Джон Фредерик Денисон Морис: Англиялық дінші және христиандық социализмнің негізін қалаушысы

English Anglican socialist theologian (1805–1872)

John Frederick Denison Maurice (29 August 1805 – 1 April 1872) was an English Anglican theologian, a prolific author, and one of the founders of Christian socialism. Since the Second World War, interest in Maurice has expanded.

John Frederick Denison Maurice was born in Normanston, Lowestoft, Suffolk, on 29 August 1805, the only son of Michael Maurice and his wife, Priscilla. Michael Maurice was the evening preacher in a Unitarian chapel. Deaths in the family brought about changes in the family's "religious convictions" and "vehement disagreement" between family members. Maurice later wrote about these disagreements and their effect on him:

Michael was "of no little learning" and gave his son his early education. The son "appears to have been an exemplary child, responsive to teaching and always dutiful. He read a good deal on his own account, but had little inclination for games. Serious and precocious, he even at this time harboured ambitions for a life of public service." For his higher education in civil law, Maurice entered Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1823 that required no religious test for admissions though only members of the established church were eligible to obtain a degree. With John Sterling Maurice founded the Apostles' Club. He moved to Trinity Hall in 1825. In 1826, Maurice went to London to read for the bar and returned to Cambridge where he obtained a first class degree in civil law in 1827. During the 1827–1830 break in his higher education, Maurice lived in London and Southampton. While in London, he contributed to the Westminster Review and made the acquaintance of John Stuart Mill. With Sterling he also edited the Athenaeum. The magazine did not pay and his father had lost money which entailed moving the family to a smaller house in Southampton and Maurice joined them. During his time in Southampton, Maurice rejected his earlier Unitarianism and decided to be ordained in the Church of England. Mill described Maurice and Sterling as representing "a second Liberal and even Radical party, on totally different grounds from Benthamism." Maurice's articles evince sympathy for Radicals such as Leigh Hunt and William Hazlitt, and he welcomed the "shattering of thrones, the convulsions of governments" that marked the end of the eighteenth century. He likewise commended the Whig Henry Brougham's support for Catholic emancipation in England, but criticized him for relying too much on the aristocracy and not enough on the people. Maurice entered Exeter College, Oxford, in 1830 to prepare for ordination. He was older than most of students, he was very poor and he "kept to himself, toiling at his books". However, "his honesty and intellectual powers" impressed others. In March 1831, Maurice was baptised in the Church of England. After taking a second class degree in November 1831, he worked as a "private tutor" in Oxford until his ordination as a deacon in January 1834 and appointment to a curacy in Bubbenhall near Leamington. Being twenty eight years old when he was ordained deacon, Maurice was older and with a wider experience than most ordinands. He had attended both universities and been active in "the literary and social interests of London". All this, coupled with his diligence in study and reading, gave Maurice a knowledge "scarcely paralleled by any of his contemporaries". He was ordained as priest in 1835.

In a letter of 2 April 1833 to Richard Chenevix Trench, Maurice lamented the current "spirit" of "conflicting opinions" that "cramps our energies" and "kills our life". In spite of his lamenting "contradictory opinions," that term precisely described reactions to Maurice. Maurice's writings, lectures, and sermons spawned conflicting opinions. Julius Hare considered him "the greatest mind since Plato", but John Ruskin thought him "by nature puzzle headed and indeed wrong headed;" while John Stuart Mill considered that "there was more intellectual power wasted in Maurice than in any other of my contemporaries". Hugh Walker in a study of Victorian literature found other examples of conflicting opinions. Charles Kingsley pronounced Maurice "a great and rare thinker". Aubrey Thomas de Vere compared listening to Maurice to "eating pea soup with a fork". Matthew Arnold spoke of Maurice as "always beating the bush with profound emotion, but never starting the hare." One important literary and theological figure who was favorably impressed by Maurice was Charles Dodgson, also known as Lewis Carroll. Dodgson wrote about attending morning and afternoon services at Vere Street at which Maurice preached both times with the comment, "I like his sermons very much". Maurice held the benefice of St Peter's, Vere Street from 1860 to 1869. M. E. Grant Duff in his diary for 22 April 1855, wrote that he "went, as usual about this time, to hear F. D. Maurice preach at Lincoln's Inn. I suppose I must have heard him, first and last, some thirty or forty times, and never carried away one clear idea, or even the impression that he had more than the faintest conception of what he himself meant." John Henry Newman described Maurice as a man of "great power" and of "great earnestness". However, Newman found Maurice so "hazy" that he "lost interest in his writings." In the United States, The National Quarterly Review and Religious Magazine, Volume 38 (January 1879), contained this appreciation of Maurice. "Mr. Maurice's characteristics are well known and becoming every year more highly appreciated—broad catholicity, keenness of insight, powerful mental grasp, fearlessness of utterance and devoutness of spirit." Leslie Stephen in The English Utilitarians, Vol. 3, John Stuart Mill. (1900), Wrote "Maurice is equally opposed to the sacerdotalism which makes the essence of religion consist in a magical removal of penalties instead of a 'regeneration' of the nature. He takes what may be vaguely called the 'subjective' view of religion, and sympathises with Schleiermacher's statement that piety is 'neither a knowing nor a doing, but an inclination and determination of the feelings' ".

That Maurice left a legacy that would be valued by many was harbingered by responses to his death on 1 April 1872. He was buried on the west side of Highgate Cemetery and "crowds following his remains to their last resting place, and around the open grave there stood men of widely different creeds, united for the moment by the common sorrow and their deep sense of loss. From pulpit and press, from loyal friends and honest opponents, the tribute to the worth of Mr. Maurice was both sincere and generous." Frederick Denison Maurice is remembered in the Church of England with a commemoration on 1 April. Denison Road in Ealing, London is named after him.

Maurice's close friends were "deeply impressed with the spirituality of his character". His wife observed that whenever Maurice was awake in the night, he was "always praying." Charles Kingsley called him "the most beautiful human soul whom God has ever allowed me to meet with." Maurice's life comprised "contradictory elements". Maurice was a man "of peace, yet his life was spent in a series of conflicts". He was a man "of deep humility, yet so polemical that he often seemed biased". He was a man "of large charity, yet bitter in his attack upon the religious press of his time". He was "a loyal churchman who detested the label Broad yet poured out criticism upon the leaders of the Church". He was a man of "a kindly dignity" combined with "a large sense of humour". He possessed "an intense capacity for visualizing the unseen".

As a professor at King's College and at Cambridge, Maurice attracted "a band of earnest students" to whom he gave two things. He taught them from the knowledge he had gained by his comprehensive reading. More importantly, Maurice instilled in students "the habit of inquiry and research" and a "desire for knowledge and the process of independent thought."

Maurice's written legacy includes "nearly 40 volumes", and they hold "a permanent place in the history of thought in his time." King's College also established "The FD Maurice Lectures" in 1933 in honour of Maurice. Maurice, who was Professor of English Literature and History (1840–1846) and then Professor of Theology (1846–1853).