Social Gospel

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Social Gospel was a movement led by a group of liberal Protestant progressives in response to the social problems raised by the rapid industrialization, urbanization, and increasing immigration of the Gilded Age. The social gospel differentiated itself from earlier Christian reform movements by prioritizing social salvation over individual salvation. Although the ministers and activists of the social gospel based their appeals on liberal theology, which emphasized the immanence of God and the doctrine of Incarnation and valued good works over creeds, they usually showed more interest in social science than in theology. Believing that laissez-faire capitalism's understanding of labor as a commodity and its sole reliance on mechanisms of supply and demand to determine wages and allocate resources was un-Christian, social gospel advocates supported the labor movement and called for an interventionist welfare state. They differed from secular activists in that their ultimate vision was not just a more equitable balance of power within society, but a Christianized society in which cooperation, mutual respect, and compassion replaced greed, competition, and conflict among social and economic classes. Despite all of their efforts to reach the working class and to cooperate with the labor movement, though, the social gospel failed to reach far beyond its middle-class liberal Protestant milieu. Ultimately, the greatest achievement of the social gospel was to prepare the ground of middle-class America for progressivism.

Social Gospel in the Nineteenth Century

Washington Gladden was the first person to formulate the ideas of the social gospel. After failing to have the definite conversion experience required by his family's orthodox Calvinist faith, Gladden discovered liberal theology. His editorial work with the liberal journal the Independent and his ministry in several urban churches wracked by labor conflict solidified his liberalism and his concern for the plight of labor. By the mid-1880s, Gladden's name drew audiences across the country to hear his calls for bargaining rights for labor, a shorter work week, factory inspections, inheritance taxation, and regulation of natural monopolies. His charismatic presence, along with his comforting theological exposition of the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man, made these ideas, radical at the time, more palatable to his middle-class audiences. Gladden never endorsed socialism, but hoped for a gradual evolution toward a cooperative social order. Although he did write several theological treatises, including Applied Christianity (1887) and Social Salvation (1901), Gladden's thought relied more on social ethics and reform than on Christian theology.

If Gladden reveals the social gospel's tendencies to reduce Christianity to a system of social ethics, Richard Ely calls attention to the movement's international influences. Ely was a member of a cohort of social scientists who received their academic training in Germany and who regarded the social welfare legislation of the German Empire with great interest. Ely began his career by studying with German historical economists such as Karl Knies, who rejected neoclassical economics and called for economists to attend to differing cultural and historical contexts. As the principal founder of the American Economic Association and a professor at the social science centers of Johns Hopkins and the University of Wisconsin, Ely advocated the application of Christian social ethics to the discipline of economics. In his economic writings, Ely supported such major revisions to the economic order as public ownership of natural monopolies, factory inspections, and consumer protection.

By the mid-1890s, the social gospel had the support of multiple denominations and a strong foothold in interdenominational organizations. The Episcopal church, which had strong ties to English Christian socialism, the Congregational church, which boasted Gladden and social gospel leader Josiah Strong as members, and a small minority within the Baptist Church were the denominational leaders of the social gospel. The social gospel was particularly prominent within interdenominational organizations. The Interdenominational Congress and the Evangelical Alliance evolved into organs of the social gospel, and social Christianity frequently occupied the podium at the Parliament of Religions at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair. Beginning in the 1890s, some social gospel ministers, including Gladden, traveled south with the American Missionary Association to address the plight of southern blacks. Gladden and Walter Rauschenbusch both denounced racial inequality and lynching and explicitly extended the brotherhood of man to include African Americans. However, the primary geographic and intellectual focus of the movement remained the cities of industrial America.

