“Rarely have we dared to demand of the powers that be, justice; of the wealthy men and the titled, duties. We have produced folios of slavish flattering upon the Divine Right of Power. Shame on us! We have not denounced the wrongs done to weakness. And yet for one text in the Bible which requires submission and patience from the poor, you will find a hundred which denounce the vices of the rich.”
– F. W. Robertson (1816-1853), quoted in Frederick Denison Maurice by C. F. G. Masterman, 1907
It is true that Anglicans have too often been enmeshed with the status quo and too cozy with the rich and powerful. We have been complicit with colonialism and other evils. But Robertson's denunciation is not the whole story. Anglicans have also been committed to caring for the poor, the oppressed, and the marginalized. William Wilberforce was instrumental in ending slavery and the slave trade in the British Empire. Leaders like Frank Weston, Trevor Huddleston, and Arthur Shearly Cripps spoke out on behalf of Africans in the British colonies and Anglican leaders like Desmond Tutu actively resisted Apartheid in South Africa. There is also the tradition of Anglo-Catholic “slum priests” in England. There have been few Anglo-Catholic Socialists. Anglicans like Charles Gore Gore and William Temple influenced the post-war development of the British welfare state. That is but a sample.
“I am inclined to think that we had better look unflinchingly at the work we have done; like puppies, we must have ‘our noses rubbed in it’. A man, now penitent, who has once seduced and abandoned a girl and then lost sight of her, had better not avert his eyes from the crude realities of the life she may now be living. For the same reason we ought to read the psalms that curse the oppressor; read them with fear. Who knows what imprecations of the same sort have been uttered against ourselves? What prayers have Red men, and Black, and Brown and Yellow, sent up against us to their gods or sometimes to God Himself? All over the earth the White Man’s offence ‘smells to heaven’: massacres, broken treaties, theft, kidnappings, enslavement, deportation, floggings, beatings-up, rape, insult, mockery, and odious hypocrisy make up that smell.”
– C. S. Lewis (1898-1963), Christian Reflections, The Psalms
“Look with
pity, O heavenly Father, upon the people in this land who live with injustice,
terror, disease, and death as their constant companions. Have mercy upon us.
Help us to eliminate our cruelty to these our neighbors. Strengthen those who
spend their lives establishing equal protection of the law and equal
opportunities for all. And grant that every one of us may enjoy a fair portion
of the riches of this land; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.”
– Book of
Common Prayer (1979)
“The Christian
Church . . . has the difficult but fascinating task of living in the heart of
the secular world, coming alongside all the good which is there, and at the
same time lovingly upholding a critique of the secular world in the light of
the supernatural.”
– Michael
Ramsey (1904-1988) Sacred and Secular
“We must needs
suffer pain with Christ to do our neighbor good, as well with the body and all
his members, as with heart and mind.”
– Hugh Latimer (1487-1555), Sermons on the Card
“What
Blindness can well be greater, than to think that a Christian Kingdom, as such,
can have any other Goodness, or Union with Christ, but that very Goodness,
which makes the private Christian to be one with Him, and a Partaker of the
Divine Nature? Or that Pride, Wrath, Ambition, Envy, Covetousness, Rapine,
Resentment, Revenge, Hatred, Mischief, and Murder, are only the Works of the
Devil, whilst they are committed by private or single Men; but when carried on
by all the Strength and Authority, all the Hearts, Hands, and Voices of a whole
Nation, that the Devil is then quite driven out of them, loses all his Right
and Power in them, and they become holy Matter of Church Thanksgivings, and the
sacred Oratory of Pulpits.”
– William Law (1686-1761), An Humble, Earnest, and Affectionate Address to the Clergy
“Blessed be
God, the real religion we recommend has proved its consistency with the
original character of Christianity, namely its concern for the poor. It has
proved this by changing the whole condition of the mass of society . . .”
– William Wilberforce (1759-1833), Real Christianity
“The crowning
sign of the Christ was the proclamation of a Gospel to the poor (Matt. xi.
5)—to the poor in the largest acceptation of the term, the poor in means, in
intellect, in feeling, all whom the world holds to be weak.”
– Brooke Foss Westcott (1825-1901), The Gospel of Life: Thoughts Introductory to the Study of Christian Doctrine
"The
Church is all aglow with enterprises ameliorating the condition of labor,
making all classes, rich and poor, feel their interdependence, and their duties
to one another. . . Let us go out of ourselves and live for other men. O!
Christian friends and brothers, as we read the lives of these great devoted
Churchmen and servants of Christ, shall not our hearts be stirred afresh within
us to do something more for the Master’s sake, and press on the Kingdom?"
