theologians also began to deal with the "social question". A reaction to this was the Inner Mission , a new form of Pietism that emerged in the 17th century : Its representatives emphasized the individual's personal decision of faith, the social responsibility of all citizens and diakonia as a Christian service to society. In doing so, they strictly distanced themselves from socialist ideas and limited themselves to individual-ethical, not socio-political attempts to counteract the impoverishment of large sections of the population.

Early socialism emerged in France around 1830 . Many of its representatives sharply criticized the religion of the church and Christianity of their time, but expressly referred to the early Christian community of goods, derived the idea of brotherhood from it and thus justified their future vision of worldwide democracy and communism : such as Pierre Buchez, Constantin Pecqueur , Etienne Cabet and Louis Blanc . The Saint-Simonists and, following them, the Fourierists had already explicitly described themselves as Christians. Thus the Saint-Simonists proclaimed themselves to be a church in reference to Saint-Simon's Nouveau christianisme (1825) and saw themselves as apostles. These ideas had a significant influence on the German-speaking world. Moses Hess , the founder of the socialist wing of Zionism , also based socialism on biblical tradition. The French Catholic priest Félicité de Lamennais advocated such ideas from 1833 in his book Words of a Believer (German 1834). He is considered the founder of religious socialism. In his book Livre du Peuple (1838) he equated natural law with the teachings of Jesus Christ and interpreted them as the foundation of a social revolution .

With these thoughts, Lamennais greatly influenced early German socialists, including Wilhelm Weitling , who founded the Bund der Gerechten . In his books The Guarantees of Harmony and Freedom (1841) and The Gospel of the Poor Sinner (1842), Weitling argued that Jesus was a prophet of the liberation of all people through Communism. The early community had formed a communist secret society that he wanted. The churches have obscured his teaching so that Christians from outside the churches need to be reminded of it. Swiss Protestants reacted to this in 1847 with sharp rejection: Communism is the pinnacle of human egoism , which only strives for material things. The Christian religion is his irreconcilable ideological opponent, since it strives for spiritual redemption from material things.

Karl Marx , like Friedrich Engels , distanced himself sharply from religious socialist ideas early on . For Marx, religion was an irrational “ opium of the people ” that on the one hand expressed the longing for salvation from misery and protest against it, and on the other hand prevented the real emancipation of the proletariat because it only comforted the masses and concealed the causes of their suffering. He saw the Christianity of his time as bourgeois idealism that would gradually disappear with the revolutionary upheaval of the situation. After the break with Marx, Weitling and his followers were expelled from the League of Communists due to differing views on revolution .

The Marxist view shaped German social democracy in the German Empire , which began to organize itself in 1863 with the ADAV . Up until 1918 and beyond, the Christians and the churches there were consistently experienced and rejected as essential pillars of the monarchy and capitalism. Conversely, there was also an almost unanimous consensus in German Protestantism, for example with Adolf Stoecker and Friedrich Naumann , and in Catholicism that “materialistic” social democracy was “godless” and therefore completely incompatible with Christianity.

Very few evangelical pastors entered social democratic organizations. Probably the first to do this in Switzerland was Paul Brandt , who co-founded the Swiss Social Democratic Party (SPS) in 1888. He was followed by Howard Eugster (1908) and Paul Pfluger (1911). You were elected to the Swiss National Council for the SPS before 1914 and had to give up your pastorate to do so. In 1891 (shortly after the anti- socialist laws were repealed ), the Württemberg evangelical pastor Theodor von Wächter joined the SPD. For this reason, the church authorities withdrew his permission to preach in 1893. He then founded a Social-Christian Association with moderate goals. The German pastor Paul Göhre also lost his pastorate after joining the SPD in 1899 and therefore left the church.

These few religious socialists represented the liberal theology that had been widespread since the Enlightenment , which reduced Christianity to an ethical teaching of Jesus and took universal ideals of humanity from him. Unlike most liberal theologians, they not only derived spiritual values ​​and goals from this, but also practically advocated the proletariat and a socialist society. They left the argument with the basic dates of the biblical history of salvation , especially the vicarious death and resurrection of Jesus Christ , to the conservative ("positive" or orthodox) theologians. From this they concluded a purely charitable and diaconal attitude to social problems and the strict rejection of any revolutionary change in society: “The gospel seemed to have become a weapon for the representatives of bourgeois society and the status quo. The fighters for change gave it up resignedly.”

1900 to 1945

From around 1900, historical-critical Bible researchers also discovered and examined socio-critical Bible traditions. The early Christian ethics of succession and community of goods were now used by some theologians to justify an affinity between the gospel and socialism, which obliges Christians to stand up for a just social order. The main proponents referred specifically to the Sermon on the Mount. They affirmed Marx's analysis of capitalism and saw in the proletariat, the industrial workforce, the decisive force for social change. They tried to open the church-oriented Christians to the workers' movement and to introduce them to socialism as an ethical choice that did not necessarily include atheism.

In 1880, the Protestant pastor Christoph Blumhardt took over a pastoral foundation founded by his father in Bad Boll , where he preached a form of pietism: the gospel is God's bodily presence in Jesus Christ in a world ruled by sin and death. The decisive factor is therefore not individual salvation, but the struggle and victory of Jesus Christ over this world-ruling power and the dynamic, world-changing coming of his kingdom. This radically questions egoism and does not demand religiosity, but a radical, world-shattering focus on fellow human beings and their needs. Christianity refuses to meet this challenge by making pacts with nationalism, imperialism and the "anti-god" of "mammonism" (capitalism). It is therefore part of that satanic power that delivered Jesus to the cross. Therefore, in 1899, at a local SPD meeting, Blumhardt committed himself to socialism. He understood social democracy as the work of God in history, because for the first time it recognized the oppressed as acting subjects and thus gave them their own voice and historical role. After strong public protests, he joined the SPD and was subsequently dismissed by the church leadership. He then continued his father's foundation, the work of which greatly influenced later religious socialists. He is considered the founder of this movement in German-speaking countries.

