Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-gb8f7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-23T22:36:27.829Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

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

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 June 2018

Matthew Bowman
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

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

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

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

3. Howard Hopkins, C., The Rise of the Social Gospel in American Protestantism, 1865–1915 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1940), 318 Google Scholar; Wacker, Grant, “The Holy Spirit and the Spirit of the Age in American Protestantism, 1880–1910,” Journal of American History 72 (June 1985): 45–62 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4. Hutchison, William, The Modernist Impulse in American Protestantism (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1976), 189–93Google Scholar; Hutchison, William, “Liberal Protestantism and the End of Innocence,” American Quarterly 15 (Summer 1963): 126–39CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gordon, George, The New Epoch for Faith (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1901), 384–86Google Scholar; for examples of social gospelers who accepted liberal stances on issues such as biblical criticism, evolution, and sacrament, see Gladden, Washington, Who Wrote the Bible? (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1891 Google Scholar), Gladden, Washington, How Much Is Left of the Old Doctrines? (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1899 Google Scholar), and Rauschenbusch, Walter, A Theology for the Social Gospel (New York: Macmillan, 1917), 197–208;Google Scholar Niebuhr, Reinhold, Moral Man and Immoral Society (New York: Scribner’s, 1932), chap. 1, 82 Google Scholar; Niebuhr, Reinhold, Reflections on the End of an Era (New York: Scribner’s, 1934), 48 Google Scholar.

5. Mathews, Shailer, “The Development of Social Christianity in America during the Past Twenty-Five Years,” Journal of Religion 7 (July 1927): 376–86, 383CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Carter, Paul, The Decline and Revival of the Social Gospel (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1954 Google Scholar); Meyer, Donald, The Protestant Search for Political Realism, 1919–1941, 2d ed. (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1988), 35–37 Google Scholar; Handy, Robert, The American Religious Depression, 1925–1935 (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1968 Google Scholar).

6. Hutchison, , Modernist Impulse, 164 Google Scholar; Mead, Sidney, The Lively Experiment (New York: Harper and Row, 1963), 183 Google Scholar; White, Ronald and Howard Hopkins, C., The Social Gospel: Religion and Reform in Changing America (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1976), xvi Google Scholar; May, Protestant Churches; Abell, Aaron, The Urban Impact on American Protestantism (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1943 Google Scholar); Carter, Paul, The Spiritual Crisis of the Gilded Age (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1971 Google Scholar); Ahlstrom, Sydney, A Religious History of the American People, 2d ed. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004), 786 Google Scholar; King, William McGuire, “‘History as Revelation’ in the Theology of the Social Gospel,” Harvard Theological Review 76, no. 1 (1983): 109–29, 120CrossRefGoogle Scholar. General surveys tend to follow the historical consensus outlined here: see Noll, Mark, A History of Christianity in the United States and Canada (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1992), 304–7Google Scholar, who argues that, theologically, the social gospel “is often associated with more liberal trends,” while some evangelical groups like the Salvation Army merely drew on “its themes of social service.” Winthrop Hudson and John Corrigan argue that the “social gospel had no unified point of view,” a fair statement, though one that obliterates the possibility of any social gospel theology whatsoever, and concludes that it was based on institutional concerns: “a sincere desire to combat injustice” and “a desire to overcome an assumed alienation of workingmen from the churches.” Hudson, Winthrop S. and Corrigan, John, Religion in America, 6th ed. (Upper Saddle River, N.J.: PrenticeHall, 1999), 302–5Google Scholar.

7. William Hutchison, Modernist Impulse, 145–47 (he numbers roughly a third of liberals who were not associated with the social gospel); William McGuire King, “The Biblical Base of the Social Gospel,” in The Bible and Social Reform, ed. Ernest R. Sandeen (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1982), 85; Susan Curtis, A Consuming Faith: The Social Gospel and Modern American Culture (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991).

8. For Rauschenbusch's upbringing, see Evans, Christopher, The Kingdom Is Always but Coming: A Life of Walter Rauschenbusch (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004), xxviii–xxx Google Scholar, 33–44, 61–67; on Strong’s, see Dorothea Muller, “Church Building and Community Making on the Frontier, a Case Study: Josiah Strong, Home Missionary in Cheyenne, 1871–1873,” Western Historical Quarterly 10 (April 1979): 191–216, and Strong, Josiah, My Religion in Everyday Life (New York: Baker and Taylor, 1910), 15–18 Google Scholar; on Herron’s, see Crunden, Robert, Ministers of Reform: The Progressive Achievement in American Civilization, 1889–1920 (New York: Basic Books, 1982), 40–43 Google Scholar. On liberal unfamiliarity with conversion experience, see Hutchison, Modernist Impulse, 78, 145–47. Interestingly, Hutchison argues that the crisis mentality in liberalism that he identifies with the social gospel did not emerge until after 1900; the exceptions he notes are Strong and Herron. I would argue that these two demonstrate that the social gospel, as I define it, clearly emerged earlier than 1900. Mathews cited in Hopkins, Rise of the Social Gospel, 3, and Mathews, “Development of Social Christianity,” 377, 385.

9. Smith, Timothy, Revivalism and Social Reform: American Protestantism on the Eve of the Civil War, 2d ed. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980 Google Scholar).

