Christianity and Politics: The Case of Gerrard Winstanley

Abstract

“For I tell you and your preachers, that Scripture which saith The poor shall inherit the earth, is really and materially to be fulfilled. For the earth is to be restored from the bondage of sword property, and it is to become a common treasury in reality to whole mankind; for this is the work of the true saviour to do, who is the true and faithful Leveller, even the spirit and power of universal love...Thus wrote Gerrard Winstanley in 1650, about one year after the execution of Charles I. Sketching in the economic and political conditions of an earlier revolutionary period, Engels wrote in The Peasant War in Germany:“Even the so-called religious wars of the sixteenth century involved primarily positive material class interests. Although the class struggles of the day were carried out under religious shibboleths, and though the interests, requirements, and demands of the various classes were concealed behind a religious screen, this changed nothing in the matter and is easily explained by the conditions of the time.”