Social Gospel in the Twentieth Century

In the early twentieth century, the social gospel found its intellectual leader in Rauschenbusch. A theologian, Rauschenbusch's social gospel career began while he was the minister of a German Baptist congregation in the Hell's Kitchen neighborhood of New York City. His witness of urban poverty sparked his passion for social Christianity, and after his eleven years of ministry, he became the theologian of the social gospel. In Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907), Christianizing the Social Order (1912), and A Theology for the Social Gospel (1917), Rauschenbusch united German pietistic evangelicalism, theological liberalism, and social Christianity by connecting the Kingdom of God to social salvation. For Rauschenbusch, the Kingdom of God lay in the unknown future, but was latent in the present and active in moments of crisis and change. The Church's and the Christian's role was to enunciate the Kingdom, to find it in the present, and to look to the future with a vision of the Kingdom as one's fulfillment and end. Rauschenbusch accepted a gradualist, Fabian version of socialism. He denounced what he saw as the evils of capitalism and gave his support to workers, but never joined the Socialist Party.

The social gospel reached its zenith in the decade before World War I. In 1908, the Federal Council of Churches, a federation representing thirty-three Protestant denominations, came into being and immediately adopted the social creed of the churches, which affirmed labor's rights to unionize and to bargain collectively. The Men and Religion Forward Movement, an interdenominational campaign that challenged men and boys to devote themselves to Christian social reform, was founded in 1911. An expanding YMCA, the development of institutional churches, and the social direction of the Religious Education Association, which oversaw Sunday-school education, expanded the reach of social Christianity. The social gospel's indirect connection to progressive activist Jane Addams further benefited the movement by drawing attention to the cause of urban social reform. Addams was not, strictly speaking, a member of the social gospel; she did not use the language of social Christianity, and she maintained a skeptical attitude toward the churches, which offered her little financial support. However, her work as a settlement house founder and social activist made her a symbol of the social gospel in action. Hull House workers joined social gospel activists in lobbying for urban housing improvements, shorter working hours, better working conditions for women, unemployment insurance, and against prostitution and other forms of urban vice.

Most members of the social gospel supported World War I, which they saw as a chance to Christianize society and international politics. The Senate's rejection of U.S. participation in the League of Nations and the revelation of the horrors of the war destroyed the cultural optimism that had been the social gospel's emotional foundation. The social gospel persisted through the 1920s, mostly through pacifist and ecumenical organizations. Yet the majority of American Protestants, who remained socially and theologically conservative, had begun to withdraw their support. Fundamentalism, which began its struggle for denominational power in the 1920s, articulated the growing distrust of the liberal theology behind the social gospel. Fundamentalists did not object to Christian social concern, but to the social gospel's prioritization of social salvation over Christ's regeneration of individual souls. The social gospel, fundamentalists claimed, valued Christian faith only for its inspiration of social action. Furthermore, liberal theology's overemphasis on God's immanence in human society had made God an almost irrelevant component in a largely human project of social reform. As the fundamentalist fight against liberalism and modernism became more strident, fundamentalists identified all social Christianity with the liberal social gospel and associated Christianity with social conservatism.

Criticisms of Social Gospel

In the 1930s, neo-orthodox theology, which originated with the work of Swiss theologian Karl Barth, formed a second major critique of the social gospel. Barth emphasized the transcendental nature of God and the apostolic message of scripture, and criticized liberal theology's willingness to alter Christianity to fit the needs of the middle class, modern scholarship, and social reform. Along with his fellow theologians Paul Tillich and H. Richard Niebuhr, Reinhold Niebuhr expanded Barth's critique of the social gospel. Reinhold Niebuhr took the social gospel to task for its optimism, inattention to human sinfulness, and avoidance of political conflict. In the early 1930s, Niebuhr called for a social Christianity that possessed a more realistic understanding of power structures and human sinfulness and based its appeal on a deep, biblical faith instead of utopian visions. A new, more politically realistic social gospel did develop in the 1930s, as the changing political mood gave a more radical branch of social Christianity the opportunity to express itself. However, World War I, the growth of Protestant political conservatism, and the critiques of neo-orthodoxy divided the social Christianity of the 1930s from its progressive-era precursor.

Bibliography

Curtis, Susan. A Consuming Faith: The Social Gospel and Modern American Culture. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991.

Hopkins, Charles Howard. The Rise of the Social Gospel in American Protestantism, 1865–1915. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1940.

May, Henry F. Protestant Churches and Industrial America. New York: Harpers & Brothers, 1949.

White, Ronald C., Jr., and C. Howard Hopkins. The Social Gospel: Religion and Reform in Changing America. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1976.

