Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-tf8b9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-07T09:52:31.198Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

10 - Christian social thought

from PART I - CHRISTIANITY AND MODERNITY

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2008

Sheridan Gilley
Affiliation:
University of Durham
Brian Stanley
Affiliation:
Henry Martyn Centre, Cambridge
Get access

Summary

Catholic social teaching

In the Catholic tradition, the contours of Christian social thought in the nineteenth century were increasingly defined by the content of papal encyclicals. An encyclical is a letter, usually addressed to the Catholic bishops of the world, by which a pope attempts to strengthen the unity of the church in its belief and discipline. He may also apply that belief to the day-to-day affairs of the human race and therefore pronounce on social, economic and political problems. The first pope to revive the ancient practice of issuing encyclicals was Benedict XIV (1740–58), but, before Rerum Novarum in 1891, the papal encyclicals contained no social teaching as such. When the popes dealt with matters such as the state and the family, they usually looked to Revelation as their authority and spoke to Catholics, or to transgressors of the rights of the church.

Divine Revelation, formally speaking, is the source from which the church draws its teaching. None the less, for the development of its social teachings, the church increasingly turned to the natural law, sometimes referred to as the moral law, and saw it as a handmaiden of Revelation. The church could do so because it believed that the natural law is written in the human heart by God and can be known by the use of reason. Therefore, when the popes began to teach on the rights of the family, and on the right to possess private property and to association, the basis for the existence of the state, they claimed that reason could deduce such rights from the natural law. This appeal to the natural law is vital to the cogency of the papal encyclicals, because the church argues that its social teachings are valid for everyone, irrespective of belief in Revelation.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2005

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Anstey, Roger, The Atlantic slave trade and British abolition, 1760–1810 (London: Macmillan, 1975).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Antonazzi, Giovanni (ed), L’enciclica Rerum Novarum: testo autentico e redazioni preparatorie dai documenti originali (Rome: Edizioni d Storia e Letteratura, 1957).Google Scholar
Bunting, T. P. and Rowe, G. S., The life of Jabez Bunting (London: Longman, 1887).Google Scholar
Calvez, Jean-Yves, SJ and Perrin, Jacques, SJ, The church and social justice: the social teachings of the popes from Leo XIII to Pius XII (1878–1938) (London: Burns and Oates, 1961).Google Scholar
Carlen, Claudia (ed.), The papal encyclicals 1740–1878 (Ann Arbor, MI: The Pierian Press, 1981).Google Scholar
Carlen, ClaudiaThe papal encyclicals 1878–1903 (Raleigh, NC: McGrath Publishing, 1981).Google Scholar
Christensen, Torben, Origin and history of Christian Socialism, 1848–34 (Aarhus: Universitets-forlaget, 1962).Google Scholar
De Gasperi, Alcide, I tempi e gli uomini che prepararano la ‘Rerum Novarum’ (Milan: Vita e Pensiero, 1945).Google Scholar
Ehler, Sidney Z. and Morrall, John B. (trans. and ed), Church and state through the centuries: a collection of historical documents with commentaries (London: Burns and Oates, 1954).Google Scholar
Fremantle, Anne (ed), The papal encyclicals in their historical context (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1956).Google Scholar
Gohre, P. S., The evangelical-social movement in Germany (London: Ideal, 1898).Google Scholar
Heslam, P. S., Creating a Christian worldview: Abraham Kuyper’s lectures on Calvinism (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1998).Google Scholar
Howse, E. M., Saints in politics: the ‘Clapham Sect’ and the growth of freedom (London: George Allen, and Unwin, 1953).Google Scholar
Jones, Peter A., The Christian Socialist revival, 1877–1914 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lausten, M. S., A church history of Denmark (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002).Google Scholar
Molony, John, ‘The making of Rerum Novarum, April 1890–May 1891’, in Furlong, Paul and Curtis, David (eds.), The Church faces the modern world: Rerum Novarum and its impact (Hull: Earlsgate Press, 1994).Google Scholar
Molony, John, The emergence of political Catholicism in Italy: Partito Popolare 1919–1926 (London: Croom Helm, 1977).Google Scholar
Molony, John, The worker question: a new historical perspective on Rerum Novarum (Melbourne: Collins Dove, 1991).Google Scholar
Rickard, John, H. B. Higgins: the rebel as judge (Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1984).Google Scholar
Samuelsson, K., From great power to welfare state: 300 years of Swedish social development (London: Allen and Unwin, 1968).Google Scholar
Scott, F. D., Sweden: the nation’s history (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1977).Google Scholar
Soloway, R. A, Prelates and people: ecclesiastical social thought in England 1783–1852 (London and Toronto: Routledge and Kegan Paul and University of Toronto Press, 1969).Google Scholar
Thompson, D. M., ‘John Clifford’s social gospel’, Baptist Quarterly 31 (1986).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thompson, D. M., ‘R. W Dale in context’, in Binfield, C. (ed.), The cross and the city, Supplement no. 2 to Journal of the United Reformed Church History Society 6 (1999).Google Scholar
Thompson, D. M., ‘The emergence of the Nonconformist social gospel in England’, in Robbins, K. (ed.), Protestant evangelicalism: Britain, Ireland, Germany and America c.1750–c.1950, Studies in Church History, Subsidia 7 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1990).Google Scholar
Ward, W. R., Theology, sociology andpolitics: the German Protestant social conscience, 1890–1933 (Berne: Peter Lang, 1979).Google Scholar
Wear mouth, R. F., Methodism and the working-class movements of England, 1800–1850 (London: Epworth Press, 1937).Google Scholar
Wintle, M., An economic and social history of the Netherlands, 1800–1920 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wintle, M., Pillars of piety: religion in the Netherlands in the nineteenth century, 1813–1901 (Hull: Hull University Press, 1987).Google Scholar
Wright, T. R., The religion of humanity: the impact of Comtean positivism on Victorian Britain (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986).Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×