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The Theological Basis of Digger Communism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Paul Elmen
Paul Elmen
Affiliation:
Northewestern University
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Extract

The Diggers who broke the turf on St. George's Hill Sunday morning, April 1, 1649, have an importance far larger than the number of people involved would suggest, for their action was the first effort to bring into being a socialist Utopia. Their bold combination of theoretical and practical communism baffled their contemporaries, and historians ever since have failed to see them in the totality of their meaning.*** Were they simply hungry men, agrarian revolutionaries filing one more protest against economic and social injustice? Or were they religiously inspired men who used the most dramatic means at their disposal to portray the sinfulness of man and the possibility of redemption? The ambiguity of the Digger experiment has lent color to both explanations.

Type
Research Article
Information
Church History , Volume 23 , Issue 3 , September 1954 , pp. 207 - 218
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 1954

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