A religious movement that arose in the United States in the late nineteenth century with the goal of making the Christian churches more responsive to social problems, such as poverty and prostitution. Leaders of the movement argued that Jesus' message was as much about social reform as about individual approaches to salvation.

The Social Gospel movement is a Protestant Christian intellectual movement that was most prominent in the late 19th century and early 20th century. The movement applied Christian ethics to social problems, especially poverty, inequality, liquor, crime, racial tensions, slums, bad hygiene, child labor, weak labor unions, poor schools, and the danger of war. Theologically, the Social Gospel leaders were overwhelmingly post-millennialist. That is because they believed the Second Coming could not happen until humankind rid itself of social evils by human effort.^[1] Social Gospel leaders were predominantly associated with the liberal wing of the Progressive Movement and most were theologically liberal, although they were typically conservative when it came to their views on social issues.^[2] Important leaders include Richard T. Ely, Washington Gladden, and Walter Rauschenbusch.

Although most scholars agree that the Social Gospel movement peaked in the early 20th century, there is disagreement over when the movement began to decline, with some asserting that the destruction and trauma caused by World War I left many disillusioned with the Social Gospel's ideals^[3] while others argue that World War I actually stimulated the Social Gospelers' reform efforts ^[4]. Theories regarding the decline of the Social Gospel after World War I often cite the rise of neo-orthodoxy as a contributing factor in the movement's decline ^[5]. Some believe that many of the Social Gospel's ideas reappeared in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. "Social Gospel" principles continue to inspire newer movements such as Christians Against Poverty.

Social Christianity Important figures Francis of Assisi  · Von Ketteler Pope Leo XIII  · Adolph Kolping Edward Bellamy  · Margaret Eadie Wedgwood Benn Phillip Berryman  · James Hal Cone Dorothy Day  · Toni Negri Leo Tolstoy  · Oscar Romero Gustavo Gutiérrez  · Abraham Kuyper Daniel Berrigan  · Philip Berrigan Martin Luther King, Jr.  · Walter Rauschenbusch Desmond Tutu  · Tommy Douglas Organizations Confederation of Christian Trade Unions Catholic Worker Movement Christian Socialist Movement Key Concepts Subsidiarity  · Christian anarchism Marxism  · Liberation theology Praxis School  · Precarity Human dignity  · Social market economy Communitarianism · Distributism Catholic social teaching Neo-Calvinism  · Neo-Thomism Key Documents Rerum Novarum (1891) Princeton Stone Lectures (1898) Populorum Progressio (1967) Centesimus Annus (1991) Caritas in Veritate (2009) Part of a series of articles on Christianity

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Contents 1 United States 2 Canada 3 In literature 4 The 21st century 5 See also 6 References 7 Further readings 7.1 Primary sources 7.2 Secondary sources

United States

The Social Gospel affected much of Protestant America. The Presbyterians described its goals in 1910 by proclaiming:^[6]

The great ends of the church are the proclamation of the gospel for the salvation of humankind; the shelter, nurture, and spiritual fellowship of the children of God; the maintenance of divine worship; the preservation of truth; the promotion of social righteousness; and the exhibition of the Kingdom of Heaven to the world.

In the late 19th century, many Americans were disgusted by the poverty level and the low quality of living in the slums. The social gospel movement provided a religious rationale for action to address those concerns. Activists in the Social Gospel movement hoped that by public health measures as well as enforced schooling so the poor could develop talents and skills, the quality of their moral lives would begin to improve. Important concerns of the Social Gospel movement were labor reforms, such as abolishing child labor and regulating the hours of work by mothers. By 1920 they were crusading against the 12-hour day for workers at U.S. Steel.