Blumhardt decisively influenced the Swiss theologians Hermann Kutter and Leonhard Ragaz. Both welcomed the growing workers' movement as a current challenge for all of Christianity and took the inexorably growing social democracy as a sign of the coming kingdom of God: their attack on capitalism meant radical judgment on the dominant culture shaped by church and Christianity and, despite their atheism , corresponded to that transcendent kingdom of God and its cultural criticism . The church only appeals to God to block any form of social justice on earth. Both understood socialism on the one hand as a consequence of God's actions and on the other hand as the realization of his will on earth. In his writing you must! (1903) Kutter described the social democrats as "tools of the living God" and "proclaimers of divine truth". The stagnating present must inevitably give way to a new, better future. This passionate accusation against the church in favor of social democracy triggered heated debates within the church and was seen as a turning point. Kutter left it open whether Christians would now have to join the SPD; he did not see it as their task to convert the social democrats to God and to actively participate in them. Instead, they should submit to the judgment of God and passively await His further action in history.

Ragaz, who distributed Kutter's writing, on the other hand, wanted to permanently unite Christians and socialists for joint political activities. Only in this connection will there be a real religious renewal: "Religious and social searching - both often flowing separately and striving towards each other - that should be ... the most comprehensive and simplest description of our religious situation and task." For this search for a synthesis he gave from 1906 with Benedikt Hartmann and Rudolf Liechtensteinhan the magazine Neue Wege. Leaves out for religious work. It should not add new church groups to the existing ones, but provide a forum for discussion for all of them. To this end, Ragaz also organized the first religious and social gathering on April 17 and 18, 1907 in Zurich . This was followed by the annual religious-social conference for Christians from all church-political camps. In January 1909, Kutter, Ragaz, Liechtenhan and Oskar Pfister (1873–1956) called on all Christians to gather: “...who, with us, see a fundamental transformation of our economic order as a religious and moral duty and the social movement of our day as a Joyfully welcome the means of realizing the kingdom of God.” In 1911, Liechtensteinhan initiated an association of friends of the religious-social conference , which consciously avoided programmatic definitions and did not see itself as a church party. But Ragaz wanted to involve the group more and more in the revolutionary change in society. He joined the SPS in 1913; this was the break with Kutter, who never belonged to any party. Ragaz understood his step as a fundamental solidarity with the proletariat, not as an approval of a specific program. For him, socialism was the “community duty” in all areas of life, which went far beyond party politics. So he represented pacifism against the SP majority after 1914 . His attempts to find followers among German liberal Christians around Martin Rade failed, since most of them approved of the First World War .

The Swiss Reformed theologian Karl Barth broke with his theological teachers after they had approved Germany's entry into the war by a large majority in August 1914. Barth had previously worked as a pastor in Safenwil for more workers' rights, trade unions and social obligations for employers. He joined the SPS in 1915 and welcomed the Zimmerwald Manifesto as an attempt to found a new international against war. At first, like Blumhardt, Kutter and Ragaz, he equated Jesus Christ as the embodiment of the kingdom of God with the socialist movement of his time. In 1919 he founded "dialectical theology" with his commentary on Romans . In his Tambach lecture , he emphasized that Christian faith and politics should not be mixed up in order to pave the way for a new, positive relationship between the church and the workers' movement. Any direct connection between God's revelation and a political ideology is an improper misuse of the gospel. However, this requires a rational decision for a just future society that corresponds to God's kingdom, but does not claim to realize it. Barth thus represented a minority position in German-speaking Protestantism.

After the First World War, various groups of Christians with socialist goals emerged in Germany. The Catholic clergymen Magnus Jocham , Josef Král and Franziskus Maria Stratmann founded the pacifist Peace Association of German Catholics in 1919 on the basis of Christian-Socialist impulses . It was in this environment that the Christian Social Party of Bavaria came into being in 1920, from which the Christian Social Reich Party emerged in 1925 . This was a left-wing split from the Catholic Center Party , approached the KPD and therefore renamed itself the Workers' and Farmers' Party of Germany (Christian-Radical People's Front) in 1931 .

The evangelical New Works movement is also an expression of the trend of social Christianity and a turn towards primitive Christianity, which can also be found in Christian youth movements . The actual Neuwerk movement, which formed at the beginning of the Weimar Republic, is usually classified as Christian-socialist (main representative: Eberhard Arnold ).

At the end of 1919, religious socialist groups emerged in Berlin , at the beginning of 1920 in Cologne and soon in many other cities, including the League of Socialist Friends of the Church under Günther Dehn . He soon merged with the Bund Neue Kirche to form a religious and social association. At that time, Georg Wünsch (1887–1964) formulated a draft program: The November Revolution freed the church for its actual purpose. She could now "make the cause of the oppressed her own". Christ's spirit compels them to resist all nationalism and to work for international reconciliation in order to achieve a humanity united in Christ. What form of society this should have remained open.

The Quaker Emil Fuchs (1874–1971) suggested that in the crisis situation after the founding of the republic, the national church should change into a confessional church and profess to unite the people in “brotherly love”. Wünsch considered this unrealistic. On the initiative of Erwin Eckert (1893–1972) from Pforzheim, the League of Religious Socialists in Germany (BRSD) was founded in 1926 from these various predecessors. He wanted to change the then nationalist , militarist and anti-democratic majority in the DEK in the long term.

