In his Christ and His Times (1886), Benson had written that "there is much in 'socialism,' as we now understand it, which honestly searches for some beneficial remedy—much of which is purely religious and Christian."
"[1] In the spirit of the archbishop's admonitions, in 1889, Henry Scott Holland, Regius Professor of Divinity at the University of Oxford called together a group, which evolved into the Christian Social Union.
[4] Its rules were that it would consist of "members of the Church of England" who agreed:[5] The group's origins lay in the writings of Frederick Denison Maurice (once a professor of theology at King's College London), Charles Kingsley, and John Malcolm Forbes Ludlow.
The Oxford branch was concerned mostly with the accumulation and analysis of economic facts, with a view to helping to understand the nature and magnitude of contemporary social problems and developing potential solutions for such issues.
[7]From its origins in Oxford and London, the CSU spread throughout the United Kingdom, with about 60 branches established by the middle of the first decade of the 20th century.
Its leaders included Henry Scott Holland, Dean of St. Paul's, and, briefly William Temple, later Archbishop of Canterbury from 1942 to 1944.