Many reformers inspired by the movement opened settlement houses, most notably Hull House in Chicago operated by Jane Addams. They helped the poor and immigrants improve their lives. Settlement houses offered services such as daycare, education, and health care to needy people in slum neighborhoods. The YMCA was created originally to help rural youth adjust to the city without losing their religion, but by the 1890s became a powerful instrument of the Social Gospel.^[7] Nearly all the denominations (including Catholics) engaged in foreign missions, which often had a social gospel component in terms especially of medical uplift. The Black denominations, especially the African Methodist Episcopal church (AME) and the African Methodist Episcopal Zion church (AMEZ) had active programs in support of the Social Gospel.^[8] Both evangelical ("pietistic") and liturgical ("high church") elements supported the Social Gospel, although only the pietists were active in promoting Prohibition.^[9]

In the United States prior to World War I, the Social Gospel was the religious wing of the progressive movement which had the aim of combating injustice, suffering and poverty in society. During the New Deal of the 1930s Social Gospel themes could be seen in the work of Harry Hopkins, Will Alexander and Mary McLeod Bethune, who added a new concern with African Americans. After 1940, the movement withered, but was invigorated in the 1950s by black leaders like Baptist minister Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement. After 1980 it weakened again as a major force inside mainstream churches; indeed those churches were losing strength. Examples of its continued existence can still be found, notably the organization known as the Call to Renewal and more local organizations like the Virginia Interfaith Center for Public Policy.

Canada

The Cooperative Commonwealth Federation, a political party that was later renamed the New Democratic Party, was founded on social gospel principles in the 1930s by J.S. Woodsworth, a Methodist minister. Wordsworth wrote extensively about the social gospel from experiences gained while working with immigrant slum dwellers in Winnipeg from 1904 to 1913. His writings called for the Kingdom of God "here and now".^[10] This political party took power in the province of Saskatchewan in 1944. This group, later led by Tommy Douglas, a Baptist minister, introduced universal medicare, family allowance and old age pensions.^[11] This political party has largely lost its religious basis, and became a secular social democratic party.

In literature

The Social Gospel theme is reflected in the novels In His Steps (1897) and The Reformer (1902), by the Congregational minister Charles Sheldon, who coined the motto "What would Jesus do?" In his personal life, Sheldon was committed to Christian Socialism and identified strongly with the Social Gospel movement. Walter Rauschenbusch, one of the leading early theologians of the Social Gospel in the United States, indicated that his theology had been inspired by Sheldon's novels.

In 1892, Rauschenbusch and several other leading writers and advocates of the Social Gospel formed a group called the Brotherhood of the Kingdom. Members of this group produced many of the written works that defined the theology of the Social Gospel movement and gave it public prominence. These included Rauschenbusch's Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907) and Christianizing the Social Order (1912), as well as Samuel Zane Batten's The New Citizenship (1898) and The Social Task of Christianity (1911).

The 21st century

In the United States, the Social Gospel is still influential in mainline Protestant denominations such as the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the Presbyterian Church USA, the United Church of Christ, and the United Methodist Church; it seems to be growing in the Episcopal Church as well, especially with that church's effort to support the ONE Campaign. In Canada, it is widely present in the United Church and in the Anglican Church. Social Gospel elements can also be found in many service and relief agencies associated with Protestant denominations and the Catholic Church in the United States. It also remains influential among Christian socialist circles in Britain in the Church of England, Methodist and Calvinist movements.

In Catholicism, liberation theology has similarities to the Social Gospel.

See also

• Christian socialism
• Evangelical left
• The Gospel of Wealth
• Liberation theology
• Social justice

References

1. ^ For the most part, they rejected premillennialist theology (which was predominant in the Southern United States), according to which the Second Coming of Christ was imminent, and Christians should devote their energies to preparing for it rather than addressing the issue of social evils.
2. ^ White, Jr. (1990), and Ahlstrom (1974).
3. ^ White, Jr. and Hopkins (1975) and Handy (1966).
4. ^ Visser 't Hooft (1928)
5. ^ Ahlstrom (1974), Hopkins (1940), White, Jr. and Hopkins (1975), and Handy (1966)
6. ^ Rogers and Blade 1998
7. ^ Hopkins (1940)
8. ^ Luker (1998)
9. ^ Marty (1986)
10. ^ Template:Cite web=http://www.ncf.ca/ip/government/fedelect/nat/ndp/about/brief.history
11. ^ The Encyclopedia of Saskatchewan. "The Encyclopedia of Saskatchewan "Social Gospel"". University of Regina (Saskatchewan, Canada. http://esask.uregina.ca/entry/social_gospel.html. Retrieved 2009-10-14. 