Similar groups emerged in other European and American states. The connection between religion and socialism was much discussed there. Some understood the kingdom of God as a present force that is also effective in social democracy, others as a transcendent future that can only be depicted through political goals, not realized. By 1933, the BRSD had over 20,000 members in 17 state associations with many local groups, divided into four regions. Eckert led the southern district, Fuchs the middle district, Georg Fritze (1874-1939) the western district, Paul Piechowski (1892-1966) the northern district and Günther Dehn (1882-1970) Berlin. Eckert was overall manager until 1931, then Bernhard Göring (1897–1949) until 1933. Some members were close to the Neuwerkkreis , which emerged from the youth movement in 1923 and aimed for cooperatives as residential and educational units; however, no agreement was reached. In 1929 the Bund merged with the Group of Catholic Socialists ; Jewish socialists were also among them.

The BRSD took part in church elections in all regional churches and demanded, among other things, strict separation of church and state, reduction of church taxes , church calls against unemployment , against military services and against a day of mourning to commemorate the Treaty of Versailles . However, his candidates rarely received more than 10 percent of the vote.

Eckert publicly stood up for anti-militarism and for the Soviet Union and therefore received several ecclesiastical disciplinary proceedings. After the SPD expelled him in 1931, he joined the KPD and was subsequently dismissed as head of the federal government. The National Socialists took him into protective custody in 1933 and sentenced him to three years in prison in 1936. After 1945 he held management positions in the KPD-West and later the DKP in Baden, where he remained a member until his death.

Not all Christians who strove for socialism were also members of the BRSD, but like Karl Barth they approved and supported its goals. In addition to the BRSD, there were smaller, predominantly academic groups, such as the Tillich circle around the theologian Paul Tillich , who found a contemporary historical form of the “ kairos ”, the inner-historical revelation of God, in socialism .

From the beginning, the members of the BRSD repeatedly warned of the dangers of nationalism and anti-Semitism . They were also among the first to protest against the newly founded party of German Christians in the Evangelical Church with a mass leaflet:

“They will talk about the gospel, but by that they mean their own gospel of racial pride, the brutal violation of everyone else's opinion, the glorification of the spirit of war, and military build-up. They have distorted the cross of Christ into a swastika ... So Hitler stretches out his hands to the evangelical church as if to a sure prey and already feels himself to be the future master of the church.”

The BRSD was the most important and cohesive anti-fascist group in German Protestantism before 1933. In 1933 they were therefore among the first to be persecuted by the National Socialists. The pastors Karl Kleinschmidt (1902-1978), Ernst Lehmann (1861-1948), Arthur Rackwitz (1895-1980) and the pacifist Hans Karl August Francke (1864-1938), at that time pastor in the Heilig-Kreuz-Kirche (Berlin- Kreuzberg) were imprisoned for months from March 6, 1933. Francke's account of this circulated in the Berlin communities; when this became known to the authorities, they arrested him again. Nevertheless, he headed the "Brotherhood of Socialist Theologians" with Rackwitz until his death in the concentration camp .

Paul Tillich was the first non-Jewish professor to lose his chair in Frankfurt am Main and emigrate to the USA . Emil Fuchs and Martin Heinrich Kappes (1893–1988) were also able to emigrate. By June 1933, some state associations and local groups of the BRSD had dissolved themselves; on July 18, 1933 it was officially banned. Some local groups continued to work illegally, and some members joined various resistance groups . Ernst von Harnack (1888–1945) took part in the July 20, 1944 resistance and was executed afterwards.

Karl Barth, who in 1931 emphatically remained in the SPD and never became a member of the BRSD, defended the pacifist Günther Dehn in 1932 when SA groups wanted to chase him out of office. From 1933 onwards, Barth played a key role in supporting the Confessing Church 's struggle against conformity under National Socialism. After refusing to take the official oath to Adolf Hitler, he was forced to leave Germany. He returned to Switzerland in 1937 and from there tried to intervene further in German affairs. In 1945, before the end of the war, he joined the National Committee for a Free Germany , in which socialists, communists and anti -fascists , who had previously been persecuted by the National Socialists and had mostly fled into exile, jointly designed a free and social constitution for all of Germany.

Since 1945

After 1945, emigrated and surviving religious socialists first came together again in regional groups. Karl Arnold was also a leading representative of Christian socialism in the CDU . In Hesse , Emil Fuchs and the Catholic author Walter Dirks (1901–1991) formed the Working Group for Christianity and Socialism (“Chrisos”). In June 1948 the BRSD was re-established in Kassel . His democratically decided program was strictly separated from any totalitarian system of government; it was also emphasized that no special form of socialism was sought.

The division of Germany that took place in 1949 affected the BRSD severely; many members rejected any cooperation with communists. Fuchs then resigned from the federal government and the SPD and moved to Leipzig . The West German Confederation now emphasized more than before the Christian creed and the goal of democratic socialism based on the Darmstadt Word of 1947. In 1957 it gave itself a new program, called itself the Community for Christianity and Socialism and made Georg Wünsch Honorary President. The rapprochement between Protestants and Social Democrats, as expressed in the SPD's Godesberg program of 1959, was actively promoted by the BRSD.

During the Cold War , however, the BRSD never regained its former strength. Religious socialists remained a vanishing minority between the anti-Communism of the West and the Stalinism of the East. Only through the student movement did the BRSD gain new support and since 1970 it has grown to several hundred members. In 1977 it was re-established in Bochum , expressly going back to the first program from 1926. The first federal spokesman was the Bochum mathematics professor Günter Ewald . His successors were the Bielefeld Catholic theologian Klaus Kreppel , the Düsseldorf Protestant theologian Erhard Griese and the Berlin Protestant theologian Ulrich Peter . By 1990, membership declined slightly; since then the BRSD has been growing again. New members today are often party-affiliated or non-party leftists who no longer feel they belong in any left-wing party. For its part, the BRSD is a member of the International Union of Religious Socialists (ILRS), the Church from Below Initiative (IKvu) and the Attac network.

