If you look into the history of most European, well, areas (the actual countries have changed over the years), it appears that religion was one of the driving forces behind things that don’t really seem all that spiritual or even associated with religious feelings at all. Looking specifically at England, there was an historical period between about 1649 and 1660 when the place was a republic, not a monarchy. It was called the English Commonwealth, and was run by a more-or-less elected parliament.
You might think that a shift from a hereditary monarchy to an electoral republic might influence how people thought about some other things, and you’d probably be right. There was one activist, Gerrard Winstanley (born October 19, 1609) who organized a group called the True Levellers. They were also known as the Diggers, which was probably more apt, because their goal was to reverse the process of “enclosure” — where previously public land had been annexed by various members of the nobility and turned into private, restricted space. The physical process of enclosure involved planting tall hedges to keep people out; the Diggers simply dug those up.
The broader objective of the Diggers was to use the freed land for cultivation of food, or other common use by anyone who needed it — fairly close to how the land had been traditionally used in England before enclosure. This seems, in retrospect at least, to have to do with issues like economic inequality. But Winstanley and his followers explained it in purely religious terms. The reasoning behind freeing the land was not economic (or at least it wasn’t stated as such); it was because Winstanley found verses in the Bible showing this was how the land was supposed to be used. He wrote pamphlets about his ideas, and they’re entirely religious in tone.
Not a lot is known about Winstanley’s early life; he was born in a rural area and his mother’s identity was never recorded. He moved to London when he was 21 to become an apprentice tailor, and later joined the tailors’ guild. But then the English Civil War came along and ruined his business. He moved back to the countryside, and that seems to be the point at which he began his activism.
The True Levellers didn’t last very long — the landowners hired a gang of thugs to beat up the activists, and they did such a thorough job that the group — at least those still alive — disbanded. Winstanley persisted in his out-of-the-mainstream religious beliefs, though; he became a Quaker, a “Universalist,” and in his 50s became a “churchwarden,” which is a sort of volunteer assistant to the priest or minister of a parish. Winstanley and his cause have been remembered, though; there’s an annual “Diggers’ Festival” in Wigan, the town where he was (probably) born, and he’s mentioned on the Alexander Garden Obelisk in Moscow — erected during the Soviet era to honor historical figures from the struggle for worker liberation. But I’m not sure he would have approved — another Soviet principle was the rejection of religion.