Further readings

Primary sources

• Batten, Samuel Zane. The Social Task of Christianity: A Summons to the New Crusade. New York: Fleming H. Revell Co., 1911.
• Gladden, Washington. Who Wrote the Bible? A Book for the People. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Co., 1891.
• Mathews, Shailer. Jesus on Social Institutions. New York: Macmillan, 1928.
• Mathews, Shailer. The Spiritual Interpretation of History. William Belden Noble lectures. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1916.
• Peabody, Francis Greenwood. Jesus Christ and the Social Question; An Examination of the Teaching of Jesus in Its Relation to Some of the Problems of Modern Social Life. New York: Macmillan, 1900.
• Rauschenbusch, Walter. Christianity and the Social Crisis. New York: Harper & Row, 1964.
• Rauschenbusch, Walter. A Theology for the Social Gospel. New York: Macmillan Co., 1917.
• Sheldon, Charles Monroe. In His Steps: "What Would Jesus Do?". London: Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent & Co., 1897.
• Sheldon, Charles Monroe. The Reformer]]. Chicago: Advance Publishing Co., 1902.
• Strong, Josiah. The New Era; Or, The Coming Kingdom. New York: The Baker & Taylor Co., 1893.
• The New Era: Or, The Coming Kingdom (1898) by Josiah Strong complete text from Google Book Search
• Thomas, Lewis Herbert, ed. The Making of a Socialist: The Recollections of T.C. Douglas. Edmonton, Alta.: University of Alberta Press, 1982.

Secondary sources

• "Social Gospel." Encyclopedia Americana. 30 vols. Danbury, Connecticut: Grolier, 2003.
• Sydney E. Ahlstrom. A Religious History of the American People (1974)
• Susan Curtis. A Consuming Faith: The Social Gospel and Modern American Culture (1991)
• Jacob H. Dorn. Socialism and Christianity in Early 20th Century America. (1998), online edition
• Brian J. Fraser. The Social Uplifters: Presbyterian Progressives and the Social Gospel in Canada, 1875-1915 (1990)
• Robert T. Handy, ed. The Social Gospel in America, 1870-1920 (1966).
• Charles Howard Hopkins. The Rise of the Social Gospel in American Protestantism, 1865-1915. (1940) online edition
• William R. Hutchison. "The Americanness of the Social Gospel; An Inquiry in Comparative History," Church History, Vol. 44, No. 3 (Sep., 1975), pp. 367-381 online in JSTOR
• Maurice C. Latta, "The Background for the Social Gospel in American Protestantism," Church History, Vol. 5, No. 3 (Sep., 1936), pp. 256-270 online at JSTOR
• Ralph E. Luker. The Social Gospel in Black and White American Racial Reform, 1885-1912. (1998) excerpt and text search
• Martin E. Marty, Modern American Religion, Vol. 1: The Irony of It All, 1893-1919 (1986); Modern American Religion. Vol. 2: The Noise of Conflict, 1919-1941 (1991)
• Dorothea R. Muller. "The Social Philosophy of Josiah Strong: Social Christianity and American Progressivism," Church History 1959, v 28, #2 pp. 183-201] at JSTOR
• Benjamin G. Rader, "Richard T. Ely: Lay Spokesman for the Social Gospel." Journal of American History. 53:1 (June 1966). in JSTOR
• Jack B. Rogers, and Robert E. Blade, "The Great Ends of the Church: Two Perspectives," Journal of Presbyterian History (1998) 76:181-186.
• Gary Scott Smith, "To Reconstruct the World: Walter Rauschenbusch and Social Change," Fides et Historia (1991) 23:40-63
• Willem A. Visser 't Hooft, The Background of the Social Gospel in America (1928).
• Ronald C. White, Jr., Liberty and Justice for All: Racial Reform and the Social Gospel (1877-1925) (1990).
• Ronald C. White, Jr. and C. Howard Hopkins. The Social Gospel. Religion and Reform in Changing America (1975).

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