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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 March 2015
In 1921, Shailer Mathews coined what became a classic, yet somewhat obtuse, definition of the social gospel in North American religious history. He defined it as “the application of the teaching of Jesus and the total message of the Christian salvation to society, the economic life, and social institutions such as the state, the family, as well as to individuals.” For all the problems with Mathews's definition, it does serve as a useful template for understating the social gospel, especially interpreting what Mathews meant by the phrase, “the total message of the Christian salvation.”
1 Mathews's definition can be found in a co-edited volume with Smith, G.B., A Dictionary of Religion and Ethics (New York: Macmillan, 1921), 416–417Google Scholar. An abridged version of this definition was also used by Charles Howard Hopkins in his classic study of the American social gospel, The Rise of the Social Gospel in American Protestantism, 1865–1915 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1940), 3Google Scholar. An updated and expanded definition of the social gospel is offered by Lindley, Susan Hill, “Deciding Who Counts: Toward a Revised Definition of the Social Gospel,” in The Social Gospel Today, ed. Evans, Christopher H. (Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox, 2001), 17–26Google Scholar.
2 For an analysis on the historiography of the social gospel, see Luker, Ralph E., “Interpreting the Social Gospel: Reflections on Two Generations of Historiography,” in Perspectives on the Social Gospel, ed. Evans, Christopher H. (Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen Press, 1999), 1–13Google Scholar.
3 See Hutchison, William R., The Modernist Impulse in American Protestantism (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1976)Google Scholar; Dorrien, Gary, The Making of American Liberal Theology: Imagining Progressive Religion (Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox Press, 2001)Google Scholar, and Dorrien, The Making of American Liberal Theology: Idealism, Realism, & Modernity (Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox Press, 2003)Google Scholar.
4 See, for example, King, William McGuire, “‘History as Revelation’ in the Theology of the Social Gospel,” in Harvard Theological Review 76, no. 1 (1983): 109–129CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
5 See Fishburn, Janet Forsythe, The Fatherhood of God and the Victorian Family (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1981)Google Scholar; Deichmann Edwards, Wendy J. and De Swarte Gifford, Carolyn, eds. Gender and the Social Gospel (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2003)Google Scholar; Evans, Christopher H., The Kingdom is Always but Coming: a Life of Walter Rauschenbusch (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2004)Google Scholar
6 Gary Dorrien, “Social Salvation: The Social Gospel as Theology and Economics,” in The Social Gospel Today, 101.
7 While historians acknowledge that the social gospel continued after World War I, its influence is often seen through the prism of Reinhold Niebuhr and the rise of crisis theology in the 1930s. See for, example, Carter, Paul, The Decline and Revival of the Social Gospel (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1954)Google Scholar; Meyer, Donald, The Protestant Search for Political Realism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1960)Google Scholar. A nuanced interpretation of how the social gospel developed after World War I is offered by William McGuire King, “The Emergence of Social Gospel Radicalism in American Methodism” (Ph.D. dissertation, Harvard University, 1977). King discusses the rise of a more hard-edged theological radicalism that characterized the growth of social Christianity after World War I.
8 See Hollinger, David, After Cloven Tongues of Fire: Protestant Liberalism in Modern American History (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2013)Google Scholar; Coffman, Elesha J., The Christian Century and the Rise of the Protestant Mainline (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hedstrom, Matthew S., The Rise of Liberal Religion: Book Culture and American Spirituality in the 20th Century (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013)Google Scholar.
9 Part of the social gospel's diffusion can also be seen in generations of student activists who emerged in protestant youth organizations prior to World War II. See, for example, Tracy, James, Direct Action: Radical Pacifism from the Union Eight to the Chicago Seven (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996)Google Scholar.
10 Classic studies of the social gospel in Canada include Allen, Richard, The Social Passion: Religion and Social Reform in Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1971)Google Scholar and Phillips, Paul T.a Kingdom on Earth: Anglo-American Social Christianity (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1996)Google Scholar. On the connection to the Co-Operative Commonwealth Federation see Stebner, Eleanor J., “Young Man Knowles: Christianity, Politics, and the ‘Making of a Better World’,” in Religion and Public Life in Canada, ed. Van Die, Marguerite (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001), 219–236Google Scholar.
11 In addition to being the topic of numerous monographs and articles, Rauschenbusch was cited as a primary influence by many prominent social reformers later in the twentieth century, in particular, Martin Luther King, Jr. See King, Stride Toward Freedom (New York: Harper & Row, 1958)Google Scholar.
12 See Ryan, John, A Living Wage (New York: Macmillan, 1906)Google Scholar. While Ryan's work draws heavily upon the writings of the economist Richard Ely (who influenced many of the major protestant social gospel theorists), Ryan's thought is grounded in a tradition of Catholic natural law theology. See Beckley, Harlan, Passion for Justice: Retrieving the Legacies of Walter Rauschenbusch, John A. Ryan, and Reinhold Niebuhr (Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox, 1992)Google Scholar; Dorrien, Social Ethics in the Making: Interpreting an American Tradition (Malden: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011)Google Scholar.
13 Dores Sharpe, Rauschenbusch's former secretary, published the first full-length biography of Rauschenbusch. While the book is filled with many personal anecdotes, at points its arguments border on hagiography. See Sharpe, Walter Rauschenbusch: A Biography (New York: Macmillan, 1942)Google Scholar.
14 Specifically, the social gospel movement was instrumental to the rise of “social ethics.” See Gary Dorrien, Social Ethics in the Making: Interpreting an American Tradition.
15 Rauschenbusch, A Theology for the Social Gospel (New York: Macmillan, 1917), 1Google Scholar.
16 Quoted in King, William McGuire, “An enthusiasm for humanity: the social emphasis in religion and its accommodation in Protestant theology,” in Religion and 20th-Century American Intellectual Life, ed. Lacey, Michael J. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 77Google Scholar.