The English theologian and cleric John Frederick Denison Maurice (1805-1872) was a founder of Christian socialism.

Frederick Denison Maurice was born in Suffolk on Aug. 29, 1805, the son of a deeply pious, politically radical Unitarian minister-teacher. When he went to Trinity College, Cambridge, he was much influenced by the Platonically derived, idealist philosophy then coming from Germany, especially through the works of S. T. Coleridge. He studied law but became an editor in London. However, about 1828, convinced that he had wasted his Cambridge years, he entered Oxford.

In 1831 Maurice was baptized an Anglican; in 1834 he was ordained. At this time he made a considerable stir with a long novel, Eustace Conway, and a tract in defense of the Oxford requirement of subscription to the Thirty-nine Articles, the Anglican creed, on entrance. He was professor of literature and history, and later of divinity, at King's College, until he was forced...