Nevertheless, the influence of religious-social ideas in the EKD has grown considerably since 1945; they helped shape their social ethics and political orientation. For example, the EKD 's Eastern memorandum of 1965, which outlined a policy of detente and reconciliation with Poland and Russia, went back to earlier BRSD demands. The church historian Günther Brakelmann therefore summarized:

"Although the religious-socialist movement ... has always been a minority movement within Protestantism, it has decisively influenced and stimulated the discussion about the relationship between church and workers, church and socialism as well as church and economic order."

In the GDR, the BRSD played no role as an organization. Individual religious socialists were involved in the SED , which was superficially open to religious socialism around 1946/47: Arthur Rackwitz, Erich Kürschner , Karl Kleinschmidt and Bernhard Göring. The latter became deputy chairman of the FDGB after 1946 and was a member of the SED executive board. Fuchs was a member of the German Peace Council , an "honorary member" of the East CDU and, since 1958, a member of the Christian Peace Conference , which was founded against nuclear weapons . He received high state honors and awards. Erich Hertzsch (1902–1995) endeavored to continue the dialogue between Christians and Marxists in line with the BRSD's founding program of 1926. A few religious socialists also joined the Eastern CDU or, like Heinrich Mertens , the LDP .

However, in many Protestant communities, especially in their youth groups, an unorganized and programmatically unfixed religious-socialist tradition remained widespread. Rudi Dutschke was active in such a group in the early 1950s and became a religious and democratic socialist through the example of Pastor von Luckenwalde . Because of this and his family background, he refused military service in the NVA in 1957 and invoked pacifism .

Since 1975, when the Helsinki Final Act was passed, new religious-socialist groups against Stalinism have formed in the GDR, for example in the area of open work in the evangelical churches and in the church from below . Since 1980, socialist Christians have played a leading role in the context of the peace movement in associations such as the base groups of the Christian Peace Conference in Saxony (CFK base group Königswartha ) and Thuringia (CFK group Kapellendorf ), the group Gegenstimme , from 1989 in the United Left . A religious-socialist association arose in the final phase of the GDR in early 1990 with the Christian Left Initiative .

Other states

Ireland and Great Britain

No independent religious socialism developed in Ireland , but well-known representatives of the labor movement such as James Connolly and James Larkin saw no contradiction in being a Marxist on the one hand and a practicing Catholic on the other. Connolly laid down his thoughts on the compatibility of religion and socialism in his 1910 paper Labour, Nationality and Religion .

In Great Britain, the Guild of Saint Matthew formed around Stewart Headlam in 1877, the first Christian socialist association that came from the high church part of the Church of England . Other groups and organizations emerged in the period before and around 1900, for example with the Anglican reformist Christian Social Union and the resulting Church Socialist League , as well as the Methodist Sigma Society , the Catholic Socialist Society and the Free Church Socialist League .

A section of the ILRS was formed in 1960 through the merger of the Society of Socialist Clergy and Ministers and the Socialist Christian League to form the Christian Socialist Movement (CSM). The CSM has been corporately affiliated with the Labor Party since 1986 and, like the Labor Party, has no longer explicitly demanded the socialization of the means of production since 1995. At the CSM conference in 2007, the majority of the delegates decided, distancing themselves from Tony Blair's government at the time, to tie more closely to their own traditions and those of the Labor Party in the future.

Other groups that exist today that represent more radical positions than the CSM are, for example, the Quaker Socialist Society , which was re-established in Great Britain in 1979, and the Society of Sacramental Socialists , which is based on the tradition of the Guild of Saint Matthew .

France

In France , around 1830, Protestant pastors began to take the poverty of workers and their families that had arisen as a result of the Industrial Revolution seriously and to think about social justice . In 1871 the "Mission populaire évangélique" (Protestant People's Mission) was established, led by the Scottish Protestant pastor Robert McAll . McAll worked in the Quartier de Belleville , where working-class families lived in wretched conditions. Above all, he wanted to fight alcoholism and violence. He also worried about the lack of Christian faith in many working-class families.

A few years later, the Protestant pastor Tommy Fallot championed Christian socialism. He was pastor at the Chapelle du Nord (the former Taitbout Chapel) in Paris. He was not only interested in material and moral aid, but also advocated Christian socialism and placed social justice as a political goal in the foreground. Here he was supported by important people such as theology professor Raoul Allier and the pastors Charles Wagner , Wilfred Monod , Élie Gounelle and Jules Jézéquel. They founded the "Solidarités", houses where people of different denominations and worldviews met and helped each other.

At the same time, the "Ecole de Nîmes" was founded in Nîmes around the economist Charles Gide . This school advocated a third way between capitalism and socialism and supported the creation of cooperatives .

In the 1930s groups of Christian socialists emerged, joining the Gauche Revolutionnaire within the social democratic SFIO and later Marceau Pivert 's Parti Socialiste Ouvrier et Paysan (PSOP) .

Netherlands

In addition to Christian-socialist groups within the social-democratic SDAP, the Christelijk-Democratische Unie (CDU) existed in the Netherlands from 1926 to 1946, a left-wing Protestant and pacifist party that did not explicitly, but in fact, see itself as socialist was represented in Parliament and in 1946 merged into the newly founded social democratic Partij van de Arbeid (PvdA); smaller and more radical religious left organizations were the Vrije Menschen Bond and the Bond van Christen-Socialists .

The well-known poet Henriette Roland Holst , after turning her back on Marxism in 1928, turned to Christian socialism and published the underground journal De Vonk (The Spark), later De Vlam (The Flame), during the German occupation of 1940-45. After 1945, religious socialists first organized themselves in the PvdA, later partly in the left-wing socialist Pacifistische Socialistische Partij PSP .

North America

In the USA and Canada , some members of the traditional free churches , especially the Quakers , Methodist and Wesleyan churches , Mennonites and some Baptists represent not only liberal but also anti-capitalist and socialist ideas. Presbyterian pastor Norman Thomas was a longtime leader and a six-time presidential candidate from 1928 to 1948 of the Socialist Party of America , while the interim minister of the Reformed Church in America , Abraham Johannes Muste , played in the labor movement, in the founding phase of the Trotskyist movement around 1930 and up to played an important role in the peace movement after his death in 1967.

