The Problem of Christian Socialism

Socialism is on the rise in the United States. Its recent ascendency started with Bernie Sanders’ surprising challenge to Hilary Clinton in 2016, then the election of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib in 2019, and most recently with Zohran Mamdani as mayor of New York City since January 2026. It has been a good decade for the Democratic Socialists of America, at least.

Socialism, however, is a slippery term not limited to left-wing politicians, politics, or parties. Many see the parallel rise of the populist right, which rejects economic liberty in favor of nationalism and industrial policy, as a form of socialism as well. Historically, at least, most have been as anti-capitalist as the typical socialist, even if they might balk at being called socialist today.

Another historical way of viewing socialism would be trade-unionism, which has been on the decline for decades now in the United States. Nevertheless, it recently took a surprising turn toward political diversity when Sean O’Brien, the general president of the Brotherhood of Teamsters, spoke at the Republican National Convention in 2024. The Teamsters did not endorse a presidential candidate that year, breaking with a two-decade streak of backing Democrats since 2000. 

Others see “socialism” in the welfare state capitalism of Scandinavia. Economists would dispute this (hence the term “welfare state capitalism”), but for many this is what socialism means, as distinct from, say, communism or fascism. Socialists today often, to their credit, object to equating socialism with communism or fascism, but most communists and fascists would not object to this equation, rather claiming their ideologies to be the truest forms of socialism. 

For still others, “socialism” simply means caring for one’s neighbor, the idea that morality, ethics, love, justice, and fairness are not individual values but necessarily mean working for the common good, including the material wellbeing of others and state social policies.

What are socially conscious Christians to make of this? Can a Christian be a socialist? Or is the term “Christian socialist” a contradiction? 

A Christian perspective must contend, as Anglican theologian F. D. Maurice put it, “with the unsocial Christians and unchristian Socialists,” whether or not one would call oneself a “Christian socialist.” Simply claiming or rejecting “socialism,” however one defines it, is not enough. Any answer to the problem of American socialism requires a positive vision of Christian social service and action.

S. L. Frank on the Problem of Christian Socialism

First, as a matter of fact, it should be noted that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is Roman Catholic. So if the question, “Can a Christian be a socialist?” is merely a factual matter, the answer is yes. Nor is she the first such Christian socialist in history, as we’ll see in a moment. I start here, however, because I want to be clear that the foregoing discussion is not meant to call into question the sincerity of anyone’s faith.

Before some brief history of Christian socialism, however, it is important to more clearly parse S. L. Frank’s understanding of the pivotal term: “it might seem that ‘Christian socialism’ is, in principle, not a problem at all,” writes Frank. “And indeed, so far as by socialism we mean nothing other than an attitude of active love for one’s neighbors, a serious sense of responsibility for their material fate, every Christian, insofar as he wishes to be a true Christian, must in this sense be a ‘socialist.’” Here we see that the usage of “socialism” as merely “caring for one’s neighbor” is not recent. 

In this sense, Frank even writes in a later work, “‘Christian socialism’ as a doctrine of social reform was preached by St. John Chrysostom in the fourth century and has been present in a general form in Christian thought from the moment when the so-called ‘social question’ began to trouble human conscience.” He then claims, “The sound and rational principles of it have been proclaimed obligatory for Christians in the well-known modern Encyclicals of the Popes Leo XIII and Pius XI,” i.e., Rerum Novarum (1891) and Quadragesimo Anno (1931). Frank also, on a purely voluntary level, supports Christian organized labor, among other social enterprises: “There must be Christian unions of various trades and professions, Christian societies for supplying human needs, Christian organizations for reconciling all kinds of human conflicts.”

Indeed, even at the time Frank wrote his essay on Christian socialism (1939), “socialism” had a broad semantic range. The German historical school of economics, for example, claimed to promote socialism, but it was not Marxist. Indeed, at its worst it can be seen as a precursor to National Socialist—i.e., Nazi—economics, though many of its major figures, such as W. G. F. Roscher, were far more mainstream and could not fairly be associated with Nazism. Similarly, many American Social Gospel theologians, such as Washington Gladden, were influenced by this economic school as well. Some, such as Walter Rauschenbusch, even explicitly supported socialism and identified as a Christian socialist, though in his case that position seems more informed by the now-obscure work of Henry George, author of Progress and Poverty and advocate of the land tax.

