Francis Bellamy - Political Views

Political Views

Bellamy was a Christian Socialist who "championed 'the rights of working people and the equal distribution of economic resources, which he believed was inherent in the teachings of Jesus.'" In 1891, Bellamy was forced from his Boston pulpit for his socialist sermons, and eventually stopped attending church altogether after moving to Florida, reportedly because of the racism he witnessed there.

In "Cultural Movements and Collective Memory : Christopher Columbus and the Rewriting of the National Origin Myth," Timothy Kubal explains:

Francis Bellamy was a leader in three related movement groups -- the public education movement, which sought to celebrate and expand public schools, the nationalist movement, which sough to nationalize public services and protect them from privatization, and the Christian socialist movement, which sought to promote an economy based on justice and equality. Bellamy had preexisting relationships with grassroots groups representing each movement and he united his diverse network for collective memory activism in 1892.

Francis Bellamy fused his participation in the Christian socialist movement and the nationalist movement. Francis began his career as a preacher, but after several years of service, he was ousted by a congregation that disliked his tendency to describe Jesus as a socialist. Bellamy was no simple preacher-turned-journalist, but the brother of the most famous nationalist icon of the era. Edward Bellamy was the symbolic leader of the nationalist movement, which sought to nationalize public services and the economy to meet the needs of the masses rather than the few. Francis's brothers book -- a utopian tale of an advanced socialist society -- sparked more than one hundred grassroots nationalist organizations around the country called Bellamy Clubs. Edward protested against the name for his local group, and the others agreed to change the name to the Nationalist Club.

Francis Bellamy also drew from networks established by the Christian socialist movement. Early in the nineteenth century, the French philosopher Henri de Sain-Simon expounded a "new Christianity" that sought to use scientific principles to help solve problems with the poor. Religion, science, and community were to be used to end the exploitation of the masses. By the end of the century, Bellamy and many of the "new St. Simonians," as they sometimes called themselves, saw nationalism (de-privatization) and public education as the policy solutions to meet the goals established by the Christian socialists, thus leading to a natural connection among the nationalist and Christian Socialist movements.

The Society of Christian Socialists, a grassroots organization, was founded in Boston 1889. Francis Bellamy served as founding vice president and wrote several articles for the Society of Christian Socialists' newspaper, the Dawn. The newspaper was run by his brother Edward and Frances Willard, president of the Women's Christian Temperance Union. In one article, Francis Bellamy wrote that Christian socialists had the obligation to live out the golden rule, to act toward contemporary society as did Jesus. He quoted Bible passages that revered Moses and Jesus as denouncing the evils of greed and lust for money (ibid). Francis Bellamy (hereafter Bellamy) was also chairman of the Boston chapter of the Society of Christian Socialists' education committee.

To raise the stature of the organizations, bring in funds, and educate the public about Christian Socialism, Bellamy offered public education classes; for a fee participants joined courses with topics such as "looking Backward," Jesus the socialist," "What is Christian Socialism?" "The Subject of Labor in Light of the Bible," and "Socialism versus anarchy." This last lecture became particularly popular and Bellamy in 1891 was asked to turn it into a written piece for the Nationalist Club's newspaper, the Arena. Bellamy's essay distinguished anarchy from nationalism and socialism, and it declared the need for a strong government to protect the weak masses from the powerful corporations. He argued that the only socialist economy could produce work environments where both the worker and the owner could practice the golden rule (ibid). Through these experiences, Bellamy gained increasing experience with the media and with public relations. He used these tools to coordinate a massive Columbus Day campaign.

Bellamy's views on immigration and universal suffrage were somewhat less egalitarian. He wrote that " democracy like ours cannot afford to throw itself open to the world where every man is a lawmaker, every dull-witted or fanatical immigrant admitted to our citizenship is a bane to the commonwealth; where all classes of society merge insensibly into one another.”