The social gospel movement in the United States began as a faith-based, grassroots movement of laity and clergy in the aftermath of the Civil War. During this era, American society faced extreme levels of social instability resulting not only from wartime trauma and loss, but also relocation of massive numbers of those emancipated from slavery, a rapidly accelerated pace of both industrialization and urbanization and unprecedented waves of immigration.
In addition to the obvious, dire need for reconstruction, the post-bellum era was characterized by wage depression, high illiteracy and unemployment rates, extensive poverty, racial discrimination, poor sanitation, and plagues of human trafficking, lynching, liquor abuse and civic corruption. These and other social crises pressed hard upon large segments of the populace, compelling the attention of many American protestants who, along with a progressive view of history, had inherited from earlier evangelical and puritan visionaries a vision of a godly nation.
As defined by social gospel proponent Shailer Mathews, the social gospel was, simply, “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.” The goal of the social gospel was to effect Christian salvation that redeemed and transformed both personal lives and the social order. Thus conversion was aimed not only at individuals, but also at American society and the whole world.Footnote 31 Social gospel workers applied themselves to both domestic and foreign social betterment opportunities while the movement's leaders maximized the persuasive power of pulpit, platform and press. Both clergy and laity leveraged democratic political processes and the emerging social sciences to accomplish the bold, broad mission of the social gospel to build the kingdom of God on earth, starting at home in the United States of America.
The theological emphases of the social gospel movement revolved around commonplace understandings of the biblical teachings of Jesus. These include the advent of the kingdom of God, the first and second Great Commandments (one must love God above all else and one's neighbor as oneself) and the Golden Rule (one should treat others the way one would want to be treated). These and similar biblical teachings became recognized as hallmarks of the social gospel movement and provided the foundation for increasingly widespread, formalized teaching of Christian social ethics.
In large part it was the legacy of American evangelicalism's long-standing commitments to mission, social holiness, social reform, and the building of a Christian nation and world that gave rise to this religious, social and political movement in the United States. The American social gospel coincided with and was related to similar developments in other countries, especially in Canada, Great Britain, Germany and other parts of Western Europe. The impact of both its theologies and practices extends past the fifty years or so (1865–1915) of its prominence, through the twentieth century American civil rights movement, and beyond.
In order to grasp the breadth and the racial and gender diversity of the social gospel movement, one must distinguish between at least two important facets of the movement. The first was a concerted, practical element that began to emerge in the 1860s out of a basic, common sense understanding of Christian teachings and ethical imperatives in the face of enormous social crises. The second was the related, widely popularized academic theology that began to appear in the 1870s. That is, a loosely-knit, intellectual sub-movement with its own literary focus led by university and seminary professors such as Shailer Mathews and Walter Rauschenbusch arose as another significant aspect of the social gospel movement. These and other professors attempted both to capture and further promote in and through the academy what formally educated proponents understood to be the movement's essence.
Unless one recognizes both the grassroots and academic elements of the movement, one misses its complexity, which included potent advocacy for racial and gender equality. These convictions were rarely observed in the elite, academic centers that eventually produced the most sophisticated social gospel theologies and publications, such as those penned by Washington Gladden, Josiah Strong and Walter Rauschenbusch. These materials, often without benefit of the full array of grassroots experience and expertise, in turn framed what became the most famous social gospel rhetoric and subsequent scholarly, historical narratives about the movement.
African Methodist Episcopal (AME) pastor Reverdy Ransom (1861–1959) exemplified grassroots social gospel commitments in his founding of Chicago's Institutional Church and Social Settlement in 1900 to help meet needs of blacks and immigrants who were moving into the city. Organized as a residential city mission, it featured an auditorium, dining room, kitchen and gymnasium. Programs included men's and women's clubs, childcare, concerts, classes and lectures. Ransom's work embraced social activism such as mediation in labor disputes and addressing civic corruption in order to improve the social conditions of those with whom he ministered not only in Chicago, but also later in Boston and New York. Ransom was an outspoken advocate for civil rights for African Americans and a leader in the formation of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
Members of African American denominations were especially responsive to the crises precipitated by the residual effects of slavery and racial discrimination. Outraged by the continuing scandals of lynching, segregation and disenfranchisement, AME Sunday School teacher and journalist Ida B. Wells-Barnett became an outspoken and effective grassroots social gospeler and civil rights leader. Women's roles in the social gospel movement ranged from quiet, dedicated social work alongside other laity and pastors, to missionary service, and to advocacy for woman suffrage and full clergy rights for women. When Victorian era white Methodist women like Frances E. Willard felt called to serve in leadership beyond their traditionally designated feminine roles, they often made a compelling case that it was not only in the interest of social holiness, but also “home protection.” Thus many social gospel women championed with a vengeance the cause of temperance alongside woman suffrage and other reforms, especially through the Woman's Christian Temperance Union and a plethora of “woman's clubs.”
The social gospel movement associated itself with concerns about unchecked capitalism and limited democracy by supporting fair, living wages for workers and by issuing scathing critiques about discriminatory labor and voting laws and practices. It provided programs for social betterment and reconstruction that addressed poverty and the myriad other problems facing society. Social gospel commitments were institutionalized in legislation such as child labor and health and safety laws, and in denominational home mission societies and organizations such as the Methodist Federation for Social Service (1907), the Federal Council of Churches and Methodist Social Creed (1908) and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (1909).
Between the Civil War and the early twentieth century, forms of literal Biblicism that had developed previously alongside and in support of slavery aligned with American pre-millennialist, fundamentalist and holiness theologies under the rubric of a politicized form of protestant “evangelicalism.” This wave of American Christianity expressed virulent opposition to theories of evolution, scholarly higher criticism, ecumenism and social gospel-inclined elements of protestantism. These pre-millennialists devotedly awaited the second coming of Christ for inauguration of the kingdom of God on earth and perfection of society in lieu of joining post-millennialist social gospelers who worked fervently toward its creation in the here and now.
As a result of the World Wars, the post-war critique of progressive history and the growth of pre-millennialist, neo-orthodox, and a variety of new liberal and other theologies, the social gospel movement lost the significant place it had held for decades in academic circles. Yet social gospel piety and practice remained as important facets of the faith and life of innumerable Christians, their churches, agencies and denominations. The movement's legacy includes a history of legislation and organizations that continue to check the advance of potent social problems. It also includes ongoing, grassroots efforts to live out a faith beyond personal piety in order to transform communities, the nations and the world according to a common sense understanding of the teachings of Jesus about salvation and the Kingdom of God.
