Christianity and Equality - some early torchbearers

by Andrew Bradstock

Christians have usually divided into those who think we have to accept inequality as a consequence of ‘the Fall’ and those who see a biblical imperative to challenge it. That no hint of a social hierarchy is woven into the Creation story has inspired many to believe that our fundamental equality before God should be reflected in our economic and social arrangements.

In fact they see the whole of Scripture as a challenge to pursue a radical vision, pointing to the egalitarian structure of the early Hebrew communities, the calls by the prophets for social justice built on equality, the songs of Hannah and Mary with their references to God bringing down the powerful and lifting up the lowly, and the early Christian practice of sharing possessions as examples of God’s concern for equality. Not without reason does Duncan Forrester argue that the major source of the ‘modern worldwide emphasis on equality’ is the Judaeo-Christian tradition.

For most of its history the church has not overtly challenged inequality, so those of its members who have are found on its fringes. One well-known example is the fourteenth-century priest John Ball, who rallied his followers with a sermon based on the popular saw, ‘When Adam delved and Eve span, Who was then the gentleman?’ Ball held that, since all are descended from the first tenants of Eden no basis exists for class and social division. ‘Things cannot go well in England, nor ever shall, until all things are held in common, when there shall be neither slaves nor lords, but all of us are united together’ was the gist of his message. And he sought to act upon it by leading a revolt against an iniquitous poll tax, advocated by the then Archbishop of Canterbury!

During the English civil war ideas of equality again surfaced strongly, not least among Quakers who believed that all had the ‘light within’ and could know Christ without the aid of a ‘learned priest’. For them God was the ‘great Leveller’, and some went so far as ‘going naked’ to show that, whether finely or raggedly dressed, underneath we are all equal. Quakers refused to remove their hats when in the presence of their ‘superiors’ and used the familiar ‘thee’ and ‘thou’ form of address with both high and low rank. God, not fellow humans, was worthy of respect, they argued. One of the Quakers’ contemporaries, Abiezer Coppe, also saw God having ‘levelling tendencies’, likening him to a highwayman who takes from the rich and gives to the poor. Coppe had an interesting take on the text ‘the Lord will come as a thief in the night’!

The Levellers themselves pushed a radical agenda, one of their leaders, John Lilburne, affirming that ‘every particular and individual man and woman that ever breathed in the world since Adam and Eve are and were by nature all equal and alike in power, dignity, authority and majesty.’ From this he derived the concept of the sovereignty of the people: rule by one person over another could only be tolerated where the governed had given their consent. Leveller women, like Quaker women, argued their equality with men. Despite their name Levellers did not advocate ‘levelling property’, though the Diggers or ‘true levellers’ did. They not only believed that God originally made the Earth a ‘common treasury’ but that a propertyless society was still attainable, despite the Fall leaving us subject to impulses of greed, fear and lust. Inspired by their leader, Gerrard Winstanley, Diggers set up communities based on common ownership, encouraging others to see sharing the land as the only way to achieve a rational and just society.

More recently writers like Tawney and MacIntyre have called Christians to work for equality, MacIntyre looking back to the monastic communities as models of egalitarian living. In the 1960s Vatican II and the World Council of Churches spoke of the church as a sign of the coming unity of humankind and an instrument for its achievement - and arguably the church prefigures this unity every time it celebrates Holy Communion. As Christians share equally in the bread and the wine we anticipate powerfully that future ‘kingdom’ when all human distinctions of wealth, status and power will be levelled and the redeemed will gather on equal terms in the ‘new Jerusalem’.

Andrew Bradstock was Director of CSM (2004 - 2008) and author of several books on the 17th-century radicals.

Andrew Bradstock, 05/02/2009