Both the Democratic Socialists of America , which belongs to the Social Democratic International , and the left-socialist Socialist Party USA house religious-socialist associations with the Religion & Socialism Commission (recently also called Religious Socialists ) and the Faith & Socialism Commission (which unites members of different religions).

Base Churches in Third World Countries

In the 1960s and 1970s, especially in South Africa, Asia and Latin America, numerous so-called grassroots communities emerged that linked the self-organization of the poor with socialist land reform and the reorganization of the social order in their countries. They tied in with religious and social self-help projects that Catholic religious communities such as the Franciscans and their international mission societies have been building for a long time.

From this emerged the theology of liberation , which, like the early religious socialists, combined evangelization and socialization. This has had an effect on the Vatican 's criticism of capitalism and on Catholic social teaching .

ecumenical movement

In ecumenism , there is a lively exchange between the richer churches in the industrialized countries and the vast majority of poor Christian communities in the "two-thirds world" who are pushing for a just world economic order. Numerous religious and social non-governmental organizations are also working in this direction in Europe and North America . They rarely pursue a unified socialist program, but often prepare and accompany political changes.

In 1971, at a conference in Chile , the international association Cristianos por el Socialismo was formed with branches in several countries, which advocates a synthesis of Christian and Marxist ideas; In 1973 Christians for Socialism were formed , a branch that still exists today in the Federal Republic of Germany. Sections still exist in Spain, Belgium, Denmark and Sweden.

See also

literature

General

  • Klaus Kreppel : Christian socialism. In: Wolfgang Fritz Haug (ed.): Historical-Critical Dictionary of Marxism. Volume 2: Bank Up Stupidity in Music. 2nd unchanged edition. Argument Verlag, Berlin 1999, ISBN 3-88619-432-9 , col. 495-501.
  • Eduard Buess, Markus Mattmüller : Prophetic socialism. Blumhardt-Ragaz-Barth. Edition Exodus, Lucerne 1986, ISBN 3-905575-22-1 .
  • Walter Dirks , Klaus Kreppel: Chances of a religious socialism. In: Christian and Socialist. Leaflets of the Federation of Religious Socialists in Germany e. V. No. 2. Bielefeld 1984, pp. 20-26.
  • Siegfried Katterle , Arthur Rich (ed.): Religious socialism and economic order. (= GTB Seven Star. 374). Gütersloher Verlagshaus Mohn, Gütersloh 1984, ISBN 3-579-00374-7 .
  • Günter Ewald (ed.): Religious Socialism. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 1984, ISBN 3-17-004366-8 .
  • Wolfgang Deresch: The sermon and agitation of the religious socialists. ISBN 3-7730-0045-6 .
  • Arnold Pfeiffer (ed.): Religious Socialists. Documents of the World Revolution. Walter Olten, Freiburg im Breisgau 1976, ISBN 3-530-16786-X .
  • Wolfgang Teichert (ed.): Do Christians have to be socialists? Lutheran publishing house, Hamburg 1976, ISBN 3-7859-0415-0 .
  • Wolfgang Deresch (ed.): The faith of the religious socialists. Selected Texts. Hamburg 1972, ISBN 3-7730-0056-1 .

Germany

  • Walter Bredendiek : Church history from 'left and from below'. Studies on church history in the 19th and 20th centuries from a socio-historical perspective. Leonhard Thurneysser Verlag, 2011, ISBN 978-3-939176-83-1 (PDF; 1.9 MB) .
  • Sebastian Prüfer: Socialism instead of religion. The German social democracy before the religious question 1863-1890. Goettingen 2002, ISBN 3-525-35166-6 .
  • Lothar Wenzel: Socialism from a Christian conscience with Georg Wünsch (1887-1964). 1995, ISBN 3-631-48579-4 .
  • Johannes Kandel: Theories of the labor movement in the Weimar Republic - religious socialism. In: Thomas Meyer, Susanne Miller , Joachim Rohlfes (eds.): History of the German labor movement. Part 2 (A15-A39). Federal Agency for Civic Education, Bonn 1984, ISBN 3-923423-11-X , pp. 455-483.
  • Reinhard Gaede: Church struggle for Weimar. Documents of the struggle of religious socialists against fascism 1926-1933. In: Power of the gospel in contexts of domination. Festschrift for Wolfgang Schweitzer. Supplement to issue 6/1976 Young Church - A magazine of European Christians, pp. 22-27.
  • Renate Breipohl (ed.): Documents on religious socialism in Germany. (= Theological Library . Volume 46). Munich 1972.
  • Dittmar Rostig: Bibliography on religious socialism in the SBZ and the GDR. Reporting Period: 1945–1985. ISBN 3-631-45250-0 .

Other countries

  • Guido Heinen: "With Christ and the Revolution". On the history and work of the 'iglesia popular' in Sandinista Nicaragua. (= Munich church historical studies. Volume 7). Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 1995, ISBN 3-17-013778-6 .
  • Markus Mattmüller: Leonhard Ragaz and religious socialism. 2 volumes. Helbing and Lichtenhahn, Zurich 1957/1968.
  • Julian Strube: Socialism, Catholicism, and the Occult in Nineteenth-Century France . De Gruyter, Berlin/Boston 2016, ISBN 978-3-11-047810-5 .
  • Friedrich-Wilhelm Marquardt: Theology and Socialism. The example of Karl Barth. Christian Kaiser, Munich 1972, ISBN 3-459-00804-0 .