– Charles Grafton (1830-1912), Pusey and the Church Revival
– Hugh Latimer (1487-1555), Sermons on the Card
– William Law (1686-1761), An Humble, Earnest, and Affectionate Address to the Clergy
– William Wilberforce (1759-1833), Real Christianity
– Brooke Foss Westcott (1825-1901), The Gospel of Life: Thoughts Introductory to the Study of Christian Doctrine
– Charles Grafton (1830-1912), Pusey and the Church Revival
“‘Thy kingdom come:’ let the righteous socialistic order, which Thou revealest as the true human order, spread throughout the world: let the Devil’s selfish competitive anarchy, and all who support it, be brought to utter confusion: let none of thy children sink so deep into the abyss of selfishness as to invert Thy prayer, and say ‘let me go to Heaven when I die,’ but rather ‘Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven:’ Thy will which Thou hast revealed to be that all men should be saved, that disease and premature death should be abolished, that men and women should live happy, orderly lives on a beautiful earth. ‘Give us this day our daily bread:’ us not me. If I am getting my daily bread at the cost or at the risk of depriving others of theirs, I pray Thee, oh Father, take it from me. If I have bread enough for many days, and others have not bread enough for to-day, I pray Thee to take it from me and to give it to them. I pray for a distribution of wealth according to Thy just and Fatherly laws.”
– Stewart Headlam (1847-1924), The Laws of Eternal Life, Studies in the Church Catechism
– Frank Weston (1871-1924), Our Present Duty
“It is useless
to utter fervent petitions for that Kingdom to be established and that Will
done, unless we are willing to do something about it ourselves. That means
trying to see things, persons and choices from the angle of eternity; and
dealing with them as part of the material in which the Spirit works. This will
be decisive for the way we behave as to our personal, social, and national
obligations. It will decide the papers we read, the movements we support, the
kind of administrators we vote for, our attitude to social and international
justice.”
– Evelyn
Underhill (1875-1941), The Spiritual Life
“[The goal of
the human enterprise] is fullness of personality in community. . .
“Two forms of
faithlessness are equally dangerous. One rests in natural good as a finality,
the other dreads or despises it, drawn to the ever-barren quest for discarnate
Spirit. Only the Catholic faith escapes these evils. Indifference to earthly
life and satisfaction in it are alike denied to him who kneels before the Babe.
To him, the world of sense is neither illusion nor enemy; but still less is it
his object. It is the sacramental instrument of the Spirit, and he would fain
ensure its health and purity with as anxious care as men show in preparation of
the Eucharistic Host. All those labors, which seek for the race a healthful and
decent physical existence, are preparations that men may be born from above; it
is our high privilege to make the social organism a fit home for the Indwelling
God.”
– Vida Dutton Scudder (1861-1954), Social Teachings of the Christian Year
“Unless we do change our
whole way of thought about work, I do not think we shall ever escape from the appalling
squirrel cage of economic confusion in which we have been madly turning for the last three
centuries or so, the cage in which we landed ourselves by acquiescing in a social system
based upon Envy and Avarice.
A society in which consumption has to be artificially stimulated in order to keep production
going is a society founded on trash and waste, and such a society is a house built upon sand..”
– Dorothy Sayers (1893-1957), Why Work from Letters to the Diminished Church
If our concern
as Christians is bound to be with the development of persons in community – the
divine purpose in Creation, we shall concentrate our attention on the
[political, social, and economic] influences making for true fellowship on the
one side or for gangsterism or sheer self-seeking on the other.”
– William
Temple (1881-1944), Social Witness and Evangelism
“Social
witness is a consequence of the Gospel for those who already believe, because
that Gospel, accepted in their hearts, impels them to do all they can to remedy
injustice, to alleviate distress, to create fellowship, and to promote the
development of fully matured persons in fellowship.”
– William
Temple (1881-1944), Social Witness and Evangelism
“If we are
going to show a real respect for each individual as a child of God, we must see
that from infancy to full maturity every child is set in such a social context will
best develop all the powers which God has given him. To provide such an
opportunity, not for a favoured few but for all children, is an urgent national
duty. To fail here on the ground of the large expenditure required would be a
national sin.”
– William
Temple (1881-1944), Christianity and Social Order
– Vida Dutton Scudder (1861-1954), Social Teachings of the Christian Year
– Dorothy Sayers (1893-1957), Why Work from Letters to the Diminished Church
“I am sorry to hear of the acute pain and the various other troubles. It makes me unsay all I have ever said against our English ‘Welfare State’, which at least provides free medical treatment for all.”
– C. S. Lewis (1898-1963), Letters to an American Lady
– Urban T. Holmes (1930-1981), What Is Anglicanism?
“On the one
hand, we cannot conceive the coming of God’s kingdom in the world apart from
the consummation in heaven. On the other hand as we look towards the vision of
God in heaven, we know that just because heaven is the perfection of love we do
not advance one step towards heaven unless the same love is showing itself in
our service of the human race here and now and in our healing of its wounds and
divisions.”
– Michael
Ramsey (1904-1988), Christian Responsibility in a World Society in Canterbury
Essays and Addresses
“Christian
thought is unable to conceive the reign of God upon earth apart from a
transforming of humanity into
the likeness of Christ at his coming and history into a new and unimaginable
relation to God beyond history.”
– Michael
Ramsey (1904-1988), Sacred and Secular
“Our
faith will be tested in our actions, not least in our actions concerning peace,
concerning race, concerning poverty. Faith is a costly certainty, but no easy
security as our God is blazing fire.”
