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Sin, Spirituality, and Primitivism: The Theologies of the American Social Gospel, 1885–1917

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 June 2018

Matthew Bowman
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Abstract

This article seeks to draw attention to an often overlooked aspect of the social gospel. Rather than explaining social gospelers as theological liberals who took an interest in social problems, as many historians have done, this essay argues that they were possessed of a unique theology, one which welded evangelical ideas of conversion and experiential Christianity with liberal postmillennial hopes. Their devotion to combating social ills should be understood, therefore, not solely as a secular commitment to social justice or a nebulous allegiance to Christian charity but also as a theological obligation tied to evangelical conversion and a repudiation of social sin, a crime as offensive to God as murder or theft. The social gospelers modeled the ideal Christian society upon that of the biblical patriarchs, one in which no distinction between the secular and sacred existed and sanctification guided the Christian's actions in the economy as well as in personal morality. That society, that postmillennial Zion, would come again when all humanity experienced a spiritual conversion and were truly born again as Christians—a transformation not limited to individual salvation but which brought with it a new understanding of the nature of Christian life.

Type
Research Article
Information
Religion and American Culture , Volume 17 , Issue 1 , Winter 2007 , pp. 95 - 126
Copyright
Copyright © Center for the Study of Religion and American Culture 2007

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References

Notes

1. May, Henry, The Protestant Churches and Industrial America (New York: Harper, 1949 Google Scholar), is a good overview of the ways in which the social gospel became involved in progressive reform.

2. Rauschenbusch, Walter, Prayers for the Social Awakening (Boston: Pilgrim Press, 1909), 121–22.Google Scholar

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15. On Paul, see, for example, Romans 6:6, wherein humanity is spoken of as “being in bondage to sin”; Romans 6:12, where sin is spoken of as “reigning”; and Romans 7:17: “So now it is no more that I do it [wrong action], but the sin which dwelleth in me” (KJV); see also Leon Morris, The Epistle to the Romans (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1988), 190–92. Quotes are from Rauschenbusch, , Theology for the Social Gospel, 55, 78.Google Scholar

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23. Rauschenbusch, , Christianizing the Social Order, 343 Google Scholar; Rauschenbusch, , Theology for the Social Gospel, 102 Google Scholar; Herron, , Between Caesar and God, 48 Google Scholar; Herron, George, The Christian State (New York: Crowell, 1895), 39 Google Scholar; Strong, , Next Great Awakening, 77 Google Scholar. Smucker, Donavan, The Origins of Walter Rauschenbusch's Social Ethics (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1994 Google Scholar), includes a chapter of nine pages on Rauschenbusch's spirituality that primarily discusses that of Rauschenbusch's father; it also includes a forty-four-page chapter on Rauschenbusch and sectarianism and a forty-seven-page chapter on liberalism.

24. Rauschenbusch, Christianizing the Social Order, 104; Rauschenbusch, Theology for the Social Gospel, 20–21; Hutchison, , Modernist Impulse, 78 Google Scholar. Lasch, Christopher, “Religious Contributions to Social Movements,” Journal of Religious Ethics 18 (Spring 1990): 12–15 Google Scholar, maintains that Rauschenbusch offers a strong argument against Niebuhr's pessimistic assessment of liberal idealism; however, Lasch does not draw on Rauschenbusch's theories of spirituality as much as he could (and should). In A Theology for the Social Gospel, Rauschenbusch speaks of the social gospel as a “religious experience” similar to those undergone by “Paul, Augustine, Luther, Fox, Wesley”—all reinventors of traditional Christianity who underwent a spiritual transformation.

25. Rauschenbusch, Christianizing the Social Order, 103–4.

26. Rauschenbusch, “The New Evangelism,” The Independent, May 12, 1904, 4–6; Strong, Our Country, 221, 235 (italics original); Grant Wacker, “The Holy Spirit and the Spirit of the Age in American Protestantism, 1880–1920,” Journal of American History 72 (June 1985): 45–62; Minus, Paul, Walter Rauschenbusch, American Reformer (New York: Macmillan, 1982), 56 Google Scholar; Peabody, Francis, Jesus Christ and the Social Question (New York: Macmillan, 1900), 352 Google Scholar.

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28. Herron, George, The Social Meanings of Religious Questions (New York: Crowell, 1896), 131 Google Scholar; Strong, , Next Great Awakening, 150 Google Scholar; Strong, , Our Country, 245 Google Scholar; Herron, , Christian Society, 119, 79, 199, 118, 45.Google Scholar

29. Rauschenbusch, , Christianizing the Social Order, 104, 459Google Scholar; Rauschenbusch, “Conceptions of Missions,” The Watchman, November 24, 1892, cited in Hudson, Winthrop, ed., Walter Rauschenbusch, Selected Writings (New York: Paulist Press, 1984 Google Scholar); Strong, , Our Country, 140 Google Scholar; Strong, , Next Great Awakening, 189, 99Google Scholar; Herron, , Christian Society, 43 Google Scholar; Minus, , Rauschenbusch, 92 Google Scholar; Behrends, A. J. F., Socialism and Christianity (New York: Baker and Taylor, 1886), 66 Google Scholar.

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31. Letter from Walter Rauschenbusch to Lemuel Call Barnes, May 10, 1918, reprinted in Hudson, Walter Rauschenbusch, 45; King, “Biblical Base.”

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34. Strong, , New Era, 313–16Google Scholar.

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37. Rauschenbusch, , Christianity and the Social Crisis, 101, 180, 176–77Google Scholar; Herron, , Between Caesar and Jesus, 194–95Google Scholar.

38. Strong, , Next Great Awakening, 68–69 Google Scholar.

39. Herron, , Social Meanings of Religious Questions, 15–17 Google Scholar.

40. Ibid., 56–57.

41. Rauschenbusch, , Christianity and the Social Crisis, 41 Google Scholar.

42. Strong, , Next Great Awakening, 77 Google Scholar; Rauschenbusch, , Theology for the Social Gospel, 274–76, 250Google Scholar.

43. Rauschenbusch, , Christianity and the Social Crisis, 345 Google Scholar; Muller, “Josiah Strong,” 184–87.

44. King, Martin Luther, Stride toward Freedom (New York: Harper and Row, 1958), 91 Google Scholar.