10. Herron, George, Between Caesar and Jesus (New York: Thomas Crowell, 1899), 191 Google Scholar; Strong, Josiah, The Next Great Awakening (New York: Baker and Taylor, 1902), 77 Google Scholar.

11. Abbott, Lyman, Theology of an Evolutionist (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1897), 31–49 Google Scholar; Gordon, , New Epoch, 386 Google Scholar.

12. Hutchison, Modernist Impulse, 102, 185–92; Egbert Smyth, “Christianity and Its Modern Competitors” Andover Review 6 (November- December 1886): 391–405, quote on 402.

13. Rauschenbusch, Walter, Christianity and the Social Crisis (New York: Macmillan, 1907), 397 Google Scholar; Herron, , Between Caesar and Jesus, 19 Google Scholar.

14. Sutton, William, “Benevolent Calvinism and the Moral Government of God,” Religion and American Culture 2 (Winter 1992): 23–47 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, quote on 39; Michael Young, “Confessional Protest: The Religious Birth of U.S. Social Movements,” American Sociological Review 67 (October 2002): 660–88, quote on 672; Lewis Perry, “Adin Ballou's Hopedale Community and the Theology of Antislavery,” Church History 39 (September 1970): 372–89, 376.

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

16. On Strong, see Muller, Dorothea, “The Social Philosophy of Josiah Strong,” Church History 28 (June 1959): 183–90CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Walter Rauschenbusch, , Christianizing the Social Order (New York: Macmillan, 1912), 117 Google Scholar.

17. Strong, Josiah, Our Country (New York: American Home Missionary Society, 1885), 243 Google Scholar; see also Josiah Strong, Next Great Awakening, 119–52.

18. Gladden, Washington, Being a Christian: What It Means and How to Begin (Boston: Pilgrim Press, 1885) 1–6 Google Scholar, 15–21, quotes from 6 and 19; Rauschenbusch, , Christianity and the Social Crisis, 299, 340, 177;Google Scholar Strong, Next Great Awakening, iii; Edwards, Jonathan, Religious Affections (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1959), 343 Google Scholar.

19. Herron, , Between Caesar and Jesus, 31, 206Google Scholar; Rauschenbusch, Christianity and the Social Crisis, 189, 249, 343; Rauschenbusch, Theology for the Social Gospel, 4–5; Gladden, Washington, Social Facts and Forces (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1899), 200 Google Scholar; Strong, Our Country, 140.

20. Rauschenbusch, , Christianity and the Social Crisis, 253 Google Scholar; Herron, , Between Caesar and Jesus, 47 Google Scholar; Herron, George, The Christian Society (New York: Revell, 1894), 155 Google Scholar.

21. Rauschenbusch, , Christianity and the Social Crisis, 373–74Google Scholar; Strong, Our Country, 243.

22. Gordon, New Epoch; Hutchison, Modernist Impulse, 188.

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.

27. Rauschenbusch, , Theology for the Social Gospel, 96–97 Google Scholar; Evans, , The Kingdom Is Always but Coming, 170–71Google Scholar; Herron, , Christian Society, 108 Google Scholar; Herron, , Christian State, 81 Google Scholar; Herron, George, “Confession of Faith,” cited in Peter Frederick, Knights of the Golden Rule (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1976), 162 Google Scholar; Strong, Josiah, “Introduction,” in George Herron, The Larger Christ (New York: Revell, 1891), 7, 16Google Scholar. On pietist conceptions of conversion, see Atwood, Craig, Community of the Cross: Moravian Piety in Colonial Bethlehem (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2004 Google Scholar), esp. chap. 1. For liberal disdain for evangelical experience, see Hutchison, Modernist Impulse, 78.

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.

30. Rauschenbusch, Walter, “The Kingdom of God,” reprinted in Hudson, , Walter Rauschenbusch, 76–78 Google Scholar; Strong, , My Religion in Everyday Life, 16 Google Scholar; Strong, Josiah, The New Era (New York: Baker and Taylor, 1893), 6, 10Google Scholar; Herron, , Between Caesar and Jesus, 273 Google Scholar.

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

32. Bozeman, Theodore Dwight, To Live Ancient Lives (Chapel Hill, : University of North Carolina Press, 1988 Google Scholar); Hatch, Nathan O., The Democratization of American Christianity (New Haven: Yale Unversity Press, 1989 Google Scholar); Hughes, Richard T. and Leonard Allen, C., Illusions of Innocence: Protestant Primitivism in America, 1630–1875 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988 Google Scholar).

33. Rauschenbusch, , Christianity and the Social Crisis, 30, 141Google Scholar; Strong, , Next Great Awakening, 63 Google Scholar.

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

35. Bowden, Henry Warner, Church History in the Age of Science (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1971), 186 Google Scholar; Hutchison, William, “The Americanness of the Social Gospel: An Inquiry in Comparative History,” Church History 44 (September 1975): 368, 370;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Maurice, F. D., Christian Socialism, repr. ed. (London: Christian Social Union, 1893), 263 Google Scholar; d’A. Jones, Peter, The Christian Socialist Revival, 1877–1914 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976), 85–95, 114–15Google Scholar.

36. Strong, , Our Country, 65, 74Google Scholar; Rauschenbusch, , Christianity and the Social Crisis, 298 Google Scholar.

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.