–
Michael Ramsey (1904-1988), address at the opening of the 1968 Lambeth
Conference
– Trevor Huddleston (1913-1998), The True and Living God
“We are sent
into the world, like Jesus, to serve. For this is the natural expression of our
love for our neighbors. We love. We go. We serve. And in this we have (or
should have) no ulterior motive. True, the gospel lacks visibility if we merely
preach it, and lacks credibility if we who preach it are interested only in
souls and have no concern about the welfare of people’s bodies, situations and
communities.”
– John Stott
(1921-2011), Christian Mission in the Modern World
“‘Blessed are
the poor’ ‘The poor have the Gospel preached to them’. The theme of good news
to the poor, the anawim, the little people, is crucial to Christianity.
. . So the test of spirituality is a practical test, and particularly the test
of attitude to the poor.”
– Kenneth Leech
(1939-2015), True Prayer : an Invitation to Christian Spirituality“When will we
learn that human beings are of infinite value because they have been created in
the image of God, and that it is a blasphemy to treat them as if they were less
than this and to do so ultimately recoils on those who do this? In dehumanizing
others, they are themselves dehumanized. Perhaps oppression dehumanizes the
oppressor as much as, if not more than, the oppressed. They need each other to
become truly free, to become human. We can be human only in fellowship, in
community, in koinonia, in peace.
Let us work to be peacemakers, those given a wonderful share in Our Lord’s ministry of reconciliation. If we want peace, so we have been told, let us work for justice. Let us beat our swords into ploughshares.
God calls us
to be fellow workers with Him, so that we can extend His Kingdom of Shalom, of
justice, of goodness, of compassion, of caring, of sharing, of laughter, joy
and reconciliation, so that the kingdoms of this world will become the Kingdom
of our God and of His Christ, and He shall reign forever and ever. Amen.”
– Desmond Tutu
(1931-2021), Nobel Peace Prize Lecture, December 11, 1984
– N. T. Wright (1948 - ), Simply Christian
“But the whole
point of the Gospels is that the coming of God’s kingdom on earth as in heaven
is precisely not the imposition of an alien and dehumanizing tyranny, but
rather the confrontation of alien and dehumanizing tyrannies with the news of a
God–the God recognized in Jesus–who is radically different from them all, and
whose inbreaking justice aims at rescuing and restoring genuine humanness.”
– N. T. Wright (1948 - ), Kingdom Come: The Public meaning of the Gospels
– Kelly Brown Douglas (1957 - ), What does it mean to be a Christian in these times?, Christian Century, February 2025
“We are to
live as if the bigotry, fear, stereotypes, and hateful ‘isms’ that separate us
one from another are no more. We are to live as if compassion not condemnation,
justice not judgment, and righteousness not self-righteousness are the
watchwords of our humanity. We are to live as if the peace of God that is
justice has come to earth. Even if these ways of acting are not the ways of our
world, we must be daring enough to make them the way of our living.”
– Kelly Brown
Douglas (1957 - ), How is it That God Speaks? in Feminism and Religion, January 21, 2014
Important as the pursuit of justice is, Anglicans also recognize that justice, as well as political and economic policies more generally, must be pursued with humility and mercy
“Man cannot
meet his own deepest need, nor find for himself release from his profoundest
trouble. What he needs is not progress, but redemption. If the Kingdom of God
is to come on earth, it must come because God first comes on earth Himself.”
– William
Temple (1881-1944), Nature, Man and God
“A social
order for which humanity hungers is beyond the reach of merely human
expedients. Nothing will establish peace on the earth but a new creation from
God in response to repentance and prayer.”
– Lambeth
Committee Report on International Relations (1920)
“Political issues are often concerned with people as they are, not with people as they ought to be. Part of the task of the Church is to help people to order their lives in order to lead them to what they ought to be. Assuming they are already as they ought to be always leads to disaster.
It is not my belief that people are utterly bad, or even that they are more bad than good. What I am contending here is that we are not wholly good, and that even our goodness is infected with self-centeredness. For this reason, we are exposed to temptation as far as we are able to obtain power.
The Church’s
belief in Original Sin should make us intensely realistic and should free us
from trying to create a Utopia.”
– William
Temple (1881-1944), Christianity and Social Order
“It is of crucial
importance that the Church acting corporately should not commit itself to any
particular policy. A policy always depends on technical decisions concerning
the actual relations of cause and effect in the political and economic world;
about these a Christian as such has no more reliable judgement than an atheist,
except so far as he should be more immune to the temptations of self-interest.”
– William
Temple (1881-1944), Christianity and Social Order
“It is one
thing to state main Christian principles, or to denounce a particular downright
evil. It is another thing to commend a particular programme, on which the
technical skills and wisdom of competent Christians may differ, and to say
‘This is the Christian programme,’ as if to unchurch or label as second-grade
any Christians who might for good reasons dissent.”
– Michael
Ramsey (1904-1988), The Christian Priest Today
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