The Social Gospel Movement
The Social Gospel was a Protestant movement that was most prominent in the early twentieth-century United States and Canada. The movement applied Christian ethics to social problems, especially issues of social justice such as economic inequality, poverty, alcoholism, crime, racial tensions, slums, unclean environments, child labor, inadequate labor unions, poor schools, and the danger of war.
In the United States, prior to World War I, the Social Gospel was the religious wing of the Progressive movement, which aimed to combat injustice, suffering, and poverty in society. Denver, Colorado, was a center of Social Gospel activism. Thomas Uzzell led the Methodist People's Tabernacle from 1885 to 1910. He established a free dispensary for medical emergencies, an employment bureau for job seekers, a summer camp for children, night schools for extended learning, and English language classes. Myron Reed of the First Congregational Church became a spokesman for labor unions on issues such as worker's compensation. His middle-class congregation encouraged Reed to move on when he became a Socialist, and he organized a nondenominational church. Baptist minister Jim Goodhart set up an employment bureau, and provided food and lodging for tramps and hobos at the mission he ran. He became city chaplain and director of public welfare of Denver in 1918. In addition to these Protestants, Reform Jews and Catholics helped build Denver's social welfare system in the early twentieth century.
Walter Rauschenbusch and Dwight Moody
One of the defining theologians for the Social Gospel movement was Walter Rauschenbusch, a Baptist pastor of a congregation located in Hell’s Kitchen in New York City. Rauschenbusch railed against what he regarded as the selfishness of capitalism and promoted a form of Christian Socialism that supported the creation of labor unions and cooperative economics.
While pastors such as Rauschenbusch were combining their expertise in Biblical ethics and economic studies and research to preach theological claims around the need for social reform, others such as Dwight Moody refused to preach about social issues based on personal experience. Pastor Moody’s experience led him to believe that the poor were too particular in receiving charity. Moody claimed that concentrating on social aid distracted people from the life-saving message of the Gospel.
Rauschenbusch sought to address the problems of the city with Socialist ideas that proved to be frightening to the middle classes, the primary supporters of the Social Gospel. In contrast, Moody attempted to save people from the city and was very effective in influencing middle-class Americans who were moving into the city with traditional style revivals.
Pastor Dwight Moody, ca.1900
Portrait of Pastor Dwight Moody: preacher, evangelist, and publisher in the Social Gospel movement.
The American Missionary Association
The American Missionary Association (AMA) was a Protestant-based abolitionist group founded on September 3, 1846, in Albany, New York. The main purpose of this organization was to abolish slavery, educate African Americans, advocate for racial equality, and promote Christian values. Its members and leaders were both black and white and chiefly affiliated with Congregationalist, Methodist, and Presbyterian churches.
The AMA started The American Missionary magazine, which published from 1846 through 1934. Among its efforts was the founding of antislavery churches. For instance, the abolitionist Owen Lovejoy was among the Congregational ministers of the AMA who helped plant 115 antislavery churches in Illinois before the American Civil War, aided by the strong westward migration of individuals from the East. While the AMA became notable in the United States for its work in opposition to slavery and in support of education for freed men, it also worked in missions in numerous nations overseas. The nineteenth-century missionary effort was strong in China and east Asia.
Legacy
While the Social Gospel was short-lived historically, it had a lasting impact on the policies of most of the mainline denominations in the United States. Most began programs for social reform, which led to ecumenical cooperation in 1910 during the formation of the Federal Council of Churches (although cooperation regarding social issues often led to charges of Socialism). It is likely that the Social Gospel's strong sense of leadership by the people led to women's suffrage, and that the emphasis it placed on morality led to prohibition. Biographer Randall Woods argues that Social Gospel themes learned from childhood allowed Lyndon B. Johnson to transform social problems into moral problems. This helps explain his longtime commitment to social justice, as exemplified by the Great Society, and his commitment to racial equality. The Social Gospel explicitly inspired his foreign-policy approach of a sort of Christian internationalism and nation building.