Friedrich Engels wrote about early Christianity, most notably in his essay “A Contribution to the History of Early Christianity,” published shortly before his death in 1895. He interpreted early Christianity through the lens of historical materialism, arguing that it was a revolutionary movement of the oppressed masses and shared many characteristics with the modern socialist movement.
Engels’s key arguments
- A movement of the oppressed: Engels contended that early Christianity was not a movement of the privileged but a religion of the poor, the marginalized, slaves, and those who were politically subjugated and dispersed by the Roman Empire.
- Parallel with the modern working-class movement: Engels drew a direct comparison between early Christianity and 19th-century socialism. Both were movements of the oppressed that preached salvation from hardship. The main difference was that Christianity promised salvation in the afterlife, while socialism promised it through the transformation of society in this world.
- Opposed by the ruling class: Both early Christians and socialists were persecuted and regarded as enemies of the state and the social order. Yet, driven by this persecution, they both grew in strength.
- The historical development of Christianity: According to Engels, the revolutionary potential of early Christianity faded as it became the state religion of the Roman Empire, compromising its original principles. He saw later movements in the Middle Ages, like the German Peasants’ War, as attempts to restore the original “communistic” Christianity.
- Early source material: Engels valued the Book of Revelation as the oldest Christian text, believing its apocalyptic and radical tone most accurately reflected the spirit of the earliest Christian communities around 68 A.D.. He also engaged with the biblical scholarship of Bruno Bauer, who argued that Christianity originated in the Hellenistic Greco-Roman world rather than in Palestine.
The influence of Engels’s analysis
Engels’s work heavily influenced subsequent Marxist interpretations of religion. For much of the 20th century, many sociologists and historians shared the view that early Christianity was a movement of the dispossessed. His analysis helped shape the academic study of the origins of Christianity by emphasizing its social and economic context. While some of Engels’s specific conclusions are debated today, his contribution represents a landmark historical-materialist critique of religion that continues to be discussed by scholars.