web links

Commons : Religious Socialism  - Collection of Images

German-speaking area

International

itemizations

  1. ↑ Principles of the BRSD, 1996 ( Memento des Originals from December 22, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@2Template:Webarchiv/IABot/www.brsd.de
  2. ↑ Quoted from Daniela Dunkel: Religious Socialism. In: Theological Real Encyclopedia. Volume 28, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin 1997, ISBN 3-11-002218-4 , p. 504.
  3. ↑ Karl Barth: War, Christianity and Socialism. Lecture before the Grütliverein on February 14, 1915. In: Karl Barth Complete Edition, Volume 48: Lectures and smaller works 1914-1921. Theological Publishing House, Zurich 2012, ISBN 978-3-290-17630-3 , p. 117.
  4. ↑ Karl Barth: The future of Christianity and socialism. Lecture on July 31, 1917 at the YMCA holiday camp in Buus. In: Karl Barth Complete Edition, Volume 48: Lectures and smaller works 1914-1921. Zurich 2012, p. 406.
  5. ↑ Christian Danz , Werner Schüßler , Erdmann Sturm : Religion and Politics. Lit Verlag, 2009, ISBN 978-3-643-50012-0 , pp. 9f.
  6. ↑ Paul Tillich: Class Struggle and Religious Socialism. In: Carl Heinz Ratschow (ed.): Paul Tillich: Main works in 6 volumes, Volume 3: Social-philosophical and ethical writings. Walter de Gruyter, Berlin 1998, ISBN 3-11-011537-9 , p. 169. ; quoted by Christine Freund: Religious Socialism. In: Publication series of the Hamburg University for Economics and Politics Volume 9/1995, pp. 1199-1203.
  7. ↑ Ulrich Peter: Religious Socialism. In: Traugott Jähnichen, Norbert Friedrich: Protestantism and social question. Profiles during the Weimar Republic. Lit Verlag, 2000, ISBN 3-8258-3569-3 , p. 230. and p. 269.
  8. ↑ Helga Grebing , Walter Euchner, F.-J. Stegmann, Peter Langhorst: History of social ideas in Germany: Socialism - Catholic social teaching - Protestant social ethics. A manual. Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, 2005, p. 1010.
  9. ↑ Kurt Nowak: Religious Socialism in the Weimar Republic. In: Joachim Mehlhausen (ed.): And beyond Barmen. Studies in Church History. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Goettingen 1997, ISBN 3-525-55723-X , p. 109f.
  10. ↑ Martin Honecker: Outline of social ethics. Walter de Gruyter, Berlin 1995, ISBN 3-11-014474-3 , p. 475.
  11. ^ Eckart Otto: Continuum and Proprium: Studies in the Social and Legal History of the Ancient Orient and the Old Testament. Harrassowitz, 1970, ISBN 3-447-03835-7 , p. 336. ; Eckart Otto: The Torah, Studies on the Pentateuch. Harrassowitz, 2009, ISBN 978-3-447-05901-5 , p. 237.
  12. ↑ Hans-Jürgen Benedict: Mercy and deaconry: from saving love to a successful life. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 2008, ISBN 978-3-17-020158-3 , p. 31.
  13. ↑ Johannes Rehm, Hans G. Ulrich: Human right to work?: Social-ethical perspectives. Kohlhammer, 2009, p. 31.
  14. ↑ Hans Bardtke: The latifundia in Judah during the second half of the eighth century BC. For understanding Isaiah 5:8-10. In: Hommages to Andre Dupont-Summer. Paris 1971, pp. 235–254.
  15. ↑ Verena Moritz , Hannes Leidinger : Socialism. UTB, Stuttgart 2008, p. 27.
  16. ↑ Detlev Dormeyer, Folker Siegert, Jacobus Cornelis de Vos: Work in Antiquity, in Judaism and Christianity. Lit Verlag, 2006, p. 171.
  17. ↑ M. Beer: General history of socialism and social struggles. 6th edition. New German publisher, Berlin 1929. (Reprint: Salzwasser-Verlag, 2012) p. 36.
  18. ↑ Frank Crüsemann: The Old Testament as a space of truth for the New: The new view of the Christian Bible. Gütersloher Verlagshaus, Gütersloh 2011, ISBN 978-3-579-08122-9 , p. 196.
  19. ↑ Gabriel Kyo Seon Shin: Jesus' proclamation of the final year of jubilee in Nazareth: a historical-critical study of Luke 4:16-30. (= European University Papers: Theology. Volume 378). Peter Lang, 1989, ISBN 3-261-04137-4 . Sabine Plonz: Heavenly citizenship - love of the world: approaches to a dialogical-political theology in an ecumenical context. Lembeck, 2007, ISBN 978-3-87476-535-0 , p. 162.
  20. ↑ Exegetical discussion of Matthew 5.5: Cornelis de Vos: Holy Land and the nearness of God: Changes in Old Testament conceptions of land in early Jewish and New Testament writings. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Goettingen 2012, ISBN 978-3-525-53583-7 , p. 124f.
  21. ↑ Wolfgang Reinhardt: The growth of the people of God. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Goettingen 1995, ISBN 3-525-53632-1 , pp. 175–177.
  22. ↑ Martin Hengel: The end of all politics. In: Martin Hengel: Jesus and the Gospels: Small Writings Volume V. Mohr/Siebeck, Tübingen 2007, ISBN 978-3-16-149327-0 , p. 386. ; Holger Finze-Michaelsen: The other luck. The Beatitudes of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Goettingen 2006, ISBN 3-525-60426-2 , p. 41.
  23. ↑ Christoph Parry: People, Works, Epochs: An Introduction to German Cultural History. Max Hueber Verlag, 2004, ISBN 3-19-001498-1 , pp. 19f.
  24. ↑ Anton Grabner-Haider, Johann Maier, Karl Prenner: Cultural history of the late Middle Ages: From 1200 to 1500 AD Göttingen 2012, p. 49.
