The Background for the Social Gospel in American Protestantism

1936 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 256-270 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maurice C. Latta
Keyword(s):  
World Wide ◽  
Industrial Revolution ◽  
Social Gospel ◽  
Western Civilization ◽  
Religious Leaders ◽  
Oxford Movement ◽  
The Social ◽  
American Protestantism ◽  
Lewis Mumford ◽  
The Great War

Although the social gospel has been described as “the first expression of American religious life which is truly born in America itself,” it was evoked upon the American scene by forces, world-wide in scope, which have everywhere brought about similar reactions in the field of religion. The full setting in of the industrial revolution in country after country of Western civilization created such problems for religion as to lead within a generation to a vigorous enunciation of a social ethic by alert religious leaders of the country. The decade of the 1770's in England saw the beginnings of what Lewis Mumford calls the “paleotechnic” phase of civilization and within a generation Wilberforce and the “Clapham Sect” were thundering against the iniquities of the slave trade. Despite the passions of the great war with France, the cold rigidities of the “dismal science,” and the distracting ecclesiastical convulsions of the Oxford Movement, the development of a social emphasis in religion went on to find expression in the charities of Peabody and Shaftesbury, and the positive teachings of Maurice and Kingsley.

The Mission to China

2020 ◽  
pp. 11-33
Author(s):  
Thomas H. Reilly
Keyword(s):  
Colleges And Universities ◽  
Social Gospel ◽  
Industrial Economy ◽  
Social Christianity ◽  
The Social ◽  
American Protestantism ◽  
The Relationship

American Protestantism determined to a large extent the nature of the mission errand to China, especially in the Chinese Protestant elite’s understanding of social Christianity. American Protestantism, however, suffered from certain weaknesses in its own understanding of the relationship between Christianity and society, and this weakness was most evident in the message of the Social Gospel. The Social Gospel aimed to reshape the modern industrial economy, so that it was more humane to workers and more beneficial to society. That message, though, was compromised in its transmission to China by its association with imperialism. Beyond this message of the Social Gospel, American missions were also the early benefactors of the main institutions—colleges and universities, the YMCA and the YWCA—through which the Protestant elite influenced the larger society.

The Rise of the Social Gospel in American Protestantism, 1865-1915

1941 ◽  
Vol 46 (4) ◽  
pp. 945
Author(s):  
Charles A. Ellwood ◽  
Charles Howard Hopkins
Keyword(s):  
Social Gospel ◽  
The Social ◽  
American Protestantism

The Rise of the Social Gospel in American Protestantism, 1865-1915

1941 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 382
Author(s):  
Henry F. May ◽  
Charles Howard Hopkins
Keyword(s):  
Social Gospel ◽  
The Social ◽  
American Protestantism

The Image of the Protestant Minister in the Christian Social Novel

1968 ◽  
Vol 37 (3) ◽  
pp. 319-334
Author(s):  
Grier Nicholl
Keyword(s):  
Social Problems ◽  
Social Gospel ◽  
Traditional View ◽  
American Novel ◽  
Urban America ◽  
The Social ◽  
American Protestantism ◽  
Social Novel ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Social Novels

The image of the American Protestant minister in the American novel of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was, according to many scholars, predominantly a negative one. Conservative, steeped in outdated creeds, aloof from modern realities, and materialistic—these were some of the kinder descriptions of the much maligned Protestant clergyman which they find in the American novel of this period. But my own study of over one hundred Christian social novels, which reflect the rise of the social gospel in American Protestantism, leads me to urge a reassessment of this traditional view of the literary image of the Protestant minister. As propaganda for the emerging social gospel, the Christian social novel portrays not only the stereotyped picture of the clergyman, but more prominently a new kind of minister—physically rugged, intelligent, deeply religious, compassionate and above all a man concerned with the application of the gospel to economic and social problems. He was, in sum, an idealized image of the kind of heroic minister needed to take the gospel out of the sanctuary and into the slums and factories of modern urban America.

Ecclesiastical Politics and the Founding of the Federal Council of Churches

1974 ◽  
Vol 43 (3) ◽  
pp. 350-365
Author(s):  
John Abernathy Smith
Keyword(s):  
Social Service ◽  
Social Gospel ◽  
Churches Of Christ ◽  
National Council ◽  
American Christianity ◽  
Social Christianity ◽  
The Social ◽  
American Protestantism ◽  
Influential Book ◽  
Federal Council Of Churches

In an influential book of thirty years ago, The Rise of the Social Gospel in American Protestantism, 1865–1915, Charles Howard Hopkins interpreted the founding in 1908 of the Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America, the forerunner of the present National Council, as a stage in the flowering of the social gospel in American Christianity. His interpretation was soon confirmed by John Alexander Hutchison. In We Are Not Divided, a study of the pronouncements of the Federal Council, Hutchison wrote that the Federal Council was born of the marriage between “the idea of social service and the idea of interdenominational cooperation”. By “the idea of interdenominational cooperation”, however, Hutchison meant little more than what Hopkins had already defined as the impulse for social Christianity, and there the matter has rested for subsequent historians, including two former secretaries of the Federal Council.

Rich Laymen and Early Social Christianity

1967 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-65
Author(s):  
Clyde C. Griffen
Keyword(s):  
Social Gospel ◽  
Small Minority ◽  
Social Christianity ◽  
The Social ◽  
American Protestantism

Clergymen led the movement within American Protestantism known as Social Christianity or the Social Gospel. A small minority, primarily in the larger cities, began the shift away from individualistic views of salvation and ethics in the 1870's and 80's. By 1910 they had grown sufficiently in numbers and influence to secure official endorsement by the major denominations of a broad construction of Christian responsibility for the welfare of society.

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