Stewart
Headlam,
the son of
an Evangelical Christian, was born
at Wavertree near Liverpool on 12th
January. After Eton, Headlam went to Cambridge
University where he influenced by the ideas of the Christian
Socialist, Frederick Denison Maurice.
Headlam agreed with Maurice, who taught him moral philosophy at Cambridge,
that God's Kingdom on earth would replace a "competitive, unjust
society with a co-operative and egalitarian
social order."
Headlam was ordained and appointed curate of St. John's Church in
Drury Lane. He was shocked by the poverty he witnessed in London
and was determined to do all he could to reduce this suffering. In
1873 he moved to St. Matthew's Church, Bethnal Green, where the conditions
were even worse than in Drury Lane. The vicar at the church, Septimus
Hansard, was another Christian Socialist
who influenced the ideas of Headlam.
In his sermons, Headlam attacked the wide gap between rich and poor
and warned the working class that they should distrust middle-class
reformers. Headlam presented Jesus Christ as a revolutionary and when
the Bishop of London, heard about this, he threatened him with dismissal.
Headlam refused to change and in 1878 he was sacked.
Headlam now became a vicar without a parish. He established the Guild
of St Matthew which soon had 400 members, a quarter of them
church ministers. He toured the country expounding Christian
Socialism. Influenced by the ideas of Henry
George, the author of Progress
and Poverty, Headlam argued for a tax on land and
the redistribution of wealth as a means of ending poverty. He also
denounced wealth as robbery and inconsistent with Christianity.
In 1886 Headlam joined the Fabian Society.
He soon became one of the leading figures in the movement, helping
to formulate policy and speaking at public meetings. He wrote the
Fabian pamphlet Christian
Socialism, where he declared that his main objective
was not to convert socialists to Christianity, but to make socialists
out of Christians. He was also editor of The
Church Reformer, a Christian
Socialist journal that was published from 1884 to 1895.
Headlam was active in local politics and in 1888 he and Annie
Besant, were elected to the London
School Board. Together they attempted to persuade the School
Board to abolish compulsory religious instruction and to provide free
meals for the poor. Headlam also joined the campaign to persuade the
government to help intelligent members of the working class to receive
a university education.
Most of the leaders of the Fabian Society
did not share Headlam's religious beliefs. However, Headlam was willing
to help non-Christians if they shared his political beliefs. Headlam
joined the campaign to persuade Parliament to allow the leader of
the Secular Society, Charles
Bradlaugh, to take his seat in the House
of Commons. Headlam also helped Oscar Wilde
during his trial for homosexual offences and when he was released
from prison in 1897.
Elected to the London County Council in
1907, Stewart Headlam remained active in politics until his death
on 18th November, 1924.
(1)
Stewart Headlam, speech at a meeting of the Guild of St Matthew (1883)
Jesus was the social and political Emancipator,
the greatest of all secular workers, the founder of the the great
Socialistic society for the promotion of righteousness, the preacher
of Revolution.
(2)
Stewart Headlam, speech (1883)
We who are Socialists owe a special debt of gratitude
to the men who gathered round Maurice in 1848, and under his influence
and teaching made by their work and writings the propagation of Socialism
a far easier thing than it otherwise would have been.
(3) Stewart Headlam, Christian
Socialism (1892)
The Christian Church is intended to be a society
not merely for teaching a number of elaborate doctrines, not even
for maintaining a beautiful ritual and worship but mainly and chiefly
for doing on a large scale throughout the world those secular, socialistic
works which Christ did on a small scale in Palestine.
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