Although it’s known for high rents and fashionable stores today, Manhattan’s Greenwich Village neighborhood was a home for radical leftists and ambitious religious changes a century ago, according to Binghamton University doctoral candidate Rachel Stevens.

Stevens spoke Monday in Lecture Hall 3 about the Greenwich Village left, a socialist group that was around from 1910-1924 and helped develop the modern American political left. The talk, “From Social Gospel to Socialism,” was a part of a series started by co-director of the BU religious studies minor, Doug Jones, to publicize the minor and start a dialogue about religion at BU.

“When we study religion, we’re studying it from a purely academic point of view,” Jones said. “The idea was to have people talk about what it means to consider belief and practice from the point of view of the religious participant.”

The Greenwich Village left broke away from what it viewed as conservative Christian sects of the time and started its own belief known as Christian Socialism, which rejected capitalism and argued that Jesus represented the working class. Members of the group practiced their religion through group discussions, and advocated for workers’ rights and the destruction of capitalism.

The group edited and distributed “The Masses,” a radical socialist magazine that had 12,000 subscriptions nationwide at its peak. Members also referred to Christ as “Comrade Jesus” to show the tie between the working class and the historic figure.

“They used this idea of Jesus the carpenter as an image that really resonated with the working class, but they were very much against the institutionalized church, because they felt that the ideals of the radical, historical Jesus weren’t aligned with the version of America at the time,” Stevens said.

Stevens credited the group with developing new ways to bridge the gap between the educated middle class and the working class, like attending workers’ rallies, writing about their experience at rallies in their magazine and publishing illustrations of police brutality against protesters.

Rebecca Cohen, an undeclared freshman, said she was impressed with the group’s ability to rebel but still remain a part of society.

“I think that it was important that they had this dialogue between what they wanted and staying in society,” Cohen said. “After 45 minutes I learned something that I wouldn’t necessarily learn in a class. Even in a history class about movements like this you don’t get to touch on everything.”

Stevens originally obtained her master’s in religious studies at Harvard Divinity School to become a priest but changed her mind and chose to become a professor, getting her doctorate in history at BU. She said that she wanted to share the topic of her dissertation because she missed having a dialogue about religion from different angles.

“When I came here I felt like I was the lone wolf crying out for people to talk about religion,” Stevens said. “Religious studies is a different way of doing historical analysis and inquiry but it’s no less historical for that.”

The Greenwich Village left dispersed in 1924 after the magazine was bought out by a communist group and the main leaders moved to different countries. Stevens explained that the importance of the group was their intellectual significance, as even after the group dissolved the ideas they promoted continued to be important.

“Greenwich wasn’t a place but a state of mind,” Stevens said. “It was the passion and the ideas behind it that’s most important. You could be anywhere and be a part of it.”