Importantly, Frank survived the Russian revolution, being exiled in 1922 with many other religious intellectuals and settling in Berlin. This would have been a bad enough environment in the coming years for a Slav, but Frank was also ethnically Jewish. In 1937, he and his family fled to Paris, after being questioned more than once by the SS. He lost many friends and family in the Holocaust. Thus, Frank had seen real communism and fascism, and he rejected both those forms of socialism. But he did not merely equate socialism with these extremes. He had friends, such as the philosopher Nikolai Berdyaev and the theologian Fr. Sergei Bulgakov, who, in different ways, identified as Christian socialists. So Frank’s position carries with it relevant, contemporary nuance.

Bulgakov, notably, had been a Marxist economist before his religious conversion, after which he published several critiques of Marxism, including an explicit rejection of the labor theory of value. According to Gennadii Aliaiev, “Bulgakov’s main point” of an essay he wrote on Christianity and socialism “is that the social and economic nature of socialism is beyond the doctrine of the Orthodox Church. The only thing that is to be really condemned is the militant atheism with which it is confused.” Aliaiev continues, “However, Frank insists” in a response to Bulgakov “that not only must openly professed atheism be rejected, but also the condemnation must be spread to latent atheism: the grounds on which the dominant type of the socialistic mood rises.” 

As for Berdyaev, his socialism was personalistic and anarchistic—suspicious of state power but also rejecting capitalism. As editor of the journal Put’ that published Bulgakov’s essay, he claimed to welcome all perspectives—except any that tried to justify capitalism. To his credit, however, he published Frank’s essay in Put’s final issue. Why would this be “to his credit”? Because Frank does not stop at the “caring for one’s neighbor” definition of socialism, explicitly rejecting socialism as a model for social structures and affirming economic liberty. 

Frank asks,

“[H]ow should a Christian relate—precisely as a Christian, that is, from the depths of his specifically Christian life orientation—to the idea of social reforms? This question ultimately boils down to the question: how should a Christian evaluate external measures, organizational order, aimed at satisfying the material needs of people?”

As an empirical matter, Frank thinks the answer should be obvious: “In essence, we think that the experience of socialist economy (both in Russia and in Germany) refutes this assertion”—that in relation to the fair distribution of income and the material well-being of the masses, the socialist system has an advantage over capitalism—“and testifies to the exact opposite.”

But, again, Frank takes part in a conversation with friends whom he knows to be neither fascists nor communists. Thus, he adds further nuance to sharpen his critique, rather than resting it on the worst historical expressions of socialism. 

Frank makes a distinction between two aspects of social life, corresponding to various dualities, such as the heavenly and earthly kingdoms, the Church and the world, grace and the law: “This duality does not, as is often thought, entail complete indifference to the ‘world,’ a complete isolation within the ‘heavenly’ alone; such a position would, on the contrary, signify the absence of the duality fundamental to Christian consciousness.” Thus, Frank affirms the aspiration to apply Christian principles to social structures and material life. The question—and, to him, the problem—is whether the social structures of socialism can promote Christian principles.

The law and government are needed to check the full social harm of human sin, but they cannot save. Thus, Frank argues in his social philosophy, The Spiritual Foundations of Society, that civil law must reconcile spontaneous order with external planning, always preserving and protecting human freedom, only curtailing its abuse and leaving room for it to provide what the state never can: the grace and mercy of the Gospel that alone can save the soul. The state cannot love. Thus, he writes in his essay on Christian socialism, “From the standpoint of Christian faith and a Christian understanding of life, preference is given to that social system or order that is most conducive to the development and strengthening of free, fraternal, loving communion between people.” Making himself clear, he adds, “As paradoxical as it may seem, such a system is not ‘socialism,’ but rather a system based on the economic freedom of the individual, on the freedom of individual disposal of property.”

Thus, Frank’s answer to the question, “Can a Christian be a socialist?” is ultimately “no,” so long as one understands socialism as more than merely “caring for one’s neighbor.” Indeed, he implies that such concern should lead us to the opposite conclusion. As he wrote in The Spiritual Foundations of Society, “In practice, liberalism or Manchesterism contains a considerable amount of truth. But this truth usually receives an incorrect philosophical explanation.” The correct “philosophical explanation,” to Frank, is one based on his Orthodox Christian perspective. The duality of life has ontological roots—it is a divinely grounded order. The Kingdom of God consists in the proper union of the law and grace in the reality of “Godmanhood,” our communion with the divine, revealed by Jesus Christ, the unique “God-Man,” who preached the good news of the Fatherhood of God. 

F. D. Maurice’s Christian Socialism

While I am personally sympathetic to Frank’s position, we can further nuance this discussion by considering the socialism of the first Christian socialist, F. D. Maurice. I say that Maurice is the first Christian socialist, because he actually coined the term for a series of tracts he and other leaders of his movement published in 1850. “‘Tracts on Christian Socialism,’” wrote Maurice to J. M. Ludlow, “is, it seems to me, the only title which will define our object and will commit us at once to the conflict we must engage in sooner or later with the unsocial Christians and the unchristian Socialists.” 