  25. ↑ Angelika Lozar: Studies in the history, art and culture of the Cistercians. The Spiritual Heritage Volume 16. Lukas Verlag, 2003, ISBN 3-931836-85-1 , p. 61.
  26. ↑ Verena Moritz, Hannes Leidinger: Socialism. UTB, Stuttgart 2008, ISBN 978-3-8252-3013-5 , p. 29.
  27. ↑ Helmut Feld: Francis of Assisi. CH Beck, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-406-44770-9 , pp. 32–35.
  28. ↑ Ulrich Horst: Evangelical poverty and papal teaching: Minorite theologians in conflict with Pope John XXII. (1316-34). W. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 1996, ISBN 3-17-013799-9 .
  29. ↑ Verena Moritz, Hannes Leidinger: Socialism. Stuttgart 2008, p. 30.
  30. ↑ Werner Röcke, Rolf Grimminger, Hans-Joachim Simm, Marina Münkler: Hanser's social history of German literature from the 16th century to the present, Volume 1: Literature in the transition from the Middle Ages to modern times. Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 2004, ISBN 3-446-12775-5 , p. 547.
  31. ↑ Alain Felkel : Uprising: the Germans as a rebellious people. Lübbe, 2009, ISBN 978-3-7857-2387-6 , p. 134; Werner Rocke and others: Hanser's social history of German literature from the 16th century to the present, Volume 1: Literature in the transition from the Middle Ages to modern times. 2004, p. 547; Heinrich Pleticha: Landsknecht, Bundschuh, mercenaries: The heyday of the Landsknechts, the turmoil of the peasant uprisings and the Thirty Years' War. Arena-Verlag, 1974, ISBN 3-401-03714-5 , p. 61.
  32. ↑ Hans Jürgen Goertz: Everything belongs to everyone. The experiment in community property from the 16th century to the present day. CH Beck, Munich 1988, ISBN 3-406-09289-6 ; Marcus Sandl: Politics in the face of the end of the world. In: Andreas Pecar, Kai Trampedach (eds.): The Bible as a political argument: prerequisites and consequences of biblical legitimacy of rule in the pre-modern era. Oldenbourg Wissenschaftsverlag, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-486-64443-2 , p. 243ff.; Sven Aage-Joergensen: Utopian Potential in the Bible. In: Wilhelm Vosskamp (ed.): Utopia Research. Interdisciplinary studies on modern utopia. Suhrkamp, ​​1997, ISBN 3-518-37659-4 , pp. 375–401.
  33. ↑ Hans-Dieter Plümper: The community of goods among the Anabaptists of the 16th century. A. Kümmerle, 1972, ISBN 3-87452-166-4 , pp. 18ff.; Jan Cattepoel: Thomas Müntzer: A mystic as a terrorist. Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main 2007, ISBN 978-3-631-56476-9 , p. 101.
  34. ↑ Gerhard Gerhold: Socialism and Protestantism. Neugebauer, 1981, p. 23; Gottfried Seebaß: Kingdom of God and apocalyptic in Thomas Müntzer. In: Gottfried Seebaß, Irene Dingel (ed.): The Reformation and its outsiders. Collected essays and lectures. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Goettingen 1997, ISBN 3-525-58165-3 , pp. 165–185.
  35. ↑ Volker Gerhardt, Hans-Christoph Rauh (eds.): Beginnings of GDR philosophy 1945-1958. Claims, powerlessness, failure. 2001, p. 32, note 20
  36. ↑ Gerd Ströhmann: Educational rituals of the Hutterite Anabaptist community: Community education in the context of different times and cultures. LIT Verlag, 1998, ISBN 3-8258-3978-8 , p. 56.
  37. ↑ Astrid von Schlachta : Danger or Blessing? The Anabaptists in Political Communication. V&R unipress, 2009, ISBN 978-3-89971-758-7 , p. 101.
  38. ↑ HD Plümper: The community of goods among the Anabaptists of the 16th century. 1972
  39. ↑ Roland Ludwig: The reception of the English Revolution in German political thought and in German historiography in the 18th and 19th centuries. Leipzig University Press, 2003, ISBN 3-937209-27-1 , pp. 416–419.
  40. ↑ Fenner Brockway, Britain's first socialists: the Levellers, Agitators, and Diggers of the English Revolution. Quartet Books, 1980, ISBN 0-7043-2207-2 .
  41. ↑ Hermann Schempp: Community settlements on a religious and ideological basis. Mohr/Siebeck, Tübingen 1969, ISBN 3-16-529272-8 , p. 29 and p. 177.
  42. ↑ Richard Faber: Socialism past and present. Königshausen & Neumann, 1999, ISBN 3-88479-731-X , p. 78.
  43. ^ Article Poverty VI. In: Gerhard Müller, Horst Balz (eds.): Theological Real Encyclopedia Volume 1: Aaron Catechism. Walter de Gruyter, 1993, p. 92.
  44. ↑ Sebastian Prüfer: Socialism instead of religion. The German social democracy before the religious question 1863-1890. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Goettingen 2002, ISBN 3-525-35166-6 , p. 202.
  45. ↑ Ulrich Gäbler : History of Pietism, Volume 3: Pietism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Goettingen 2000, ISBN 3-525-55348-X , p. 301 f.
  46. ↑ Julian Strube: Socialism, Catholicism and the Occult in Nineteenth-Century France . De Gruyter, Berlin/Boston 2016, pp. 41–95.
  47. ↑ Sebastian Prüfer: Socialism instead of religion. The German social democracy before the religious question 1863-1890. Göttingen 2002, p. 278. Cf. Julian Strube: Socialism, Catholicism and the Occult in Nineteenth-Century France . De Gruyter, Berlin/Boston 2016, pp. 182–186, 196–211.
