Robertson, Archibald Horace Mann

Robertson was born in Durham in 1886 ^[2] , being the eldest of the three sons of Archibald Robertson and his wife Julia, nee Mann ^[3] . His father was an Anglican priest and became a bishop, but his son in the early years departed from religion.

In 1899, Robertson Jr. received a scholarship to study at Winchester College ^[4] , where he began to doubt the orthodoxy of Christianity and Tory conservatism after reading books on the history of the French Revolution , then reinforced by the “History of the Conflict between Religion and Science” by J. W. Draper and The Ethics of Socialism Belfort Bucks ^{[5] [6]} .

Then he studied at Trinity College, Oxford ^[2] , at the same time becoming increasingly interested in politics against the backdrop of the victory of the liberals in the 1906 elections and the rise of the Labor Party ^[6] . He avidly read the left-wing periodicals The Clarion, Labor Leader, The New Age, and the weekly newspaper of the Social Democratic Federation Justice, becoming the regular author of the latter ^[6] .

In 1910, having received a diploma, he entered the British Civil Service; by the beginning of the war in 1914, he worked as the personal secretary of the permanent secretary of the British Admiralty ^[7] . His post freed him from being drafted into the army, but he, like many leftists, was tormented by doubts about the war, although in the end he decided to support it. He left the Independent Labor Party and the Fabian Society , but continued to collaborate in a rationalistic and socialist press. During this period, he used the pseudonym Robert Arch ^[2] , in part to avoid confusion with his father, who wrote about the history of the church. After the war, Belfort Bucks introduced him to the Association of Rationalist Press, which was engaged in the fight against obscurantism and the popularization of science.

After the death of his father in 1931, Robertson resigned from the civil service ^[2] . After that, he devoted himself to leftist politics, history and criticism of the Christian church, publishing under his own name. Speaking for a greater emphasis on social issues, he left the Association of Rationalistic Press and moved to the Progressive League (Federation of Progressive Societies and Persons) S.E.M. Joad, Herbert Wells, John Hobson and Bertrand Russell. For fifteen years after the end of World War II, he was a teacher at the South Place Ethical Society ^[6] .

Repeatedly visited the Soviet Union ; After his fourth visit in 1938, he joined the Communist Party of Great Britain ^[6] , motivating this decision, including a threat from German Nazism, and remained in its ranks until the end of his life ^{[8] [9]} . Although his most famous works are devoted to criticizing religion, he actively called for dialogue between atheists and believers, for the cooperation of Christians, Marxists and other socialists in peacekeeping and building a just society.

In the books Church and People in Britain (1949), Rationalism in Theory and Practice (1954, Russian translation - M., 1956), Reformation (1960), Socialism and Religion (1960), he propagated Marxism, defended science against religion and stigmatized the complicity of the church in maintaining the existing order.

In his most famous work, The Origins of Christianity ( The Origins of Christianity , 1953; Russian translation - M., 1956 and 1959), Robertson considered the original Christianity as a religious shell for the revolutionary movement of the oppressed social lower classes of Judea and the entire Roman Empire. However, along with this radical Judeo-Christianity, he noted the opposite tendencies, laid down in the corresponding aspirations of the middle strata of the religious and mystical doctrine of salvation in Paulianism , which over time allowed the ruling classes to emasculate the opposition nature of Christianity and turn this religion into an instrument of class exploitation. Defending the historicity of Jesus of Nazareth , in which he saw the revolutionary leader of the masses, Robertson came out with consistent criticism of mythological theory , which led to a polemic with Soviet authors, among whom it dominated.

• Robertson A. Rationalism in theory and practice. - M .: Publishing house of foreign literature . Editorial Board on Philosophy and Psychology, 1958.
• Robertson A. The Origin of Christianity / Transl. from English Yu. V. Semenova. General wording introductory article and afterword by S. I. Kovalev . - M .: Publishing house of foreign literature . Editorial Board on Philosophy and Psychology, 1959.