‘We are All One in the Eyes of the Lord’: Christopher Hill and the Historical Meanings of Radical Religion

Abstract

Christopher Hill’s responses to his intellectual roots in Biblical Protestantism are traced throughout his career, with reference initially to his Methodist upbringing and more specifically to early family influences and to the impact upon him of an impressive Methodist circuit preacher, T. S. Gregory. It was Gregory in the later 1920s who stirred the young Hill by stressing the topical relevance of traditional Christian teachings about spiritual equality: ‘we are all one in the eyes of the Lord’. Hill agreed with this message of fundamental egalitarianism, which remained with him long after he lost his religious faith. It was because he was an egalitarian that Hill become a Marxist, in the stormy political years of the early 1930s, rather than the other way round. And Hill retained this core conviction long after his resignation from the Communist Party in 1957, when he shared in the move to a more specifically humanist or cultural Marxism. A preoccupation with the historical role of radical religion remained a central feature of Hill’s historical writings throughout his massive output; and the ramifications of his arguments about Puritanism in particular are explored fully. Despite changing circumstances and emphases, Christopher Hill retained his moral faith in human freedom and equality, on the grounds that true freedom must include freedom from cankering want, as well as freedom from ignorance, powerlessness, despair, and the contempt of others. Such social justice remains necessary because ‘we are all one’.