  48. ↑ Gerhard Valerius: German Catholicism and Lamennais. Volume 39 of Publications of the Contemporary History Commission: Researches. Matthias-Grünewald-Verlag, 1983, ISBN 3-7967-1051-4 , p. 21; Jan Rohls: Modern Protestant Theology, Volume 1: The Prerequisites and the 19th Century. Mohr/Siebeck, Tübingen 1997, ISBN 3-16-146660-8 , p. 459.
  49. ↑ Antje Gerlach: German literature in Swiss exile: The political propaganda of the associations of German refugees and journeymen in Switzerland from 1833-1845. Vittorio Klostermann, 1975, ISBN 3-465-01042-6 , p. 192.
  50. ↑ Eduard Buess, Markus Mattmüller: Prophetic Socialism. Blumhardt-Ragaz-Barth. Lucerne 1986, p. 17 f.
  51. ↑ Julian Strube: Socialism, Catholicism and the Occult in Nineteenth-Century France . De Gruyter, Berlin/Boston 2016, pp. 48–53; see Gareth Stedman Jones : Utopian Socialism Reconsidered. In: Raphael Samuel (ed.), People's History and Socialist Theory , Routledge & Kegan Paul: London et al. 1981, pp. 138-145.
  52. ↑ Sebastian Prüfer: Socialism instead of religion. The German social democracy before the religious question 1863-1890. Goettingen 2002, p. 276.
  53. ↑ Sample document: Stefan Grotefeld, Matthias Neugebauer, Jean-Daniel Strub: Source texts of theological ethics: from the early church to the present. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 2006, ISBN 3-17-018747-3 , p. 296.
  54. ↑ Gerd W. Grauvogel: Theodor von Wächter, Christian and Social Democrat. Franz Steiner, 1994, ISBN 3-515-06565-2 .
  55. ↑ Eduard Buess, Markus Mattmüller: Prophetic Socialism. Blumhardt-Ragaz-Barth. Lucerne 1986, pp. 29-34; Quote p. 34.
  56. ↑ Examples: Max Löhr: Socialism and Individualism in the Old Testament. Volume 10 of Supplements to the Journal of Old Testament Scholarship. Toepelmann, 1906; Hermann Gunkel: Individualism and Socialism in the Old Testament. In: Religion in history and present, volume III, 1912, col. 493-497; Max Eschelbacher: Socialism in the Old Testament. In: Martin Buber: The Jew. 1924; Robert von Pöhlmann, Friedrich Oertel: History of the Social Question and Socialism in the Ancient World, Volume 2 , CH Beck, 1925 and more often
  57. ↑ Examples: Klaus Kreppel: Decision for socialism: the political biography of Pastor Wilhelm Hohoff 1848-1923. New Society, 1974, ISBN 3-87831-182-6 ; Rudolf Todt: The radical German socialism and the Christian society. Berlin 1878 (reception e.g. here , here , here and here ); Friedrich Heiler: Jesus and Socialism , Christian Kaiser, 1919 ( reception ); Johannes Heinrichs: Freedom - Socialism - Christianity. For a communicative society. Bouvier Verlag Herbert Grundmann, Bonn 1978; Richard Faber: Socialism past and present. 1999, p. 92.
  58. ↑ Susanne Illgner: Recovering the utopia: on the implementation of the Sermon on the Mount in religious socialism. Lingbach, 1989, ISBN 3-923982-05-4 .
  59. ^ Article Marx/Marxism III. In: Theological Real Encyclopedia Volume 22: Malaysia - Minne. Walter de Gruyter, Berlin 1992, p. 248.
  60. ↑ Eduard Buess, Markus Mattmüller: Prophetic Socialism. Blumhardt-Ragaz-Barth. 1986, pp. 37-40.
  61. ↑ Manfred Geis, Gerhard Nestler: The Palatinate Social Democracy: Contributions to its history from the beginnings to 1948/49. KF Geissler, 1999, ISBN 3-933086-75-2 , p. 470.
  62. ↑ 4 28, col. 506.
  63. ↑ Daniela Dunkel: Religious Socialism. In: Theological Real Encyclopedia. Volume 28, Col. 505 f.
  64. ↑ Bruce L. McCormack, Matthias Gockel: Theological Dialectics and Critical Realism: The Origin and Development of Karl Barth's Theology 1909-1936. Theological Publishing House, Zurich 2006, ISBN 3-290-17395-X , p. 93.
  65. ↑ Helga Grebing, Walter Euchner, F.-J. Stegmann, Peter Langhorst: History of social ideas in Germany: Socialism - Catholic social teaching - Protestant social ethics. A manual. Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, 2005, ISBN 3-531-14752-8 , p. 1006.
  66. ↑ Hans Prolingheuer: Small political church history p. 49.
  67. ↑ Walter Bredendiek: Church history from 'left and from below'. Studies on church history in the 19th and 20th centuries from a socio-historical perspective. Leonhard-Thurneysser-Verlag 2011, ISBN 978-3-939176-83-1 , p. 13.
  68. ↑ Report on the first arrest in the exhibition Evangelical Resistance
  69. ↑ Günter Ewald (ed.): Religious socialism. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 1977; Klaus Kreppel: A thin but steady stream. Church from below (IV). In: Public Forum. No. 9, April 27, 1984, p. 29; Klaus Kreppel: To our readers. In: Christian and Socialist. Leaflets of the Federation of Religious Socialists in Germany eV No. 1/1984, pp. 1-4; Walter Dirks, Klaus Kreppel: Chances of a religious socialism. In: Christian and Socialist. No. 2/1984, pp. 20-26.
  70. ↑ Hans Prolingheuer: Small political church history. p. 510.
  71. ↑ Michael Rudloff: The SED's relationship to ideological tolerance in the years 1946 to 1949. In: International scientific correspondence on the history of the German labor movement , 4/1993, pp. 490-505.
  72. ↑ CSM: Who we are ( Memento of 8 June 2012 at the Internet Archive )
  73. ↑ Ekklesia.co.uk (19 March 2007): Christian Socialists head for more radical Labor territory
  74. ↑ anglocatholicsocialism.org ( Memento of August 7, 2011 at the Internet Archive )