Religion, Utopia and the Socialist Movement: Socialism in Britain, 1880-1900

社会主义与宗教和乌托邦之间的关系一直令人不安。二十世纪社会主义的主流，共产主义和社会民主主义，试图在社会主义与宗教和乌托邦之间划清界限（Leopold，2008; McLellan，1987; Sassoon，2010）。因此，社会主义似乎不应该包含宗教和乌托邦的成分。因此，与宗教和乌托邦话语相结合的社会主义形式将显得非常可疑。在我的研究中，我的目标是通过对世纪后期英国社会主义的深入研究来考虑这种怀疑是否合理。英国社会主义对我的研究来说是一个有利的案例，因为它有明显的乌托邦和宗教色彩（Yeo，1977;博蒙，2005; Linehan，2012）。具体来说，社会主义思想家爱德华·卡彭特、新生活团契和工党都试图用精神术语和乌托邦式的愿景来阐明他们的社会主义（Pierson，1973; Mayhew，1982;曼顿，2003年）。我的主要研究目标是研究乌托邦，宗教和社会主义在19世纪后期开始被阐述，并确定通过这种阐述产生的社会主义形式是否有任何独特之处。在此基础上，我的目的是评估宗教和乌托邦元素的引入是否扩大和深化了英国社会主义反对主流社会关系的能力，或者是否限制了这种能力。通过这种方式，我的首要研究问题如下：宗教乌托邦话语对英国社会主义运动的意义是什么？它们对运动有什么价值？

Socialism has had an uneasy relationship with religion and utopia. A concerted attempt wasmade by the dominant currents of socialism in the twentieth century, the communist current and thesocial democratic current, to draw a clear line between socialism, on the one hand, and religion andutopia, on the other (Leopold, 2008; McLellan, 1987; Sassoon, 2010). It would seem, therefore, thatsocialism should not contain religious and utopian elements. Hence, forms of socialism articulatedwith both religious and utopian discourses would appear highly suspect. I aim, in my proposedresearch, to consider whether this suspicion is justified by means of an in-depth study of Britishsocialism in the late nineteenth century. British socialism is a propitious case for my purposesbecause it had a marked utopian and religious colouring (Yeo, 1977; Beaumont, 2005; Linehan,2012). Specifically, the socialist thinker Edward Carpenter, the Fellowship of the New Life groupand the Labour Church all attempted to articulate their socialism in spiritual terms and by means ofutopian visions (Pierson, 1973; Mayhew, 1982; Manton, 2003).My primary research aim is to examine the process by which utopia, religion and socialismcame to be articulated in the late nineteenth century and to determine whether there was anythingdistinctive about the form of socialism produced through this articulation. On this basis, I aim toassess whether the introduction of religious and utopian elements extended and deepened thecapacity of British socialism to oppose prevailing social relations, or whether it limited thiscapacity. In this way, my overarching research question is as follows: What was the significance ofreligious-utopian discourses for the British socialist movement and of what value were they for themovement?