In 1850, socialism in England was not yet political. There were some—the Chartists—who wanted political change for the sake of the working classes. They would later merge with the socialists, but in Maurice’s day English socialists focused more on advocacy for organized labor, for workers freely forming unions of mutual support. Under Maurice’s leadership, the Christian socialists supported entrepreneurial worker cooperatives in the neighborhood of Lincoln’s Inn, where he served as chaplain while teaching theology at King’s College, London.

Two years before publishing Tracts on Christian Socialism, at the same time as the publication of the Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friederich Engels and, more impactful at the time, concurrently with the 1848 February Revolution in Paris, Maurice preached a series of sermons on the Lord’s Prayer. His first sermon contains a surprising affirmation for a socialist, at least by narrow and radical understandings of that term: “Property,” preached Maurice, “is holy.” 

Why was property holy for Maurice? For the same reason that S. L. Frank rejected Christian socialism in his time: “Beneath all distinction of property and of rank lie the obligations of a common Creation, Redemption, Humanity,” says Maurice. Property, to Maurice, is grounded in social responsibility. After all, Christians pray “our Father” not just “my Father.” “[T]he name Father loses its significance for us individually, when we will not use it as the members of a family,” he preached.  

Key to understanding Maurice’s social activism—and his consistent rejection of his young contemporaries’ more radical socialism—is his belief in a “divine order” of society, grounded in the Fatherhood of God. As he wrote in his Social Morality, “a Fatherly Will is at the root of Humanity and upholds the Universe.” While Maurice stops short of Frank’s Orthodox affirmation of “Godmanhood,” they nevertheless share a common Christian Platonism that grounds their social vision. God has established an ideal social order to which our earthly communities must conform as outposts of God’s kingdom. Thus, by contrast to “unchristian Socialists,” Maurice asserted, “I assume that to be the only possible condition of society which they wish to make the condition of it.” Socialism, as he conceived it, already existed in the Christian brotherhood of the Church established by Jesus Christ. We do not need to establish the kingdom of heaven on earth; it is already here.

At the same time, however, Maurice did support local workers, offering biweekly conferences with labor leaders and a weekly Bible study for other Christian socialists, as well as serving as chaplain of Lincoln’s Inn. Like Frank, his rejection of the explicit and latent atheism of the dominant socialism of his day did not mean social inaction. Rather, he took their challenge seriously, while still taking inspiration from the then-new science of political economy. Maurice never quite understood competition in non-adversarial terms, but he was a measured admirer of Adam Smith (especially his condemnation of the slave trade and aristocratic monopolies), as well as being a friendly associate of John Stuart Mill. 

While many socialists today might be unsatisfied with Maurice’s “Christian socialism,” he at the same time demonstrates that the best socialist impulses need not lead one to Marxism or populism, nor to other radical and revolutionary perspectives on the right or left. And to his credit, Maurice did leave a lasting legacy.

While the worker cooperatives ultimately failed due to mismanagement and legal obstacles, in 1854 workers in Maurice’s community approached him to become first president of The Working Men’s College, London, which still exists to this day. This school was the first in Europe to provide humane higher education to the working classes, offering courses at night and on weekends. In a series of lectures to promote the new college, Maurice outlined its liberating goal: “We must aim in all our teaching of the working classes, at making them free,” by “seek[ing] all above all things to make our working people understand that they are Persons, and not Things.” They, too, are bearers of God’s image, with immeasurable worth and potential. Christians cannot rest in “unsocial” contentment with the status quo, but must work for the good of their neighbors, their brethren in Christ.

Can a Christian be a socialist? Yes and No

Other Christian socialists, like Ludlow, lamented that Maurice diverted the energy of the movement into the college. But for Maurice, this dignifying and liberating education had been the point of Christian socialism all along. And it should give us pause today as we watch the rise of socialism across our political landscape. 

On the one hand, Frank offers good reasons why Christians should be hesitant to accept and support many socialist proposals. But on the other hand, Maurice models an alternative Christian socialism that does not fall into the sort of utopian errors Frank feared. 

At the least, both thinkers agree that it is not enough to criticize or reject what one fears in socialism. One must also affirm what is positive and give people a better alternative, a clearer—and more practical—social vision. For that, in line with Frank and contrary to the socialism of many today, we need more economic freedom for charitable and entrepreneurial initiative, not less. And we need churches to take the lead, as Maurice envisioned and modeled in his life, so that with God as our Father we may all in our various vocations fulfill Christ’s words: “inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these My brethren, you did it to Me” (25:40).