Paper short abstract:

This paper focuses on historical moments when religious ideas become ‘secularised’ and diffused to a wider population to become part of the intellectual ‘mainstream’. It explores in particular the influence of Quaker ideas on International Development Charity, through examining the early history of Oxfam.

Paper long abstract:

This paper calls attention to the significance within the history of European ideas, of moments when particular ­ often marginal ­ religious ideas become taken up by influential thinkers or institutions, and diffused to a wider population, as secular. Calling them ‘Moments of Secularisation’, the paper focuses on two such moments, each of which generate projects ‘alternative’ to prevailing capitalist modernity; and each of which have strongly influenced Europe’s relationships with the rest of the world. The first is communism, which transformed the ‘other-worldly utopianism’ of Mormons, Mennonites and others into a revolutionary political project. The second is contemporary International Development Charity, which transformed the ‘this-worldly aceticism’ of non-conformists, and particularly Quakers, into a model for moral economic engagement with the world. The paper examines the relationship between Quakerism and the influential charity Oxfam, which was founded in the 1940s in Oxford, and developed a particular, pioneering attitude towards the relationship between charity and business, and towards development rather than aid. These attitudes ­ now part of Development orthodoxy ­ can be traced back to Quaker thought and the critical moment of its secularisation from 1940s to 1960s.